Governance and Policy-Making in an Illiberal Context

In the last seven years Hungary has been characterized by a significant democratic regression and an increasing power concentration under a charismatic political leadership. The possible causes and roots of this development have received ample attention; its implications for democracy, the rule of law have been also studied; the leadership of Viktor Orbán has been subject of analysis. However, no research has addressed in a systematic way the policy aspects of this illiberal governance. Assuming that post-2010 Hungary provides a crucial case of illiberal governance, the paper’s aim is to shed light on the mechanisms and consequences of illiberal policy-making as well as on political strategies that illiberal governments use to mitigate major political conflicts stemming from weak policy outcomes. The paper also seeks to contribute to a better understanding of the democratic nature of policy-making, including the role of actors, institutions and implicit norms that are under attack in illiberal governance. The study applies an explorative research design and it investigates how illiberalism in Hungary has affected the policy process and policy outputs/outcomes. Based on a content analysis of the key documents and major media assertions of the key decision-makers the paper explores that illiberalism has deeply affected the policy process through (1) limiting policy venues, (2) neglecting or circumventing usual institutional arrangements and stakeholders in the policy process, (3) intimidating and weakening policy actors, (4) making the policy process less transparent and unpredictable. Policy outputs are also affected: (1) the quality of laws has deteriorated, (2) policy decisions have been repeatedly found to serve discretionary measures and clientelism, (3) punctuations and policy paradigm shifts have become more frequent, (4) policy decisions have triggered a number of serious legal and political conflicts with expert communities, civil society actors and international institutions. A main finding of the paper is that the illiberal institutional stance of the post-2010 Hungarian government and its genuine populism in policy discourses is typically coupled with a pragmatic policy-orientation. In certain policy areas, however, where illiberalism also operates as an ideological driver of policy decisions, the illiberal policy stance implies a weak policy outcome. This happened first and foremost in the case of the educational policy. Accordingly, the paper concludes that the long-term policy outcome of the illiberal avenue is likely suboptimal compared to the usual democratic policy-making.