Although Europe’s main election watchdog, the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE-ODIHR), raised significant concerns about the democratic character of Hungary’s 2014 and 2018 elections, the electoral dimension of such autocratisation remained a rather peripheral issue in the international discussion about Orbán’s illiberal regime.
Now, this long-established complacency appears to be changing at a rapid pace.
Daniel Hegedüs is transatlantic fellow for central Europe at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. David Levine is elections integrity fellow at the Alliance for Securing Democracy.
