Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s rule over Hungary has ended after 16 years. Despite the best efforts of the United States and Russia, who were bound together ideologically in a rare alliance of geopolitical rivals, Orban was decisively defeated by his erstwhile political ally Peter Magyar, who assembled a large coalition in favor of the restoration of liberal democratic procedures. At the time of this writing, Magyar’s party had captured 137 seats in the Hungarian parliament, easily giving it a supermajority.
An election in a small Central European country would normally not draw the attention of the European Union, the United States, or Russia.
But Orban was more than the typical “strongman” figure who often appears during times of crisis in fragile democracies.
Orban embraced the culture war argument that traditional Western civilization was under threat from the specter of “globalism,” which sought to upset the gender, family, ethnic, and economic underpinnings of traditional Hungarian culture. Orban made himself special by chartering a path toward what he called “illiberal democracy,” a system that preserved the shell of Hungarian political institutions while occupying key nodes of control within government and capturing or repressing non-governmental centers of power.
Orban’s arguments were seized upon by “traditionalists” in Russia, who argued that the West was attempting to destroy Russia’s particular cultural heritage—a combination of Orthodox Christianity with traditional, authoritarian political and economic structures.
And despite cutting his teeth on anti-Soviet politics in the 1980s and 1990s, and demonstrating a wariness of Russia after his initial electoral victory in 2010, Orban eventually embraced Russian President Vladimir Putin as a strategic and cultural ally. After 2022, Orban acted as Putin’s right-hand man in Europe, slowing aid to Ukraine and the accession of Finland and Sweden into NATO.
Indeed, in 2026, Orban campaigned directly against Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, claiming that Zelensky was interfering with Hungary’s electoral process and intended to drag Hungary into war with Russia. Orban also made specious claims about Kyiv’s supposed abuse of Hungarian minority groups in Ukraine.
In the United States, Orban earned fans all over the political right, including President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance. The idea of illiberal democracy appealed to the president and his inner circle, who have long expressed a disdain for both the process of liberal democracy and for “globalists” who threaten to unsettle traditional racial, gender, and family hierarchies.
Orban’s allies took exorbitant steps to see that he remained in power. Vance visited Hungary for a rally with Orban shortly before attending the failed U.S.-Iran negotiations in Pakistan. Vance decried “European influence” while conducting his own.
President Trump promised economic benefits for Hungary, one of Europe’s least dynamic economies.
This was reminiscent of the support the Trump administration has given right-wing candidates in South America. Meanwhile, Russia reportedly undertook a wide array of intelligence and sabotage-related activities designed to preserve Orban’s grip on power.
Impact
The impact of Orban’s defeat is not yet clear. Peter Magyar will undoubtedly fulfill some of the hopes of his European Union supporters, while hesitating on others.
It is likely that Hungary will drop its obstructionist policies with regard to support for Ukraine, especially its opposition to a large loan that is designed to keep the Ukrainian economy afloat.
However, Magyar will have much work to do in rebuilding Hungary’s political system, which over the past 16 years has veered toward authoritarianism for the second time since 1945.
What Happens Next?
Many international relations analysts find Russia’s and the United States’ fascination with Hungary to be puzzling. Regime type, at least in realist thinking, is not supposed to matter. However, both Trump and Putin made it very clear that they wanted to keep an ideological ally in power in the European Union.
Indeed, the alliance around Orban demonstrated that the transnational right, currently in power in both Russia and the United States, could coordinate its political activity and coherently pursue cooperative ideological goals.
While liberal democracy appears to have won this round, the fact that both Moscow and Washington took active steps to preserve a would-be tyrant in Hungary should be disquieting to everyone.
About the Author: Dr. Robert Farley
Dr. Robert Farley has taught security and diplomacy courses at the Patterson School since 2005. He received his BS from the University of Oregon in 1997, and his Ph. D. from the University of Washington in 2004. Dr. Farley is the author of Grounded: The Case for Abolishing the United States Air Force (University Press of Kentucky, 2014), the Battleship Book (Wildside, 2016), Patents for Power: Intellectual Property Law and the Diffusion of Military Technology (University of Chicago, 2020), and most recently Waging War with Gold: National Security and the Finance Domain Across the Ages (Lynne Rienner, 2023). He has contributed extensively to a number of journals and magazines, including the National Interest, the Diplomat: APAC, World Politics Review, and the American Prospect. Dr. Farley is also a founder and senior editor of Lawyers, Guns and Money.
