Doug Specht on how dismantling the political, legal and media machinery of illiberalism will be far harder than winning a vote
On the evening of 12 April 2026, something remarkable happened in the heart of Europe. After 16 years, Viktor Orbán conceded. His Fidesz party, which had dominated Hungarian political life since 2010, was swept aside by a landslide victory for Péter Magyar’s Tisza Party, which secured more than two-thirds of seats in the 199-seat parliament on a record voter turnout of 77.8 per cent.
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Across European capitals, relief was palpable. The EU’s most troublesome member state had, it seemed, found its democratic conscience. However, complex bureaucratic and political systems don’t rearrange themselves just because a new name appears on a ballot. Hungary voted. The question now is whether Hungary changes.
What 16 years actually built
To understand why the election result is necessary but not sufficient, it helps to think of what Orbán constructed not as a government, but as a system. Over 16 years, Fidesz methodically rewired the institutions of the state – courts, regulatory bodies, the electoral commission and the national broadcaster – to serve a single party. Constitutional Court appointments were expanded from 11 to 15 and filled entirely with loyalists. The National Judicial Office was handed to a close ally, giving one person sweeping powers to appoint judges and direct cases. These are not abstract concerns. They are the machinery through which laws are interpreted, elections are validated, and accountability is either enforced or evaded.
The electoral architecture itself was redesigned after 2011 to maximise Fidesz’s seat count, a system so tilted that, in 2022, the party won 68 per cent of parliamentary seats on just 54 per cent of the popular vote. The new government, despite its two-thirds majority, inherits a legal and institutional landscape that was built, in effect, to resist change from below.
The 470-outlet question
Nowhere is the depth of this problem more visible than in the media. Orbán’s approach to journalism was not the blunt instrument of imprisonment or assassination, the tools of cruder authoritarian systems. It was subtler and, in some ways, more durable.
Over a decade and a half, state advertising was systematically redirected away from independent outlets and towards sympathetic ones. Formerly independent newspapers and television channels were acquired by loyalist business figures and gradually consolidated.
Then, in 2018, more than 500 media outlets were simultaneously donated by their owners to a single foundation, KESMA, the Central European Press and Media Foundation, which was immediately declared a matter of ‘strategic national interest’ by the government and made exempt from competition regulation.
This move effectively wiped out independent journalism in Hungary. The few outlets that survived, Direkt36, Atlatszo, 444.hu, did so by embracing financial independence from the state, relying on subscriptions and international foundation funding. They have been powerful voices, but they reach a fraction of the audience that KESMA’s network commands.
Magyar’s incoming government has moved quickly in its rhetoric. He announced plans to suspend the state broadcaster’s news division pending reform. He has also pledged a new media law, an independent media authority, and a moratorium on state advertising.
Why journalism is infrastructure, not commentary
There is a tendency, when discussing the role of journalism in democracy, to treat it as supplementary, a check on power, useful but optional. The Hungarian experience suggests this is wrong. Democratic backsliding in Hungary did not occur through coups or spectacular ruptures. It occurred over a decade of slow institutional erosion, documented by journalists and largely ignored by those with the power to respond.
But the reverse argument is equally true: democratic restoration cannot occur without journalism doing its structural job. Three things are specifically needed now.
First, investigative accountability journalism that maps the networks of captured institutions and corrupted contracts, the financial and judicial infrastructure that will not dissolve with Fidesz’s electoral defeat. Magyar himself was a Fidesz insider before becoming its most effective opponent. The new government should be scrutinised with the same rigour as the old one.
Second, journalism that addresses the deeper crisis of public epistemics. Sixteen years of coordinated, professionally produced disinformation have done more than shift political opinion; they have eroded many Hungarian citizens’ relationship with the concept of verification itself. Rebuilding trust in factual reporting is slow, relational work that goes beyond media reform legislation. It requires journalism that meets people where they are, earns credibility through accuracy, and resists the temptation to replace one form of partisanship with another.
Third, journalism that situates Hungary’s transition in its European and global context. The dismantling of illiberal infrastructure in a mid-sized EU member state is not a local story. It is a test case for whether democratic institutions, once deliberately weakened, can be rebuilt through democratic means. The answer matters for Warsaw, for Bucharest, and for the many capitals where similar pressures are building.
Carving a new path
Hungary’s new government has the legal tools needed to rebuild the machinery of democracy. A two-thirds supermajority means it can amend the constitution, reform the courts, and rewrite the media laws. Whether it uses those tools effectively, and whether the institutions it reforms retain genuine independence rather than simply changing partisan allegiance, cannot be guaranteed by an election result alone.
That work, the slow, grinding, unglamorous work of institutional reconstruction, requires journalism that refuses to simply celebrate a change of government but also knows it must hold the new administration to account. Hungarian democracy was deconstructed over 16 years. Remaking it again will take at least as long. And every step of that journey needs to be watched, reported, and held to account.
The vote was extraordinary. Now comes the harder part.
