In 2011, Viktor Orbán’s government cleared hundreds of judges from Hungary’s courts by suddenly lowering their retirement age. Fifteen years later the same strategy was utilized against his own appointees. On September 15 parliament seated five new Constitutional Court judges, filling seats left empty when a new retirement age of 70 removed four Orbán-era judges, including the court’s president. All five of these judges were chosen by Prime Minister Péter Magyar’s Tisza party. Fidesz deputies walked out before the vote, and only six lawmakers voted no. Tisza is using the same strategies Orbán used while he was in power but Tisza is using them now to undo Orbán’s state. Whether that restoration lasts depends on one thing: will this court ever rule against the government that appointed it?

Instead of breaking the law to capture Hungary’s institutions Orbán simply changed them to his favor. After Fidesz won a two-thirds majority in 2010 they wrote a new constitution and added seats to the Constitutional Court giving its judges longer terms filling these seats and nearly every other independent office with loyalists. Bánkuti, Halmai, and Scheppele describe the process as a “disabled” constitution: the checks on power still existed on paper, but Fidesz controlled all of them. The appointments were designed to outlast Fidesz itself. So when Tisza won 141 of 199 seats in April, Tisza took over a government still run by Orbán’s appointees.

Tisza’s answer has been to use its own two-thirds majority. The 17th amendment ended President Tamás Sulyok’s term, removed the head of the Constitutional Court, and barred deputies who have served three terms from running again, a rule that hits more than half of current Fidesz deputies. Parliament also created an asset-recovery office that combines investigative, prosecutorial, and civil powers to pursue Orbán-era corruption. Critics noticed the resemblance. Amnesty International criticized the “astonishing haste” of Tisza’s single-party judicial appointments, and Fidesz called the amendment autocratic.

If you only look at the methods, Tisza is following the framework Huq and Ginsburg describe in ‘How to Lose a Constitutional Democracy.’ Varol’s “stealth authoritarianism” describes governments using legal tools that look democratic to achieve undemocratic ends, and Huq and Ginsburg show how constitutional amendments can strip away institutional checks one at a time. But these frameworks define erosion by what a move is for, not just how it is done. Bermeo describes executive aggrandizement as elected leaders weakening the checks on their own power and the opposition’s ability to challenge them. But change doesn’t always affect those in power. 

Most of Tisza’s reforms do the opposite. Under the amendment, Constitutional Court judges now serve nine-year terms instead of twelve, and the court’s president is chosen by the judges rather than by parliament. Both changes reverse Fidesz-era rules, and both reduce what any future majority, including Tisza’s, can control. Tisza also capped any prime minister at eight years in office, which limits Magyar himself. The new president, András Baka, is a jurist Fidesz once removed from the Supreme Court. By Bermeo’s standard, these are the opposite of aggrandizement.

Not every reform passes Bermeo’s test. The three-term limit on deputies fails it. It applies retroactively and falls mostly on the opposition, which is exactly the kind of rule Bermeo would flag. If Tisza’s project goes wrong, it will likely start with rules like this one.

The larger risk is to norms. Levitsky and Ziblatt argue that democracies survive on forbearance, meaning governments choose not to use their legal powers to the fullest. Tisza has shown little of it. It filled one court seat two days after naming its candidate, when it had sixty days, and it consulted no one outside the party. Orbán has already called the asset-recovery office an “ÁVH-type institution,” a reference to the communist secret police, and warned that its staff would face accountability if his side returned to power. If each new two-thirds majority purges the last one’s appointees, Hungary will not have a court. 

Fidesz has said it will challenge several of Tisza’s laws before the Constitutional Court and has already filed against the anti-corruption reforms. If the new court strikes down any part of Tisza’s agenda in the next year, the asset-recovery office being the most likely target, that is strong evidence Hungary is restoring independent institutions. If the court approves everything Tisza sends it, Hungary has not ended state capture. It has only changed which party benefits from it.

Hungary will matter well beyond its borders, because it is one of the few cases where voters have removed an entrenched illiberal government at the ballot box. Poland faced the same problem after 2023: how do you remove captured institutions without capturing them yourself? So far, Tisza has mostly done the right things in the wrong way. The reforms themselves show a party trying to give power back. But the speed and the lack of consultation set a precedent, and the next government won’t inherit Tisza’s intentions. It will inherit Tisza’s tools.

Sources
Bermeo, Nancy. 2016. “On Democratic Backsliding.” Journal of Democracy 27(1).
Varol, Ozan. 2015. “Stealth Authoritarianism.” Iowa Law Review 100(4).
Huq, Aziz & Tom Ginsburg. 2017. “How to Lose a Constitutional Democracy.” UCLA Law Review 65.
Levitsky, Steven & Daniel Ziblatt. 2018. How Democracies Die. Crown. Chapters 5 and 6.
Bánkuti, Miklós, Gábor Halmai & Kim Lane Scheppele. 2012. “Disabling the Constitution.” Journal of Democracy 23(3).