Turning Citizens into Spectators?

Hungary and Poland have acquired international notoriety over recent years for leading the wave of anti-democratic and anti-European developments in the European Union. Both countries set out to build an illiberal democracy using a right-wing nationalist rhetoric that promised to return power from the corrupt elites to the people. This paper argues that despite this “vox populi” rhetoric, both the Fidesz and the PiS government have undertaken political reforms that in fact turn citizens into spectators with a very limited say or take in politics. Citizenship is thought of to have three main elements or dimensions (Cohen 1999; Kymlicka and Norman 2000; Carens 2000): citizenship as legal status, as political agency of the country’s political institutions, and as membership in a political community. Ever since Fidesz and PiS came to power, populist politics has taken the polarization of society to levels never seen before, diving the community between the ‘good people’ (real Hungarians and real Poles) and its enemies (or traitors). Operating in this Manichean world, the conscious effort to undermine pluralism has not only meant constructing institutional obstacles to the political opposition but also a rejection of norms accepting multicultural differences in society. The push for majoritarian rule also means that majority culture is the sole grounding of shared identity, denying rights of minorities or those in dissent. The political community is replaced by the community of ‘good people’, defined solely to the taste of government using xenophobic and exclusionary ideals and practices. Judicial reforms, new parliamentary rules and abuse of public consultative initiatives mean citizens cannot act as political agents of institutions that have been captured by the ruling party. Last but not least, citizenship as legal status is losing its meaning in these regimes that question universalistic principles of human rights and the rule of law. The paper argues that the political changes do not only limit civil and political rights associated with citizenship but also endanger the fulfilment of fundamental social and cultural rights since there are no more checks on executive power. The security that citizenship is to provide cannot be enjoyed as it itself cannot be secured against authorities themselves. This way, populist strategies mask authoritarian policies that limit social, political, and legal aspects of contemporary citizenship, and as a consequence transform citizenship into spectatorship. Citizens’ rights are curtailed, political agency of citizens is disabled by dividing the community, and citizens’ belonging is questioned to the extent that people are no longer citizens but only spectators of the new regimes. This way, citizens often fall under the spell of authoritarian leaders making all political decisions a binary yes or no matter. As a consequence, politicians are only “in the eyes of the people”, replacing democratic accountability with popularity in spectator democracy.