Intro
In the last two years, Hungary has seen an influx of worker-led protests, even as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán maintained tight control over politics and the media. From 2023 to 2024, teachers and union members took to the streets of Hungary to oppose new labor laws, and the June 2024 European Parliament elections were Orbán’s worst electoral performance in decades. Yet Orbán spun this as a vindication of his rule over Hungary. He has used nationalist-populist, pro-worker language to justify his attacks on labor power and rights, cementing an elitist–oligarchic system in Hungary. This pattern of Orbán’s confirms a deeper weakness in democracies, without strong checks and social voices, even popular-sounding appeals to voters can hollow out democracy.
Worker Protests and Police Repression
In May 2023, a large campaign of demonstrations and strikes broke out when Orbán’s government pushed through an “education status” law that many teachers saw as a punishment. Thousands of teachers and students stood up and marched in Budapest against the new law they coined a “revenge law” that removed tenure protection and increased the workload of teachers. As Reuters reported, “Thousands of Hungarians rallied… to protest against new legislation eliminating (tenure) status of teachers”. The crowd came after a year of teacher strikes for better pay, and amidst around 17% inflation. Those protests were almost always peaceful, except for when police started breaking up rallies with tear gas.
In any case, the government’s response to dissent, especially labor or student-led dissent, has been heavy-handed. Police arrested dozens and beat down protestors, and Orbán’s media propaganda machine painted demonstrators as foreign-backed troublemakers. By early 2025, Orbán had explicitly and publicly vowed to squash what he labeled a “shadow army” of NGOs and Journalists funded from abroad. In March 2025 (on a national holiday), Orbán vowed to “eliminate the whole shadow army” of NGOs and foreign-influenced media. Only a few months later, his party submitted a bill to publicly list and restrict organizations that receive any foreign funding at all, a clear attack on independent labor unions and civil society. A clear move to crush dissent in Hungary.
Orbán’s Rhetoric and the 2024 Elections
Throughout these crises in Hungary, Orbán has maintained a truly relentless populist narrative. He portrays himself as the defender of everyday Hungarians against elites or foreigners, even while empowering his own inner circle: friends, family, and corporate oligarchs. For example, after the June 2024 European Parliament elections, Orbán claimed the vote was a “victory” and that “Hungarian democracy was alive and well”. In a speech to supporters, he even framed Hungarian politics as a war against outside enemies, saying “in a war situation, we have scored important victories.” Yet, in reality, his party’s support has collapsed; Fidesz won only around 44% of the vote, the weakest EU election result for Orbán’s party in decades. A new opposition list (the Tisza party) ran first, taking nearly 30% of the vote and sweeping 7 of 21 Hungarian seats. Voter turnout hit a record 59%, showing the Hungarian people’s eagerness to challenge the regime. Unfazed by this outcome, Orbán declared that this only reaffirmed the path he was moving the nation towards. By contrast, the opposition leader Péter Magyar promised to “root out corruption and revive democratic checks and balances, which critics say have been eroded under Orbán.”.
Orbán’s style mirrors Guillermo O’Donnell’s notion of delegative democracy, he governs as if voters gave him a personal mandate to do as he pleases, downplaying the legitimacy of institutions and crushing dissenting voices. O’Donnell warned that delegative leaders govern “as THEY see fit,” while sidelining horizontal checks on their power. Orbán also plays the classic populist games, even as he touts nationalist, anti–immigrant, anti–worker themes, he throws occasional bones to workers. For example, his government announced large raises in public-sector wages and minimum wages, an estimated 40% increase to wages by 2027, which he touted as helping the common Hungarian. But these gestures masked the larger reality that independent unions were being crushed and business was being handed to loyalists: though these workers were being paid more, the job protection, better benefits, and hours that are common in labor unions were being gutted by the attack on unions. Juan Linz’s analysis of authoritarian corporatism is evident here, the state co–opts favored social groups like regime–compliant labor groups and family-linked businesses in order to protect and support the regime. As one account put it, Orbán set out “goals like forming a layer of domestic businessmen, building pillars of a strong Hungary”. In other words, the elite class are enriched by public projects, siphoning money from the pockets of everyday citizens to the wealthy. In practice, some of Orbán’s closest friends and relatives have become amongst Hungary’s richest people amid widespread cronyism and nepotism, even as he spoke as if he were “fighting for our (the common Hungarians) lifestyle…against liberal elites.”
Theory and Hungary’s Case
These events can be understood through democratic theory. As Acemoglu and Robinson (2006) emphasize, a healthy democracy requires inclusive institutions that allow for broad participation in democracy and fair implementation of the rule of law, rather than allowing elites to monopolize power. But in Hungary, those institutions have been hollowed out. Nancy Bermeo’s work on Democratic erosion is a reminder that autocratizing leaders often use legal reforms to hide their real aims, exactly as Orbán did with the labor laws and court reforms. At the same time, Bermeo also notes how citizens can resist through elections and protests, the high turnout and street mobilization in 2024 may be seen as Hungary’s democratic resistance. O’Donnell’s delegative democracy concept fits Orbán’s people–centered, majoritarian rhetoric, and Linz’s work on authoritarianism explains the regime’s corporate–state networks. A concise way to tie the theory to evidence is that when unions and labor rights are strong, democracy is vibrant; when those vanish, democracy is endangered. Independent labor institutions are truly the core foundation of life in a democracy, and when labor unions or rights are undermined, populist strongmen and oligarch elitists fill that void with ‘pro-worker’ rhetoric and policies that… are the opposite of what they claim––ANTI–WORKER. In Hungary, the recent attack on labor rights was a warning sign for any sense of liberty, freedom, or democracy left in Hungary. The case of the Orbán regime reminds us that defending democracy and labor goes hand and hand. A society that cannot protect its workers CANNOT protect its freedom.
In short, Orbán’s Hungary shows how a leader can weaponize social–democratic sounding messages to camouflage an extractive––authoritarian agenda. He mobilizes working–class voters with nationalist-social policy, all while building a corporatist network of allies and crushing dissent. In terms of theory, this underscores a structural weakness: when democratic institutions are hollow, populist rhetoric can legitimize oligarchy from within a nation-state. Hungary’s 2023–24 uproars show both the promise of resistance and the perils of complacency. Without robust labor rights and institutional checks, even a popularist champion can slip into one–party dominance, a lesson with urgent relevance for democracy everywhere.
Works Cited
Hungarians protest against new teachers’ law, police violence | Sawt Beirut International
Hungary’s opposition rallies as Orban pledges crackdown on media, NGOs | Reuters
How Europe’s taxpayers will bankroll Viktor Orban’s friends and family (reuters.com)
Exclusive: Hungary premier’s friends and family win more and more public business | Reuters
Acemoglu, Daron, and James A. Robinson. Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. Cambridge University Press, 2006, Chapters 1–2.
Bermeo, Nancy. “On Democratic Backsliding.” Journal of Democracy 27 (1): 5–19, 2016.
O’Donnell, Guillermo. “Delegative Democracy.” Journal of Democracy 5 (1): 55–69, 1994.
Linz, Juan J., and Alfred Stepan. Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post-communist Europe. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996, Chapter 1.
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