Orbán’s War on Democracy – A Playbook for Trump?

The synergies between the Orbán and Trump administrations should not be ignored.

We all know the pattern. A charismatic leader wins an upset victory, often without a plurality of voters, promising to overhaul a system he sees as corrupt and out of touch. He rails against the “establishment” – institutions, bureaucracy, media, other branches of government – and promises to purge their ranks. He uses his executive power to start a constitutional revolution, which he justifies through his popular mandate. Princeton professor Kim Lane Scheppele calls this phenomenon autocratic legalism, and Hungary is her “archetypal case”.

In July 2017, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán concluded his annual speech at Bálványos Summer University with a triumphant proclamation:

“Twenty-five years ago, here in Central Europe, we believed that Europe was our future. Now we feel that we are the future of Europe.”

To unpack this claim, consider Hungary since its break from communism in the late 1980s. At the time, the country was a fledgling democracy with an interest in moving away from communism and implementing Western-minded reforms aimed at securing membership in institutions such as the EU and NATO. Accordingly, its elected leaders ushered in significant amounts of foreign aid to assist with the difficult transition to a democratic market economy. This aid often came through a rapidly growing civil society – including Western-backed NGOs. While many Hungarians welcomed Western influence, a growing faction became opposed to what they saw as a foreign invasion. Over the following two decades, political currents in Hungary shifted toward anti-Western and anti-globalist sentiments – bolstering proponents of nationalism and far-right populism. This culminated in 2010 with Orbán and his far-right Fidesz party winning a significant electoral victory in the national elections.

During its first year in office, the Fidesz-controlled Parliament amended the constitution twelve times to weaken the institutions standing in its way. It attacked the Constitutional Court, which had been the primary check on the executive for over twenty years, altering the system for nominating judges, restricting its jurisdiction, and expanding the court to add loyalists to its ranks. Then, it targeted the Hungarian election commission, adding new seats and installing loyalists in order to control both election monitoring and voter referendums. Next, it overhauled the Media Authority, the state regulatory agency, and appointed loyalists to oversee it. Finally, the Parliament elected former Fidesz vice-chair Pál Schmitt to the Presidency, installing another Fidesz loyalist in a post that could otherwise act as a check on its power.

Scheppele and co-authors Miklós Bánkuti and Gábor Halmai Scheppele discuss the implications of this dramatic shift:

“These four actions—limiting the Constitutional Court, dooming the referendum process, asserting control over the media, and putting a Fidesz loyalist in the presidency—effectively created an opening through which the Fidesz government could then push a new constitution without challenge.”

The following year, Fidesz drafted a new constitution behind closed doors, which was debated in Parliament for only nine days before passing along party lines on April 25, 2011. The new constitution substantially weakened all checks on the potential abuses of the executive. By the time the next election came along in 2014, Fidesz had successfully entrenched their power in all branches of government. Their constitutional overhaul severely limited the ability of their political opposition to compete effectively. Many scholars now consider Hungary’s elections to be “free and unfair” due to a variety of measures implemented by Fidesz to maintain power. These include a disproportionate voting system, state control of major media sources, and a lack of freedom for opposition parties to effectively campaign against them.

Orbán positions Hungary as a model for other countries in the EU to follow, which explains his “future of Europe” claim. In fact, his ambitions extend beyond Europe to all democratic countries, including the United States. Members of the far-right in the US, including Donald Trump, have praised Orbán’s takeover, with Trump calling his actions “a tremendous job in so many different ways”. Kevin Roberts, President of the Heritage Foundation, has also long admired Orbán. In a 2022 interview with Hungarian Conservative, Roberts claimed that “modern Hungary is not just a model for conservative statecraft, but the model.” And in 2023, Roberts brought the Heritage Foundation into formal partnership with the Danube Institute, a conservative think tank funded by Orbán’s government.

Trump has tried to publicly distance himself from the Heritage Foundation and their “Project 2025”, claiming on his social network Truth Social that, “I have not seen it, have no idea who is in charge of it, and, unlike our very well received Republican Platform, had nothing to do with it.” However, the Heritage Foundation’s own website suggests otherwise, noting that the project is backed by over 100 conservative organizations, many led by Trump’s close allies, including Turning Point USA, the Center for Renewing America, the Claremont Institute, the Family Policy Alliance, the Family Research Council, Moms for Liberty and America First Legal — the last of which is run by Stephen Miller, one of Trump’s top advisors. Many other former Trump administration officials have also been directly affiliated with Project 2025 including former acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller, former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, former deputy chief of staff Rick Dearborn, former Justice Department senior counsel Gene Hamilton, and former Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought.

Vought, a self proclaimed Christian nationalist and one of the key authors of Project 2025, is also the Republican National Committee’s platform policy director. New York Times columnist Damon Linker recently called Vought “Probably the Most Important Person in Trump 2.0”. He notes that if Vought is reconfirmed, he will likely continue his work enacting the radical agenda he began to implement during the last two years of the first Trump administration when he occupied the same position. Vought’s primary target is the “woke and weaponized [federal] bureaucracy”, which he sees as an unaccountable “fourth branch of government”, imposing its own agenda and defending its own distinct interests. He believes the President may (and should) use a tool-kit he calls radical constitutionalism to reassert executive authority. Vought has suggested at least four ways to “tame the administrative state,” which involve an explicit rejection of bureaucratic independence and a vague notion to “take on the system”.

Many argue that the federal bureaucracy does indeed need significant reform. However, Vought’s strategy of demolition rather than repair may create more problems than it fixes. Not all potential Trump appointees share his view. Kash Patel, Trump’s pick to run the FBI, has a fundamentally different approach. Instead of dismantling the “deep state”, Patel prefers to turn its powers against Trump’s enemies. Vought has at times reconciled these different approaches by conceding that “the answer might be both.” Over the coming months, this intra-MAGA battle will likely be waged as one front in their broader civil war.

The prominence of Vought and his attacks on the federal bureaucracy represent just one example of Orbán’s tactics making their way into the GOP playbook. Others include Trump’s consistent assault on US election integrity, most notably his refusal to concede the 2020 election, and his attacks on independent media, often dismissing any criticism as “fake news” from the “radical left”. While these tactics are employed by plenty of aspiring dictators around the world, the synergies between the Orbán and Trump administrations should not be ignored. Orbán himself claimed in 2024 that, “We have entered the program-writing system of President Donald Trump’s team, and we have deep involvement there.” Meanwhile, Hungary’s Danube Institute has provided fellowships for American right-wing and alt-right personalities such as Rod Dreher, Christopher F. Rufo, Michael O’Shea, among many others who now play a significant role in shaping GOP discourse. There is no reason to believe these synergies will not continue or even expand in the future.

The US government differs from Hungary’s in fundamental ways, most notably in its possession of a much more robust and long-standing democratic tradition, including an independent legislature and a strong judiciary. Therefore, the US route to autocracy would likely begin with the creation of a powerful executive that can slowly (or not so slowly) overwhelm the other branches.

The most notable ideological backing for expansion of the executive comes from the Unitary Executive Theory, which has been popular in some republican circles since the Reagan Administration. The theory posits that the power of the presidency has been unconstitutionally hobbled by limits placed by the courts, Congress, and civil service rules on the president’s ability to control the executive branch. Over the past few decades, as the theory has gained traction, increasing power has steadily flowed to the executive branch. This trend has only intensified with Trump’s re-election.

Hungary has given Trump a playbook for creating an electoral autocracy. Republicans in the U.S. have drawn lessons from Orbán’s approach and tailored it to fit the American context. Even with the U.S.’s long democratic history and stronger institutions, Trump’s second term could lay the groundwork for a significant “Orbánization” of America. The GOP seems to be willing to build a presidency with near-total power, capable of overpowering Congress, controlling the media and civil society, and seriously intimidating the judiciary. The degree to which it finds success in these endeavors will directly impact the health of our democracy.