The Orbán Regime

Plebiscitary Leader Democracy in the Making

András Körösényi, Gábor Illés, Attila Gyulai

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9780429624414
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

This book gives the first comprehensive and theoretically substantiated political science account of the Orbán regime in English.

It argues that Viktor Orbán's regime-building and reconstructive leadership is more than just an example of hybridisation, a successful populist appeal or a backlash against the earlier neoliberal hegemony in Central Europe. It unfolds the major traits of the Orbán regime and argues that it provides a paradigmatic case of the Weberian model of plebiscitary leader democracy (PLD). Beyond explaining the backslide of liberal democracy in Hungary, the book aims at two additional contributions of wider significance. First, by applying the concept of PLD to the Hungarian case, it reveals that the authoritarian elements are products of an endogenous drive of modern mass democracy. Second, through the glass of PLD, the Orbán regime can be seen as an experimental lab of global trends like mediatisation and personalisation of politics, populist style, the deconsolidation of liberal democratic order, and what is often labelled as "post-truth politics".

This book will be of key interest both to scholars and students of Hungary, Post-communist and Central and East European politics and to those interested in populism, democratisation and democratic deconsolidation as a broader trend in a variety of countries.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of tables
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction: the major approaches to the Orbán regime and an alternative
• 2 Plebiscitary leader democracy in theory and in practice
• 3 The primacy of politics: maintaining the capacity to act
• 4 Reconstructing the polity: constitutional tinkering and institutional reorganisation
• 5 The informal side of reconstructing the polity
• 6 Bricolage and realism in public policy-making
• 7 Concluding remarks: the implications of plebiscitary leader democracy
• References
• Index