This paper examines the issue of legislative backsliding defined from the perspective of liberal
democracy as the deterioration in the quality of the legislative process and the laws. By
examining the four dimensions of legislative backsliding – the (1) public policy, the (2) legal-
constitutional-formal, (3) the procedural, and the (4) stability dimension – for the first time, we
develop an index that can be used to analyse the practice of legislative backsliding. We use
qualitative case studies to test this system for Hungary to gain new perspectives on an emerging
phenomenon, hybrid political systems. We scrutinise laws that feature the most serious flaws to
illustrate the viability of our theoretical approach. We find that often times laws which show
qualitative deficiencies exhibit them in not just, but several dimensions. The index developed in
our study is well-positioned for longitudinal and comparative analysis as the measurement
system for legislative backsliding is scalable to most advanced democracies.