Hungary and Orbán: A Tocquevillian Reading

Nationalism is aptly described as a political ideology born out of centuries of conflict and one that prioritises the interests, culture and sovereignty of a nation-state. This single idea fractured into competing schools of thought over the course of the 19th century. Each redefined what a nation was, who belonged to it, and even who had the right to say its name.

Illustration by The Geostrata

FORMATION OF THE IDEA

German Romantic thinker Johann Gottfried von Herder, in reaction against Enlightenment universalism, argued that shared language, culture, and bloodline naturally form the basis of a nation von Herder, as a reaction against enlightenment universalism, argued that shared language, culture, and bloodline form the basis of a nation, naturally. Later, this took the path of racialised exclusionary ideology.

Resulting in it being challenged from Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, where he articulated the idea that national identity is bound up by equality, civic participation, and a democratic form of self-governance rather than ethnicity or class. This got called -democratic nationalism.

Simultaneously, Marx and Engels's Communist Manifesto proposed the argument that the entire idea of nationalism is actually a tool of the bourgeoisie (middle class) used to suppress the proletariat (working class).

This criticism emerged from the excessive promotion of class-based nationalism undertaken earlier by the bourgeoisie in order to unite people across different social strata under shared identities in the name of forming a cohesive nation-state. One that shall carefully mask the internal inequalities presiding at that time. 

The entire political trajectory of initially Europe, followed by America, lies heavily on these competing strands of nationalism and later became ideological blueprints of the nation states who adopted versions or contradictions of it. On a side note, immensely triggering socio-economic reformation too.

POLITICAL TRAJECTORY OF HUNGARY

Hungry is arguably the best single case study of this blend, as the country’s national awakening was on the grounds of ethnicity, with thinkers like Ferenc Kazinczy promoting the Magyar Language (commonly known as Hungarian).

The 1848 civic democratic movement gave rise to the Tocquevillian dimension as Lajos Kossuth argued that the future citizens of the nation deserve the right of self-governance more out of the promotion of democracy than shared culture.

The Hungarian society’s interaction with communism was very much on the lines of disdain, resulting in the 1956 Hungarian revolution. Exactly 70 years later in April 2026, when Viktor Orbán's winning streak ended, history repeated itself as democratic identity was chosen over ethnic populism, and leader Peter Magyar rose to power. Orbon entered Hungarian politics during the post- 1989 democratic transition when the nation’s first free elections took place, and by 1998, he eventually won with his party, Fidesz.

POST ORBÁN ERA

Referencing Tocqueville’s direct conclusions emerging from his study of American democracy in the 1830s, when it comes to the root civilisation taking on intersecting with democracy for the very first time, it was clearly described as a threat. The vulnerability equality shall create in the fabric of democracy, while also being its guiding engine, was one of the first warnings Tocqueville gave, and it played out exactly like that in the case of this nation.

The second idea stated that the majority misuses its privileges and oppresses the minority, making the system of universal adult franchise look somewhat flawed. Lastly, he argued that overtime citizens may altogether stop participating in civic life and hand the charge of it entirely to the state. This might be due to exhaustion or comfort in leading a life focused on privileges, livelihood, family, etc.

It began with the slow accumulation of power by the elected leader, gradually hollowing out the institutions that are meant to restrict their authority for the good. This, by definition, cannot be classified as a coup. The difference here is that it happens through legal methods where electoral rules are rewritten, the judiciary and press are restricted, etc. All of this takes place internally while maintaining the outward appearance of democratic governance. 

Tocqueville understood that voters could, paradoxically, elect their own subjugation if a leader cultivated enough fear and nationalist feeling to make opposition seem both unpatriotic and futile.

Hungary’s former Prime Minister, Orbán, is the textbook embodiment of this danger.

His Fidesz party systematically reshaped Hungary's constitutional order, judicial structure and media ownership. Going all the way till reforming electoral boundaries, until the system was manoeuvred enough to reproduce his majorities. Now the question remains whether Hungary's civic infrastructure, judiciary, independent press, and local institutions still remain robust enough to function as a genuine counterweight to any government, keeping aside its ideological character.

Hungary's story is the most honest depiction of a nation that fell into soft despotism via a ballot box and is now finding its way back out through the same.

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BY SAANVI

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