I know your post-election trauma. My experience as an organizer in Hungary is mediated by a different history, culture, and body, but it draws on some similar anger and sadness.
How could they vote for him? Did half of the country go nuts? Why am I sacrificing so much of my life for this society?
These were the questions rushing through my mind each time Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has been re-elected since 2010 in Hungary. A skillful politician, a gifted strategist, and a relentless pragmatist, Mr. Orbán and his ultra-conservative government gradually dismantled democratic institutions and extended control over the economy in the last fourteen years. Now, Hungary is a competitive authoritarian regime where formal democratic institutions (such as elections) exist but are abused, making the playing field so tilted that it is very difficult or almost impossible to replace the incumbents of the ruling party. Great studies are out there diagnosing the reasons for autocratization in the U.S. and helping organizers prepare for what is coming. Insightful articles have been written about lessons learned from Hungary, even in the columns of this journal. Let me offer my contribution to the anti-authoritarian playbook drawing on my experience as a veteran organizer, mentor, and trainer of organizers across a wide spectrum of issues from housing to caregiving to LGBTQ+, and as a researcher of the impact of movement struggles.
1. We stood up for democracy without challenging the failures of the previous regime that brought Mr. Orbán to power.
Hungary became a democracy in 1990, promising to ensure political freedom and general welfare. However, joining the Western bloc entailed plenty of economic suffering, widely perceived as the result of the failure of left-liberal policies. Left-liberal governments liberalized the economy in line with the Washington Consensus in the mid-1990s, cut welfare spending to comply with EU regulations in the late 2000s, and exposed the Hungarian housing market to the global financial markets which led to thousands of families losing their homes in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis.
Many people who expected better living standards from the democratic opening found themselves struggling instead. This gradually diminished the credibility of left-liberal parties and opened up space for a conservative take-over in 2010, which soon became an effort to centralize power. We, the progressive civil society overall, criticized the centralization of the state and demanded change but did not connect this demand to the larger story – the crisis of democracy. Although many people felt that democracy had failed them, we fought to protect it without explaining whether our vision differed from the pre-2010 democracy to which people had already said no.
2. We underestimated how unpopular the political opposition was and are still stuck with them.
In the years preceding the 2010 elections, Mr. Orbán and his party built a broad winning coalition around the promise of a conservative welfare state. They were diligently organizing to reinvigorate their conservative voter base. They extended their agenda with traditionally leftist topics such as the protection of schools, health care, and transportation from welfare cuts. This was Orbán’s answer to the crisis of democracy, and he won with a landslide victory in 2010. To most voters, his election promised a less strugglesome future. To his opposition, it signaled the coming of a nationalist-populist politician. Although the defeated left-liberal political elites were part of the problem, instead of stepping aside, they divided a new progressive political party Politics Can Be Different – LMP, and held out the false promise that the unity of the new and old opposition parties would produce enough votes to defeat Fidesz.
Progressive civil society languidly assisted in the bouncing back of these old elites because we did not understand how deep-seated grievances had been. Well, the old elites are still with us and have not won, but in return, they suck air away from authentic politicians. It was not clear to us that defeating this regime is not a sprint but a marathon and that it is not only about ousting Orbán but also about replacing the old left-liberal political elites.
3. We missed the opportunity to win over constituencies from Orbán’s flaking winning coalition.
In the beginning, in 2010, Mr. Orbán (just like Donald Trump) managed to build a relatively heterogeneous winning coalition: multi-class, multi-racial, and multi-gender. Under the unifying idea of the Hungarian nation, he could talk to Hungarian businessmen, skilled laborers, teachers, health care workers, small farmers, churches, and nationalist groups without being perceived as contradictory. However, it was almost impossible to maintain such a broad winning coalition, and Mr. Orbán did not take risks. Right after its landslide victory in 2010, his party changed the electoral law and extended control over the media, which enabled it to win 2/3 of the mandates with fewer votes than four years before. Over time, Mr. Orbán utilized media buyouts by government-connected businessmen, which has provided his party with an estimated control of 80 percent of the Hungarian media market.
Although various constituencies were not given what they had been promised or received incremental gains, many remained in Orbán’s voter bloc because of the lack of alternatives and information block-out.
We, the progressive civil society overall, did not do the relational work with and between these losing constituencies and could barely build a base that could elevate authentic political candidates. Instead, we organized – or mobilized – around issues, sometimes tens of thousands of people, and occasionally achieved policy changes. However, this approach left the Orbán regime and the dysfunctional opposition untouched.
4. We did not resolve the dilemma of fighting for policy change vs. regime change.
It is not easy to decide whether you center your fight for policy change or regime change when you deal with a solidified authoritarian regime like we do in Hungary. As much as incremental or substantial policy victories reinvigorate social movements and the political opposition, the irony is that they can also make the autocrat look better. Moreover, members of oppressed groups, who have been screwed throughout governments across the political spectrum, may perceive that authoritarianism has long been with them. For them, authoritarianism manifests itself over and over when they cannot enter a building with wheelchairs or when they are forced out of their homes despite working hard to make ends meet.
My point is that policy changes are more likely to add to regime change if combined with consistent organizing and political education. We have responded bravely and committedly to the repressive government measures, and achieved significant outcomes such as the increase of caregivers’ benefit to the minimum wage, affecting the life of 18,000 families; a developing social housing infrastructure in Budapest including a housing first program; the alliance of teachers, students, and parents protesting low teacher salaries; and so on. Whether incremental results constitute a path to a larger social change depends on how leaders can build the connective tissue between hard-fought but smaller gains and more ambitious goals, build larger coalitions, and specify the stepping stones for a larger vision.
5. And this brings us to my last point: We did not see autocratization as a process.
Autocratization does not happen all at once. Ruling elites have to sequence the expansion of domination. In Hungary, autocratization happened in three phases–though the process was not so compartmentalized in real life. In the first four years, Mr. Orbán’s party used its 2/3 majority to rewrite the constitution, capture democratic institutions, and change our electoral law. While his party won in a democratic, multi-party system in 2010, within his first term, he essentially turned the multi-party electoral system into a bi-party system by creating conditions in which the mathematical chance of winning holds only for either a unified opposition or one very strong party. During the next four years of governing, Mr. Orbán used his power to channel EU funds to trusted oligarchs including family members and close friends. During his third term, the ruling political elites extended their domination over culture. The nature of the political economy matters here. Hungary is the size of Maine, with a population of 10 million and a committed but underresourced civil society. The U.S. is a federal system of 50 states, 335 million people, and a civil society with access to abundant resources. If anyone is serious about centralizing power in this country, they must adapt their playbook to the conditions of this polity.
To conclude, if your autocrat is a gifted power broker, you had better accommodate yourself for a long-term struggle with an open mind. You must embrace curiosity to understand the multiple reasons why certain constituents made certain decisions at the polls. It requires plenty of emotional labor, but you will likely be better suited for this struggle.
