9 HUNGARY Viktor Orbán’s Authoritarian Regime KRISTÓF SZOMBATI After Viktor Orbán’s landslide victory in the 2010 Hungarian elections, the leader of the national-conservative Fidesz party made clear that his intention was to break the mold of liberal democratic rule. Under his guidance, Fidesz set out on a path of unilaterally re-writing the country’s Constitution, removing indepen- dent checks on the power of the executive, and undermining the independence of the judiciary. Orbán also initiated the move from a neo-liberal toward an in- terventionist type of governance that works to the beneft of the national bour- geoisie. While these changes were criticized by Hungary’s Western European allies and international fnanciers, they met with the approval of large segments of the electorate, frmly lodging Orbán in the position of Prime Minister. Political forecasts indicate that Fidesz is going to emerge as the victor of the spring 2018 elections. The collapse of the previous left-liberal government (2002-2010), which had been elected on a program of “welfarist regime change,” was propelled by its inability to rectify the high costs of the transition to capitalism by raising wages and pensions. Faced with a sharp spike in the public defcit to over 9% of the gross domestic product (GDP) as well as a slowdown of economic growth, the budget necessitated signifcant changes. These, however, were postponed until after the 2006 elections in order to guarantee the electoral victory of the Socialist Party. After the parliamentary elections, excerpts from an exclusive speech by then Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány to Socialist MPs, which were leaked to the me- dia, revealed that the government had deliberately withheld information from