Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban started his career as a democrat. He was a bright light in the political scene in the 1990s, beloved by well-intentioned Westerners eager to help Hungary succeed in its post-Cold War transition from communism to democracy.
But Orban built his prime ministerial career as a populist. He has chosen to eschew the hard work of leading as a democrat and instead used his party’s majority as an opportunity to take an easier course—by systematically dismantling the institutions and laws that check democratic leaders and are part of what the legal scholar John MacArthur Maguire once called “those wise restraints that make men free.”
