Last Summer I gave a keynote lecture at a workshop on “Fighting Back: Liberal Democratic Responses to the Populist Challenge” at the Central European University (CEU) in Budapest, which has been the target of attacks by Victor Orbán and his Fidesz party since I worked there in the late 1990s.
I laid out my usual argument, which is that the populist radical right represents the loud minority rather than the silent majority, and that we should focus on strengthening liberal democracy rather than weakening the populist radical right.
Then I was asked what to do about Hungary, where the radical right is in power and liberal democracy has, by and large, been replaced by what Orbán officially refers to as an “illiberal state”. How can you strengthen liberal democracy in an illiberal state? Shouldn’t you first defeat the illiberal state before you can rebuild liberal democracy?
I argued that in such a case, liberal democrats should do everything to break the illiberal democrats’ hold on power, which includes working with other illiberal democrats. In the case of Hungary, I suggested that the liberal democratic opposition, splintered into various personalized and small political parties, should form a tactical alliance with the illiberal democratic opposition, united in the populist radical right Movement for a Better Hungary or Jobbik.
The air went out of the room as I saw many people in the audience violently shake their head. Working with Jobbik? Aren’t they worse then Orbán’s Fidesz? In theory yes, but in practice, no.
Although Jobbik is currently campaigning on a less populist radical right platform then Fidesz, a Jobbik government will almost certainly be even worse for liberal democracy than the current Fidesz government. But the point is, they are not in power, and have little chance at coming to power by themselves. Fidesz, however, is in power.
Fidesz has been consistently dismantling liberal democracy in Hungary since returning to power in 2010. He and his party have changed the constitution, appointed cronies to every new position, and have created an illiberal “Frankenstate”, as one of Orbán’s most astute critics, Kim-Lane Scheppele, has termed it.
On top of that, Orbán has built a kleptocracy that has enriched a small group of his cronies, not in the least through EU subsidies and German investments, at the expense of the wider population. Knowing it must hold on to power to keep the corrupt system going, and keep Orbán’s oligarchs from facing prison sentences, the Fidesz government keeps manipulating the electoral process by bribing opposition politicians, creating bogus parties to further divide the opposition, and limiting the space for opposition campaigns.
That is why the next parliamentary elections will probably be the last somewhat free and fair elections, in which the opposition has at least a theoretical chance to defeat Fidesz. That, and nothing else, is at stake on Sunday 8 April. And, for that higher cause, a tactical and temporary alliance with Jobbik is acceptable and necessary.
Jobbik is the strongest opposition party in Hungary, mainly because liberals have been more concerned with ideological details and personal power than with saving liberal democracy. Without Jobbik, there is no chance at an electoral victory for the opposition.
Some members in the Central European University audience openly opposed an alliance with Jobbik, because it would “legitimize” or “normalize” the radical right. Fidesz supporters like British Hungarian sociologist Frank Furedi have also jumped on it, claiming that this just shows that European liberals, like myself, are not really concerned about the far right in Hungary as long as it is “our far right”. Both miss the point.
Liberal opposition parties shouldn’t collaborate with Jobbik because they accept, let alone legitimize, their populist radical right ideas. They should work together despite their populist radical right ideology! The only goal of the tactical alliance is to prevent Fidesz from putting the final nail in the coffin of Hungary’s liberal democracy. In this case, no government is better than a government.
So, how would this tactical alliance look? Given that Fidesz has created an electoral system that caters exclusively to its strengths, there are few options left. The majority of the 199 seats in the single-chamber parliament are elected through a one-round plurality system, just like in the UK and US. It used to be a two-round majority system, like in France, but this could create runoffs between coalitions of parties, including an anti-Fidesz coalition, which is why the government abolished it.
In the current system, coalitions should be built before the elections. For this purpose, a group of former politicians has recently created a website that lists all the candidates in the 106 FPTP districts and indicates which candidate of the “anti-Orbán camp” has the best chance to win the district.
Opposition parties should sit together and create a mutually acceptable list of best-placed candidates and withdraw all other candidates. In that case, each district would only have one Fidesz candidate and one opposition candidate (contesting the elections under the banner of their own party) – leaving aside the various bogus parties Fidesz created to confuse the voter.
This is the only way to break Orbán stranglehold on Hungary’s dying liberal democracy. Fidesz is polling around 50% among decided voters and, given the doctored electoral system, could regain a constitutional majority.
Liberals have a choice between remaining pure and facing the certainty of an illiberal state or “dirtying their hands” and at least fight for a liberal democratic future. There are less than two weeks left. The clock is ticking.
- Cas Mudde is a Guardian US columnist, an associate professor in the School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Georgia, and a researcher in the Center for Research on Extremism at the University of Oslo