“Voters are willing to back a leader who violates European norms if it serves their economic interests,” our Research Fellow Dorottya Szikra and Mitchell A. Orenstein, Professor and Chair of Russian and East European Studies at University of Pennsylvania and Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute write on Project Syndicate.
“The challenge for Viktor Orban’s opponents is to devise economic and social policies that attract not only the growing middle class but also those left behind by Orban’s agenda,” they argue, adding that the result is “a crushing defeat for the European Union as well,” and perhaps the outcome will force Hungary’s opposition, that “failed to offer a strong alternative”, to consider “the largely economic reasons why so many Hungarians vote for Orban.”
Read the full article (registration required) here.
The op-ed has also been published in German, in Der Standard. Read it here.