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Freedom House

chines, with their vast patronage networks, that presided over American cities a half-century ago. Fidesz is apparently seeking to ensure that rival parties will never have access to the funds or influence necessary to unseat the incumbent government.

Is Orbán a Central European version of Putin?
Orbán’s domestic critics have often compared his governing style to that of Russian president Vladimir Putin. On the surface, the comparison seems unfair. Hungary is still rated Free by Freedom House. It still has genuine opposition parties, however weak, in parliament, a relatively unfettered civil society sector, freedom of assembly, and other civil liberties. Hungary has also been spared the routine violence that marks Russian politics.11

But Orbán also began his current tenure in an environment very different from the Russia inherited by Putin. Hungary had been a successful, if flawed, democracy for two decades before Orbán took office in 2010. It was a member of the European Union (EU) and subject to that bloc’s norms and regulations. It was also a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). For Hungarians, the events of 1989 led to democratic liberties and freedom from foreign domination. For Russia, 1989 and 1991 meant the loss of a vast empire and the beginning of a decade of political and economic upheaval.

Given their different contexts, the striking feature in a Putin-Orbán comparison is the similarities. The following are some of the more obvious:

• Both have repeatedly expressed disdain for “Western” liberal values.

• Both have employed a combination of control over state broadcasters and crony ownership of the private press to dominate the mainstream media, though Hungary’s environment remains notably more free than Russia’s.

• Both have hollowed out the institutions that provide oversight and transparency regarding actions by the executive branch.

• Both have made clear their dislike for civil society organizations that pursue reformist or human rights missions. While Orbán has yet to enact Russian-style laws to declare such groups “foreign agents” or ban them as “undesirable,” Fidesz has announced the intention to introduce parliamentary legislation designed to harass NGOs and curb their funding.12

• Both have seized political opportunities offered by the presence of ethnic compatriots in surrounding countries. Putin has exploited supposed discrimination against ethnic Russians and certain other minorities in Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, and the Baltic states as justification for military intervention or hostile propaganda. Orbán has brought nearby Hungarian minorities into his political coalition by giving them the right to vote in Hungarian national elections and making it even easier for them to cast ballots than it is for Hungarian citizens who are temporarily working in Europe or elsewhere.13

• As a matter of high priority, both Orbán and Putin have secured domination over the judiciary with the goal of removing its role as a check on their power.

‘Law and Justice’ in Poland
Like Hungary, Poland was until recently regarded as one of the chief success stories from the wave of democratization that accompanied the end of the Cold War. Poland’s democratic institutions were imperfect, and the economic gains that were made possible by a rapid changeover to free-market policies were spread unevenly among the Polish people. But the achievements seemed to outweigh the deficiencies. The country’s rate of growth was impressive by European standards; it was one of the few EU member states to emerge relatively unscathed from the financial crisis of 2008. Its leaders exercised influence within the EU and NATO, and enjoyed global respect.

According to the leaders of the archconservative Law and Justice (PiS) party, however, Poland was a deeply troubled society whose system of government was in need of a top-to-bottom overhaul.

Ahead of the 2015 elections, PiS appropriated a vocabulary similar to that of Fidesz in its 2010 campaign. It depicted the center-right government as the architect of a failed economy. It denounced mainstream leaders as more comfortable with the cosmopolitan liberal values of Brussels and Berlin than with the traditional Christian morality of rural Poland. And PiS suggested that the liberal establishment that had governed for most of the postcommunist period had “stolen” the country from its rightful owners.

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