Hungary elects a new Parliament on 12 April. Most people interpret the vote through the lens of sovereignty, war, migration, or corruption - depending on which party’s narrative they follow. These questions matter. Yet slogans often obscure the deeper issue that will shape Hungary’s future for years:
Will Hungary drift further into a state-directed society, or reclaim the right of democratic initiative?
Beyond Slogans
By state-centrism (etatism) I do not mean a well-functioning state that enforces the law, defends borders, and protects the vulnerable. I mean something far more corrosive: a governing reflex that brings more and more of life under its control, leadership that trains families and communities to wait for political approval.
This pattern is not new in Central Europe. Small nations, shaped by empires and crushed under totalitarian regimes, learned a survival skill: adapt, comply, keep quiet. Today, the same posture is being recalibrated for modern bureaucracy. Hungary’s real electoral test is not which camp wins the propaganda war, but whether the next cycle restores civic freedom as a daily, lived reality. Whether self-organisation, local responsibility, and civic strength become real factors again, or whether public opinion remains something consulted once every four years, by grace of the elite.
How State Power Expands
The first sign of state-centrism is when local agency is paralysed by central dependence. Hungary’s countryside had to be broken. Financial autonomy and real room for manoeuvre of municipalities have shrunk steadily since the post-communist “breathing space.” The influence of the central executive keeps expanding, far beyond the familiar Budapest-versus-countryside conflict.
Education is another window. Over the past 16 years, governance has been re-centralised, narrowing institutional autonomy and pushing families into tighter dependence on central policy. Homeschooling has been practically banned, and the age thresholds for compulsory schooling are being pushed lower. Under the 2012 Fundamental Law, a child-development clause now ranks above nearly all other fundamental rights, leaving parental authority increasingly vulnerable.
A culture of permission does not always grow through outright bans. More often, it grows through hierarchies, procedures, and quietly expanding administrative reach.
“The State Will Handle It”
State-centrism works psychologically: citizens are nudged into double-think, retreating into private alternatives instead of civic activism.
Healthcare is a prime example. Hungary prides itself on a state-funded system, yet chronic overload and uneven quality push the middle class toward private care. Demography policy reveals an even deeper pattern: the state treats family life as an administrative project. Reproduction and sexuality are subject to state planning, while ethical debates are brushed aside as implementation details. Narrowing frameworks around self-defence, civic responsibility, and digital citizenship further accelerate control - especially during a political transition, when authority could pass to actors the public never authorised.
The governing style of the past four cycles increasingly resembles prime-ministerial will enforced through administrative instruments, rather than coherent constitutionalism. Several value-driven measures, from family-support loans to IVF programmes, were introduced at the Prime Minister’s personal instruction, quietly and without civil-society consultation. Local initiatives rarely gain visibility in either traditional media or social media ecosystems. This is not how a confident democracy behaves. A Hungarian nation that once defied the Soviets has, by 2026, fallen into the grip of a managerial state.
Fidesz vs. TISZA
Hungary’s election is the first in years marked by genuine competition. Fidesz campaigns as the guardian of the nation; TISZA presents itself as the cure for corruption and stagnation. Yet both face the same civil-liberties challenge: the temptation to deepen centralisation.
The Christian Democratic People’s Party (KDNP), once an internal moral compass, has dissolved into Fidesz. The state and government increasingly operate as a compliant “team” under the Prime Minister. Even voters weary of one-man politics may raise Péter Magyar as a shield, yet TISZA’s platform includes deeper EU and NATO integration. From a civic perspective, this is no guarantee of decentralisation. Ex-Fidesz technocrats could return to strengthen the state further, creating new agencies, rules, and reforms at the expense of local autonomy.
A Thin Hope Until April
The ideal scenario could be a Fidesz loss and a failed coalition attempt, forcing the party into internal transformation from opposition. Renewed in a citizen-centred direction, the party’s core could return via a mid-term or early snap election, or four years later. The other option is a narrow result, sparking internal reckoning within Fidesz - reshuffling power, possibly removing the Prime Minister and his inner circle.
Hungary can remain a country where politics is a tug-of-war over a paternalistic machine, or it can become a country where citizens build strong families, strong local communities, and institutions that do not need permission to exist. On the 80th anniversary of the republic, there could hardly be a more fitting test for Hungary’s young democracy.
Bela Teleki
Campaign Director | CitizenGo (Hungary)
