President Donald Trump shakes hands with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán during a meeting in the Oval Office on May 13, 2019, in Washington, D.C.
Mark Wilson/Getty Images
One of Donald Trump’s favorite politicians is the Hungarian authoritarian leader Viktor Orbán. Would a country led again by Trump embrace similar antidemocratic politics?
Opposition deputies protest as the first stage of controversial judicial reform is approved by the Knesset Law Committee on Feb. 13, 2023.
Photo by Israeli Parliament (Knesset) / Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
Huge pro-democracy demonstrations in Israel have taken place for almost two months in protest of new rules for the Supreme Court that Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government is rushing into law.
Victor Orban: Hungary’s prime minister.
Stephanie Lecocq/Pool
Garret Martin, American University School of International Service
Populists didn’t do well enough in the EU’s recent elections to destroy Europe from within. But with far-right and far-left parties winning new seats, consensus on key issues looks ever less likely.
Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban appearing before the European Parliament on September 11.
EPA/Patrick Seeger
The transatlantic relationship can no longer be an engine of global democracy thanks to Donald Trump. So the EU must rethink its partnerships with other democratic powers.
The Turkish currency, the lira, has fallen by more than 40% against the US dollar.
AAP
Brian Grodsky, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Vladimir Putin’s recent re-election was bad news for democracy in Russia. And it’s a major loss in the struggle for liberalism, as anti-democratic leaders are assuming power across the globe.
This Sunday Hungarians vote whether to return prime minister Viktor Orbán to office. The choice they make will affect the future of their country, and Europe.
Reforms to the judiciary are a threat to democracy – and that affects us all.
While some are declaring that democracy has had its day, others see this as a time to develop more truly democratic ways of living.
Gustav Klimt, Death and Life, 1910
Prime minister Viktor Orbán is quite open about his goal to build an ‘illiberal state’.
Protestors hold banners saying ‘No to the stigmatisation of civilians’ at a meeting of the Hungarian parliament’s justice committee, prior to the bill’s approval.
Laszlo Balogh/Reuters
FROM OUR ARCHIVES (UPDATED) Hungary has passed a law monitoring the finances of foreign-funded NGOs, another blow to civil society in Viktor Orban’s increasingly “illiberal democracy”.
The ascendency of Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines is just one of the shifts away from liberalism in southeast Asia.
Reuters/Lean Daval Jr