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Andras Bozoki on the Career of Viktor Orban

Losing the elections in 2002 and 2006 were formative for Viktor Orban, “he decided to seek revenge,” our Research Affiliate Andras Bozoki said in an interview with Mother Jones.

“He translated his defeats into the conviction that he was too soft and much too democratic. And he believed that if he came back to power, he would not let the opposition beat him again,” he argued, adding that “he started to believe that democracy should be built on a nation-state model with a strong leader. And that the policies should reflect the will of the majority only.”

“Rational discourse in the media has been replaced by propaganda. It was very important for Orban to create a new reality,” he continued. “There are several lessons from this: Occupying the state administration, the independent administrative bodies, starting a war against civil society, organizations, NGOs, occupying the media, threatening the capitalists, so that they should support the Prime Minister. Nonetheless, it was still some sort of democracy until 2014. But without the rule of law, it was already a low-quality, diminished democracy. Already an illiberal democracy much before Orban described his own system proudly as an illiberal democracy,” he argued.

Read the full interview here.

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