The Post-Liberal Laboratory: Sixteen Years of Orbán's Hungary

Viktor Orbán promised a post-liberal alternative to the West's failures. After sixteen years, Hungary offers something else: proof that diagnosing problems is easier than solving them.

by Kaiser Bauch

In April 2026, almost 400,000 young Hungarians will be eligible to cast their first ballot in a parliamentary election. Not one of them has any memory of a Hungary before Viktor Orbán—he has been prime minister for their entire conscious life. But this perception isn’t limited to Hungary.

If anything, it’s even stronger abroad, where the inner workings of Hungarian politics are mostly unknown to the broader public and the outward perception of the country is personified in its prime minister. For entire generations of young Europeans, Hungary simply is Viktor Orbán.

And yet, after sixteen long years, his reign might be coming to an end. While we don’t possess a crystal ball and much can happen before April—recently, rumors of an alleged sex tape involving opposition leader Péter Magyar have dominated the media—the polling has been remarkably consistent for the past year: Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz seems headed for its first parliamentary election defeat since 2006.

Whether Fidesz loses power or somehow manages to cling to it, this offers a good opportunity to look back on the past 16 years and assess whether Orbán’s domination of Hungarian politics—unprecedented in contemporary Europe—has been successful, and why. Despite the fact that Hungary is hardly a European heavyweight—a country of less than 10 million people whose GDP comprises only 1.2% of the EU’s economic output—Viktor Orbán has always commanded disproportionate attention among Western political leaders and the broader public. While very few regular people on both sides of the Atlantic could name the prime minister of the Czech Republic or Portugal—countries of roughly the same population and economic output as Hungary—most people with even a passing interest in politics know who Viktor Orbán is—and often have strong opinions about him.

For many on the conservative side of the political spectrum, Viktor Orbán has been a symbol of successful resistance—the ‘common sense’, post-communist Eastern European pushing back against the progressive tide emanating from the West, whether in the form of mass immigration, LGBT advocacy, or the “warmongering” in Ukraine, personified most often by Brussels. For liberals, he is the embodiment of corruption, democratic backsliding, and disregard for the rule of law.

The Narrative vs. The Record

Orbán has masterfully exploited the rising tide of right-wing populism that has swept Western politics for roughly a decade, selling a picture of a thriving nation-state—proud of its ethnocultural heritage and willing to defend it, skeptical of modern redefinitions of family, and genuinely pro-natalist in its domestic policies.

He has been particularly successful at impressing American conservatives aligned with the MAGA movement. In a 2019 essay, the prominent American conservative author Christopher Caldwell called Orbán’s 2015 Kötcse speech probably the most important address by a Western statesman of this century. In it, Orbán declared his stiff opposition to Western Europe’s mass immigration project and stated plainly: ”Hungary must protect its ethnic and cultural composition. I am convinced that Hungary has the right—and every nation has the right—to say that it does not want its country to change.”

Tucker Carlson, maybe the most prominent conservative media personality in the United States, has traveled to Budapest multiple times to interview Orbán—a gesture that speaks volumes about Orbán’s status among the American Right.

CPAC, the flagship American conservative conference, has held an annual European edition in Budapest since 2022, organised by Orbán’s ideological allies and attended by figures ranging from Trump allies to European party leaders broadly adjacent to the national conservative movement—or, to speak plainly, the populist Right.

Orbán has coined the term ‘illiberal democracy’ as a deliberate provocation against the prevailing liberal democratic dogma, naturally acting both as a mobilising force for those discontented with its pillars and as a red flag for its ardent defenders. He has thus deliberately worked to build a narrative of a credible systematic alternative to the way Western states are governed in the 21st century.

Viktor Orbán is an intelligent, witty, and well-read man—he allegedly reserves one day every week exclusively for reading to remain informed about the complexities of the world. If one reads Orbán’s speeches—or their translations, to be more precise—it is clear that he possesses an awareness of historical context and intellectual depth that is rather rare among the current generation of Western political leaders.

He is without doubt a naturally gifted politician with a strong instinctive understanding of his own nation and the broader European realities. Even his ability to conduct long and coherent interviews in English—such as those with Tucker Carlson—is by no means shared by his generation of post-communist politicians. In his efforts to build a political alternative to liberal democracy, he has, for a considerable amount of time, been undoubtedly successful on the level of meta-narratives. Yet Orbán is a man who thinks in historical categories—and on that level, the verdict may be less flattering than the narrative he has so skillfully constructed.

Viktor Orbán started his political career as a classic laissez-faire liberal. He was prime minister for the first time between 1998 and 2002, after which his views gradually changed. When Hungary was badly hit by the 2008 financial crisis, the country became an economic basket-case; its citizens were crushed by loans they had taken in Swiss francs, which ballooned catastrophically as the Hungarian Forint collapsed, and Hungary was forced to undergo the humiliation of asking for IMF financial assistance to avoid bankruptcy.

The experience of a weak state unable to protect its citizens from the pressures of global capital—and surely also the knowledge that this stance would prove popular with voters—turned Orbán into a champion of having a strong state with final authority over the economy, capable of standing up to global market forces. ”You must stay economically successful,” Orbán said in 2015, “because in the modern spirit of the age, even if you are right, or closest to a morally perfect position, if you are not economically successful you will be trampled underfoot.”

While this vision is once again appealing to many post-liberals disgruntled with free trade, globalism, or neoliberalism, the fact remains that the Hungarian economy is simply not particularly successful.

Orbánomics and Its Discontents

After Orbán came to power and, following the crisis, stabilised the Hungarian economy using various unorthodox measures such as special sector taxes in fields dominated by foreign companies while simultaneously decreasing income tax for firms and individuals, it experienced a high-growth ‘golden age’ lasting about seven years, until 2019.

The Hungarian economy was growing at an average of roughly 4% annually during this period; foreign investments were flowing in, living standards were rising, and Hungary appeared to be economically converging with Western Europe.

Yet it is important to acknowledge that the period between the financial crisis and COVID was a great economic time for the whole East-Central European region, propelled mostly by advantageous global conditions. The post-communist EU member states were all growing rapidly—on average about 3.2%.

While Hungary grew above the average and was among the top performers, the problem is that Hungarian growth was driven primarily by rising employment and hours worked. ‘Orbánomics’ was based on attracting foreign capital investment into factories, mostly but not exclusively in automotive, to create jobs. In this, Hungary was successful, yet this growth model—which economists call ‘extensive’ rather than ‘intensive’—started to break down around 2019, before the COVID crisis hit.

It is a model that requires more and more capital and more and more additional labor every year to maintain economic growth. Yet the Hungarian labour force is declining and the country started to experience labour shortages. Moreover, if one looks at labour productivity growth measured as GDP per hour worked in the same period (2013-2019), Hungary was among the worst performers in the region—growing 1.7% on average while the regional average was 2.3%. It also had by far the biggest mismatch between labour productivity growth and GDP growth—meaning that this growth was not sustainable unless the labour force (or working hours) continued to expand. But more on that later.

Since COVID, things have only gotten worse. While a brief economic boom followed the 2020 slump, over the past three years the Hungarian economy has been completely stagnant and the government deficits remain high. Many economists argued that this was the right moment for Hungary to shift toward an intensive growth model—focusing on increasing worker productivity and the value of Hungarian production rather than simply creating more jobs. But Orbán stuck to his original model. Since 2021, he has announced a succession of increasingly large-scale Asian battery and electric car investments from companies like CATL and BYD, with the Hungarian government providing billions of forints in subsidies. As there was no available domestic workforce, the labour needs of these new factories were filled partly by foreign guest workers.

But by 2024, the picture had darkened considerably. Electric car sales in Europe had fallen sharply, and by May, battery production in Hungary had dropped 32% compared to the same month the previous year. In Eurostat’s 2024 data on actual individual consumption, Hungary ranked last among EU countries—surpassed even by Romania and Bulgaria. All things considered, when it comes to the fundamental challenge facing post-communist economies—the lack of homegrown global companies and the resulting difficulty in moving up the value chain to higher-end production—Orbán has clearly been unsuccessful.

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Demography, Diplomacy, and Disappointment

Perhaps the most often-hailed achievement of Orbán’s governments is the renowned Hungarian pro-natalist policy. Hungary has been celebrated by conservatives across the Western world for its comprehensive policies aimed at battling low fertility. This is directly connected to the rejection of mass immigration. ”By 2035, Hungary should be demographically self-sustaining. There is no question of a population being replaced by migration. The Western experience is that if there are more guests than owners, the home is no longer a home. This risk should not be taken here,” Orbán said in 2024.

It is true that in 2015, a sharp split occurred in Europe between the countries opening their doors to hundreds of thousands of mostly Middle Eastern refugees (or economic migrants, depending on one’s evaluation)—represented most prominently by Angela Merkel’s Germany—and those countries, concentrated in post-communist Europe, that considered it dangerously foolish. Among the latter, Viktor Orbán was the most visible representative. More than a decade later, this decision looks vindicated.

But it is also important to acknowledge that politically, opposing mass Muslim asylum immigration was low-hanging fruit. The societal consensus in Visegrád countries against this type of immigration is overwhelming. When it comes to mandatory redistribution of migrants across the EU, you won’t find a government—liberal or conservative—that would support it. Viktor Orbán simply managed, in his signature style, to transform this into a spectacular PR triumph.

Moreover, while they might be legal and do not arrive on foot, Hungary is actually accepting rather large numbers of labour immigrants—in recent years, the number of residency permits for non-EU immigrants has climbed to over 60,000 annually, a considerable amount for a country of Hungary’s population. The most represented nations are Vietnam, the Philippines, China, and India—typically workers for the large foreign investment factories.

At the same time, Hungary is experiencing persistently high native emigration, mostly of young educated Hungarians to German-speaking countries, undoubtedly propelled by unsatisfactory economic prospects. As one young Hungarian noted: “So here in Hungary we are studying for many years, a diploma is a basic criterion, but the employers don’t want to pay “the price of the diploma.” That’s why many young people leave the country, because other countries are [sic] really appreciate the Hungarian labour force. So why should we stay here if we have more opportunities for a better life abroad?” Underlying all of this is the grim fact that Hungary’s pro-natalist policies simply do not work.

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At the Budapest Demographic Summit in September 2023, Hungary’s President Katalin Novák said that Hungary had found a pro-family answer to the demographic crisis: family-related spending amounting to 6% of GDP had resulted in fertility increasing from 1.25 in 2010 to 1.59 in 2021—a 27% increase. But reality is more complicated. Even if we set aside the question of what is actually counted in this spending—states can be very creative when reporting GDP percentages for defense or family support—the observed increase in fertility was primarily driven not by more children being born, but by women catching up on births they had postponed during the 2008 financial crisis. When economic conditions improved, the timing of births stabilised—creating a temporary statistical bump that looked like a policy success but was largely a recovery effect. Once again, a similar process occurred in many other states in the region.

The Hungarian population has declined by more than half a million people during Orbán’s tenure. It would be unfair to be overly harsh about this. Much of the decline was already baked into the age structure, and the Hungarian population would continue to decline even if the pro-natalist policies were spectacularly successful. It is laudable that Orbán’s various cabinets tried, and the issue appears to be a genuine concern of his. But to claim it as some revolutionary success worthy of imitation? Not at all.

Russian Roulette

Orbán’s foreign policy bet on becoming the Russian ‘connection’ in Europe after the outbreak of war in Ukraine has proven equally questionable. Some frame it as standing on the side of peace and reason against alleged Western warmongering. Others see it as a cynical calculation that Europe will eventually reengage with Russia after an inevitable Russian victory on the battlefield. So far, this also does not look like a winning bet.

Whatever one thinks about the initial reasons for the war—essentially two competing assessments of Russian intentions and how the West should respond—the fact remains that history is not waiting for the final verdict. It is rushing forward, creating new realities. After nearly four years of war, a decisive Russian victory followed by swift Western rapprochement seems increasingly unlikely.

While Hungarians may have legitimate grievances with Ukraine—connected to language rights of ethnic Hungarians living in Ukraine—the diplomatic bet on dialogue with Russia has brought few tangible benefits and carries real costs, including increased distrust from the rest of Europe and a deep rift between Visegrád countries. Most notably, the once-productive cooperation between Hungary and Poland on important European matters has been severely damaged.

Hungarian politics often tends to be dominated by strong and distinctive personalities for extended periods. The father-and-son team of Kálmán and István Tisza during Austria-Hungary, Miklós Horthy during the interwar period, János Kádár during communist times, and now Viktor Orbán. Orbán has certainly earned his place as the most significant Hungarian political figure of the 21st century so far, and one of the most conspicuous in Europe.

If one finds this evaluation too harsh, I assure you it is not motivated by any a priori hostility to Orbán’s persona or politics. Many attacks on Orbán and Hungary from European institutions—whether media demonisation or legal actions such as blocking EU funds—were almost certainly ideologically motivated. Similar actions by more compliant governments would likely have been tolerated. Attacks on Orbán often reeked of hypocrisy. For example, he was harshly criticised for blocking stricter measures against Russian energy—measures that larger states, most notably Germany, were likely privately relieved did not pass, glad to have Orbán serve as the scapegoat. Orbán, in whose nation the German automobile sector has various plants, was always comfortable dealing with German industrialists, after all.

Yet the often-repeated claim that Hungary should serve as an exemplary model is one to be firmly rejected if we are to remain faithful to honest analysis. Its post-liberal critique of liberal democracy is often compelling. The diagnosis—demographic collapse, cultural fragmentation, elite detachment—resonates because it describes real problems. But sixteen years of Orbán’s Hungary demonstrate something uncomfortable for his admirers: identifying what is broken is not the same as knowing how to fix it.