Is Viktor Orbán in Need of a Course Correction?

The June 9 elections dealt a blow to Viktor Orbán’s domestic and European agenda. Will he decide to alter course, or double down on the recipe that brought him the successes of the last 14 years?

Politics is back in Hungary, claim the chattering classes. There is no denying that the European parliamentary elections slightly altered the parameters of the Hungarian party system by opening the possibility for one unitary political actor to grow into the challenger of Viktor Orbán’s dominant party, FIDESZ. The overly cautious phrasing is warranted: although in relative terms Fidesz got its worst results in almost two decades, while Péter Magyar’s political startup, TISZA, reached records no other opposition force had reached since 2010, in absolute terms Orbán still managed to attract more than 2 million voters, a record in Hungarian EP elections, proving the continued viability of his formidable electoral machine. 

Notwithstanding, the current political landscape, with one clear political challenger who is not afraid to break taboos and transcend the ineffectual teetering of the older opposition parties, is not to the liking of the Hungarian PM. Quite the contrary, it is a state of affairs that his decade-long legal-constitutional tinkering and political machinations were designed to prevent. 

It is at this point that Orbán’s main strategic dilemma arises: if my well-calibrated electoral machine, my commanding lead in all kinds of political resources, and the well-constructed political narrative of me protecting the People from permanent external threats does not thwart the emergence of a single potent challenger, do I need to correct course in order to stay in power?

This question is made all the more pressing by developments on the European front. Presently, it seems, Orbán’s room for manoeuvre has significantly shrunk: his maximalist plan to forge a large common faction to the right of the European People’s Party (EPP) has not materialized, quite the contrary, in the very same political space the existing two groups are being fractured into three or more. Furthermore, his minimalist plans of joining the parliamentary group of the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) have also been thwarted by Giorgia Meloni’s wish to display her moderate and Atlanticist bonafides through keeping the ‘maverick’ of Europe at arm's length. 

Taken together with the troubles the Hungarian government had to weather in the last couple of years (suspension of funds, increasing marginalization in EU decision-making, hefty ECJ fines), this development does not bode well.

No wonder, then, that - if we are to believe Gábor Török, respected political analyst with access to Fidesz insiders - even some people within the broader court of Viktor Orbán are speaking about, or hoping for, some kind of change in the political strategy of Fidesz.

But what would such a course correction look like?

First, on the European level, this would undoubtedly entail a break with the idiosyncratic foreign policy on Russia and China; in other words, integration into the Atlanticist mainstream of European leaders. This strategy change would seem rational, for Orbán knows from his own experience that conforming to the principal European dogma of the day can be rewarding. For the better part of the 2010s, the central tenet of European politics was fiscal discipline and austerity, and the Hungarian Prime Minister was a faithful disciple of this doctrine. There is ample evidence showing that throughout this period Orbán had been the darling of German capital, and of the German centre-right establishment, despite him dismantling most of the liberal-democratic institutions in Hungary during the same period. His political fortunes within the EU changed only after the central dogma of European elites became anti-Putinism.

Conforming to the mainstream on this issue is made even more rational by the fact that the most important figureheads of the European New Right, once they get in, or close to, power, also subscribe to most important EU doctrines, as we have seen with Giorgia Meloni, Geert Wilders, and as we will, no doubt, see with Marine Le Pen too. 

Nevertheless, there are factors that set Orbán apart from all the Western populist right-wingers that came after him. 

One of them is not being part of the Eurozone: as many commentators pointed out, once in power, EU-critical forces are hampered by the fact that important levers of governance, like monetary and fiscal policy, are mostly out of their reach. ‘Go moderate, or go bust’: this remains their only choice. So they go moderate on most issues structurally relevant for the EU, while maintaining their radical credentials through the display of some nativist political gestures, and by stigmatizing certain social groups whose votes are few and voices muted. Even with significant chunks of EU funds suspended, Orbán’s room for maneuver is still larger than that of right-wingers in Eurozone countries.

This other issue is that generally speaking, electorates in the core of the EU are more receptive to the moralistic Cold War rhetoric of centrist elites than are Hungarians, or, for that matter, electorates in the post-Soviet region. Polls consistently show that the majority of Hungarians, though leaning towards the geopolitical West, are skeptical about every great power, and hence support a ‘transactionalist’, ‘interest-driven’ and ‘non-aligned’ foreign policy. 

So there are tangible advantages that can be associated with a foreign policy U-turn, and Orbán’s volte-face on Mark Rutte’s NATO leadership points in such a direction. However, the PM might as well calculate that he has enough political resources both domestically and in the EU to hold on until the time when, he presumes, geopolitical realities force the EU to abandon Cold War sentimentality and return to a more pragmatic foreign policy.  With a return of Donald Trump likelier by the day, and with Germany less and less able to afford an American-style trade war with China, such a presumption is far from unrealistic.

Second, the domestic dilemmas of a potential strategic course correction are even murkier. Moderate voices within Fidesz (like András Cser-Palkovics, highly successful mayor of Székesfehérvár) gesture towards questions of style: for them, the aggressive, all-out propaganda that consumes hundreds of millions of euros annually is what should be moderated, and a tone of civility should be re-discovered. At the same time, the ascendant opposition represented by Péter Magyar points to corruption and, in association with it, bad governance as the principal faults of Fidesz. 

Both are long-held centrist-normie critiques against Orbán, shared mostly by the Hungarian urban middle-classes fed up with the rhetorical excesses of the government, and the conspicuous displays of unearned wealth by Orbán loyalists. This line of criticism, however, misunderstands the societal appeal of Orbán-style populism by attributing its success to graft and the ‘brainwashing-through-propaganda’ of large sections of the electorate. 

In truth, however, Orbán’s populism builds on a twofold popular disaffection: 1. disillusionment with democratization-cum-Europeanization as a panacea for uneven development and all social ills; and 2. frustration with the broken promises of putatively democratic elites perceived to represent abstract entities like the ‘market’, ‘international norms’ etc. instead of the demos, the people. All throughout the last 20 years, Viktor Orbán managed to keep up the realistic appearance of 1. following a particularly Hungarian Sonderweg in economic and social development, and 2. representing none other than the true source of Hungarian sovereignty, the people.

Since 2010 no opposition force was capable of neither identifying these two pillars of Orbán’s populism, nor credibly challenging them. Péter Magyar seems to be experimenting with a calculated counter-populism which attempts to portray Orbán as distant and isolated from the people, with his Sonderweg leading into the abyss. It remains to be seen how such an experiment can hold up against the more entrenched reflexes of oppositional thinking (e.g. the stylistic critique described above, and the empty mechanical negation of everything Orbán), and how successful it could be against the formidable Fidesz machinery.

Nevertheless, under these circumstances what Orbán needs is certainly NOT less populism, or horribile dictu, to appear to ‘sell out’ to mainstream politics. Instead, what he might decide to need is a re-kindling of all those gestures that gave his populism its original appeal. Of course, this cannot be just the repetition of old hits and familiar clichés. If he wants to save something from the spirit of the global right-wing populist insurgency of the 2010s, a massive operation of political update, or even Aufhebung, is needed in the 2 years that remain until the 2026 general elections. 

It remains to be seen whether there is anything worth saving from this political moment, and whether it can be done in the conditions of persisting crises that reveal the inaptness of consecutive populist insurgents, with the anti-system hero of yesterday being delegitimated and outflanked by the anti-system hero of today. 

Szilárd Pap is a journalist and political analyst working as editor at the independent Hungarian video channel, Partizán. He studied political science, sociology, anthropology, and nationalism studies.