From the reform of the Constitutional Court to the relentless attacks on freedom and media pluralism, the weakening of the overall independence of the judicial system, the downplaying of the climate crisis with support for fossil fuels, the law banning Lgbtq+ content for minors, the equation of homosexuality with paedophilia, and the closure towards migrants. For twelve years, Viktor Orbán has been moulding the institutional architecture of his country in his own image. Basing his choices on an ultra-conservative populism and on a "Hungarian way". A style of his own: a political approach that seeks to pit the population against alleged political, economic and media power brokers.

Viktor Orbán's electoral dictatorship and the tyranny of passions

In this way, Orbán has managed to present himself as the champion of the rights of a "misunderstood" people set against everyone. Including the intermediary bodies that are supposed to form the binding agent of a nation's social contract: trade unions, trade associations, and political parties themselves. An attempt that, in practice, Donald Trump failed to pull off in the United States, and that Jair Bolsonaro only partially managed in Brazil. And that Marine Le Pen in France, the Party for Freedom in the Netherlands, the AfD in Germany, Vox in Spain, the FPÖ in Austria, and the Lega in Italy all dream of replicating.

Orbán's exercise of democracy is centred – in practice – on its restriction (even though he entirely rejects this claim, declaring that he merely wishes to impose a new model of governance). A dissociation of political freedoms and civil rights, on the one hand, from the country's democratic life itself, on the other. As early as 2018, philosopher Luuk van Middelaar described this approach as the emergence of an "electoral dictatorship". One in which press freedom and freedom of association serve as a useful façade to conceal the growing difficulty of genuinely opposing power.

The migrant question and the 2016 referendum

At the same time, what Orbán attempts to do is to gradually supersede representative democracy in favour of direct democracy. A sort of "tyranny of passions". Born of public emotion rather than institutional foresight. The management of migrants offered a clear illustration of this: situated squarely on the "Balkan route", Hungary immediately closed its borders and imposed conditions on asylum seekers that the United Nations denounced as deplorable.

In 2016, Orbán even called a referendum to have voters endorse the rejection of the migrant-flow distribution plan proposed by the European Union. Ninety-eight per cent of participants voted no. It was only a partial plebiscite, however, as just 44 per cent of voters turned out, which prevented the result from being validated.

BBC News (UK) ✓ @BBCNews

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Hungary election: Nationalist PM Viktor Orban claims victory bbc.in/3u3yzui

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The axis with Putin, political solidity, and obsessive attention to narrative

Yet the political solidity of the Budapest leader has not been dented. The rhetoric of a Europe "that tomorrow could cease to be the continent of Europeans" has continued to resonate with the population. Sunday's vote is the latest tangible proof of this. All the more so because it was achieved despite his political closeness to Vladimir Putin, who ordered the invasion of Ukraine (with Orbán neither renouncing his friendship with the Kremlin leader nor allowing the transit of weapons through Hungary).

The media, almost all pro-government, framed the choice as the best way to keep the European nation out of the conflict. An electoral strategy that paid off, alongside that of supporting the population's purchasing power by freezing the prices of certain goods, fuels included. Orbán is, when all is said and done, precisely this: contingent populism, the inexorable erosion of democratic freedoms, and an obsessive attention to narrative. The most "gut-driven" — and most dangerous — response to the succession of financial, economic, geopolitical, climate and health crises of the past fifteen years.