Lessons for International Democracy Aid from Hungary’s Political Breakthrough

The recent dramatic democratic breakthrough in Hungary – the crushing defeat of Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz party by a new opposition party, Tisza, led by former Fidesz member Péter Magyar – has triggered many analyses of how this startling outcome came about and what lessons pro-democratic actors in other backsliding contexts can take away from it. The accounts generally focus, understandably, on the domestic political dimensions of the story, like how new opposition movements can emerge and succeed in contexts where the ruling party has constricted political space and heavily tilted the playing field in its favour. But some lessons about how international democracy aid can be impactful in contexts of serious democratic erosion are also worth capturing, before attention moves on to what will likely soon be an engaging new wave of analyses and reflections on how the attempted redemocratisation of Hungary is going.

Civic Focus

After Fidesz returned to power in 2010 and quickly began displaying its antidemocratic intentions and determination, a set of Western funders, many of which had been supporting democracy programmes in Hungary since the 1990s, began concentrating their democracy-related aid to Hungary on supporting independent civil society. These funders included governmental entities, such as the European Union and the United States Agency for International Development, government-funded democracy foundations, such as the National Endowment for Democracy, private foundations, like the ERSTE Foundation, the Oak Foundation, the Open Society Foundations, and the Sigrid Rausing Trust, and at least one pooled philanthropic fund, Civitates.

They focused their aid on the relatively small but dedicated community of Hungarian non-governmental organisations working to defend democracy, made up principally of human rights groups, media platforms, anti-corruption watchdogs, and other policy research organisations focused on governance, as well as some local-level civic initiatives. This community came under growing attack by Fidesz as the governing party steadily tightened its grip on power. Fidesz came to believe it had little to fear from opposition parties, and saw these NGOs as the only real obstacles in the way of its quest for complete control. Fidesz employed an ever-evolving authoritarian playbook against the NGO community, which included relentless, searingly negative public messaging by Orbán and his team, a series of legal measures to impede the operations and funding sources of the NGOs, and harassment and intimidation of NGO leaders and staff.

Key Functions

Though modest in size and number, these NGOs succeeded in playing a host of inter-related functions that proved crucial in keeping the possibility of democratic change alive during what became a punishing sixteen-year run of deepening democratic regression, one that exacted a harsh personal toll on the leaders and staff of these NGOs:

• Keeping day-to-day fact-based reporting and analyses of Hungarian realities going and available to Hungarians in an environment of suffocating Fidesz media domination and propagandistic methods.
• Carrying out in-depth investigative analysis and reporting on governmental misconduct, especially relating to the burgeoning governmental corruption.
• Providing platforms for the broad dissemination of alternative ideas and opinions—something that was crucial when a new opposition movement formed and started to become active in 2024, and throughout the two years leading up to the April 2026 elections.
• Mounting legal challenges against unlawful governmental actions, both in Hungarian courts and international legal fora, especially against wrongful restrictions on citizens’ rights.
• Providing legal assistance to individuals targeted for standing up to the government’s continuous overreaching, including whistleblowers who stepped forward in the past several years with damning accounts of governmental misconduct.
• Organising and implementing citizens’ monitoring campaigns to protect electoral integrity in the face of various forms of electoral wrongdoing by Fidesz, including vote-buying.
• Helping provide a place to work within the country for a critical mass of talented, well-qualified Hungarians committed to democratic values and engagement in a period of large-scale outmigration of educated Hungarians, especially at the university and post-university levels, to other parts of the European Union.
• Nurturing local-level civic engagement among marginalised groups and in disadvantaged areas of the country.

An additional function was of special importance relating to the critical issue of the European Union deciding to cut off certain lines of funding for Hungary—which when it eventually occurred had major effects on the Hungarian economy and Fidesz’s overall credibility with Hungarian voters: providing the results of investigative research on corruption and rights abuses directly to EU officials as the EU began engaging in reviews of Hungary’s situation. The EU relied heavily on these NGO accounts, as they were based on local knowledge and expertise that the EU and its member states did not possess on their own, in their decision-making processes about funding restrictions and cutoffs.

Many institutions and people in Hungary contributed to keeping open the possibility of a democratic reemergence, from universities, schools, cultural organisations, community organisations, opposition parties, some municipal governments, businesses, and former officials. But the NGO community played an outsized role in this regard, especially in three key functions from the list above: helping keep truth about Hungary’s domestic situation alive and available to Hungarians, blunting some of the government’s most extreme efforts to consolidate power and strangle political space, and providing the platforms by which the new opposition movement, when it did emerge, could get its message out.

The very low ratio between the total amount of funding provided to this community, which, though of great importance to the community was not large in absolute terms, and the amount of impact that funding had on Hungary’s democratic future represents a noteworthy success story for international democracy aid. Given the shaky condition of the international democracy aid community, and the tide of bad news about democracy globally in recent years, it is critical not to miss this fact in the thicket of analyses about what happened and why in Hungary’s breakthrough.

Not Time to Step Back

It would be a somewhat understandable but in fact serious mistake for the aid providers that have been supporting Hungarian civil society to declare victory and go home. The new government shows many positive signs of democratic intent and no signs thus far of a desire to constrict civic space. Nevertheless, a strong, well-resourced set of civic
groups can be a vital aid to Hungary’s redemocratisation process.

Major governmental reform efforts are already or will likely soon be underway in a wide array of critical sociopolitical sectors, including constitutional reform, electoral reform, media reform, and educational reform. All of these would benefit from expert input from independent civic groups and well-constructed processes for extensive citizen participation. In addition, with political change occurring at a dizzying pace, the need is very high for independent analysis and explanation of changes to help citizens understand what is happening and react productively to it. Furthermore, although the new government appears well-intentioned in democratic terms, like any government, it merits careful watch by civic organisations to ensure that it fulfils its promises, acts in a transparent fashion, prioritises well in terms of citizens’ core needs and wishes, and avoids any tendency towards political hubris and overreach.

Funders of Hungary’s civil society should thus regard engagement in Hungary’s new political phase as the second integral half of their admirable commitment during the years of democratic erosion and should stay the course. Ideally, they should not just keep doing what they did before, but doing more—the opportunities for civil engagement in reform are actually going to call for more intensive efforts than the sort of focused defensive work of the earlier period. Demands for new capacity on the part of civic groups will be high.

In addition, funders should help make sure they are agents of positive civic adaptation to the next circumstances, giving their Hungarian partners the encouragement and freedom to step out of their previous narrowly defensive posture and spread their wings as full partners across a range of activities, including cooperation with government when needed. They should support much wider and more public-facing activities with larger numbers of citizens to help build an engaged and active democratic society and recover fully from the Orbán regime’s punishing of critical civic engagement. Finally, to foster both purpose and sustainability, funders should support NGOs developing wider international ties, allowing and encouraging Hungarian civil society to share its positive experiences with others struggling against backsliding governments.

In short, funders can help Hungarian civil society recover the early promise—long delayed but never abandoned—of becoming a full, strong partner in the country’s long-
term democratic consolidation.

The author thanks Péter Krekó, Márta Pardavi, and Zsuzsanna Végh for ideas and inputs that helped shape this article as well as Róbert László, András Léderer, Viktória Serdült, and Áron Tímár for insights they shared at a Carnegie Endowment event on June 22, 2026 on “How Fidesz Lost: Cross-Sectoral Mobilization in Hungary’s 2026 election.” The views expressed herein are the author’s sole responsibility.

Photo credit: Elekes Andor, Wikimedia Commons