Demokráciából autokráciába. A rendszertipológia és az átmenet dinamikája
From Democracy to Autocracy

Summary/Abstract: Over the short XX. century, the existing political regimes lent themselves to a relatively easy classification: the grey zone around the invisible dividing line of the scale stretching from ideal democracy to extreme totalitarianism remained empty. Since then, however, an increasing number of regimes find themselves in this intermediate zone, some of their properties recallling familiar instances of democracy, others bringing them closer to familiar instances of autocracy. The Orbán-regime, too, seems to belong to this group of regimes with apparently uncertain identity. This article suggests that we look at the grey zone regimes from a new perspective. Habitually, one tries to classify them by way of “snapsots”: static descrip tions of their main properties. I will argue for focusing instead on the dynamics of their change. Under such a dynamic approach, the Orbán-regime will appear as an autocracy already in the first part of its first electoral cycle. My conception is centered around the concept of autocratic breakthrough. By autocratic breakthrough, I understand a more or less simultaneous and overwhelming attack against all the pillars of the rule of law and the freedom of the press. If the model of autocratic breakthrough is workable then it can serve, among other things, as an “early warning system”.

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