Case Studies: How Democracies Become Overwhelmed by Strongmen

Since 2000, two functional democracies have fallen under authoritarian rule. It wasn’t through insurrections but when authoritarian governmental laws accumulated incrementally. Is America experiencing that trend? Consider how Venezuela and Hungary’s young democracies fell to an authoritarian populist movement. 

The leaders came from opposite ends of the spectrum. One advocated creating a socialist state, and the other an “illiberal state.”  However, both wanted to tear down the existing political system and never have it return. 

So, they methodically pursued taking control of the government’s executive, legislative, and judicial branches.  Institutions intended to protect a democratic society became tools to concentrate power and capital among a few.

An Atlantic article describes how moving toward authoritarian rule occurs when people are sickened with politics and want someone to fix it. The Atlantic writer believes it’s already happening in the U.S. It did materialize in Hungary and Venezuela and here’s how it occurred.  

It Begins with Electing a Charismatic Populist Leader to Eliminate a Corrupt System

From 1989 to 2011, Hungary had an established functioning constitutional democratic government. The same was true in Venezuela from 1958 to 1999. Both had free elections, a representative government, a constitutional court, and a democratic opposition. Governing parties lost elections, and the media aggressively criticized politicians. 

However, Hugo Chávez was elected Venezuela’s President in 1999, and Viktor Orbán became Hungary’s Prime Minister in 2010. Under their administrations, the freedoms described above began to weaken and become merely demonstrative. 

Each experienced a methodical transformation to authoritarianism as one political party effectively controlled three branches of government. 

Hungary

Orbán became a Hungarian national hero in 1989 by publicly demanding that Soviet armed forces leave the country. That year, a peaceful transition took place with the Soviet-backed Communist party conceding control to a constitutional democracy, where Orbán served in the National Assembly. 

Orbán was elected prime minister for the second time in 2010 after losing twice to the Socialist Party.  Two years before, his populist-nationalist party, Fidesz, initiated a referendum approved by more than 80% of the electorate, while country was suffering from the worldwide financial crisis of 2008-2009. 

The Fidesz referendum radically addressed economic reform by abolishing fees for doctors, hospital visits, and university tuition. Consequently, Fidesz received 53% of the vote in the 2010 general elections, solidly beating the ruling liberal-socialist coalition. 

Orbán has been Prime Minister ever since, reelected in 2014, 2018, and 2022, and Fidesz has controlled parliament. During this time, the civil service became easily and legally dismissible, with Fidesz party supporters filling all leading positions in the independent public institutions. This process is similar to the one the Heritage Foundation’s 2025 Project proposes to guide a Trump second presidential term. Mr. Trump’s former budget director has written a section dealing with executive orders.

András Bozoki, former president of the Hungarian Political Science Association, writes that Orbán has transformed Fidesz from a democratic institution to a highly hierarchical, centralized party controlled exclusively by him. He describes Orbán squeezing his critics out of Fidesz. This of course is what former Trump has done with his critics within the Republican Party, calling them RINOs (Republicans In Name Only) and banishing them.

In a major speech during his 2018 reelection campaign, Orbán promised to hold his opponents “morally, politically, and legally accountable.” As a result, retroactive taxation regulations were introduced to punish the personnel of the previous governments, and government-directed campaigns targeted the “criminal elements” within them.

Trump has a similar attitude toward his opponents. Believing that he lost the election due to fraud, he wrote on social media, “WHEN I WIN, those people that CHEATED will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law, which will include long-term prison sentences.”  

Venezuela 

Hugo Chávez, a former paratrooper who led a failed coup attempt in 1992, was elected president of Venezuela with 55% of the vote in 1998. He swept to power with a 16% margin, vowing to remake a system led by a corrupt elite. 

The Washington Post’s Foreign correspondent reported, “His victory reflected the discontent among Venezuela’s poor with the political establishment.” That election ended four decades of domination by the two major parties, assailed for corruption, government mismanagement of the country’s oil wealth, and catering to a small elite.

Chávez said he would be more representative of the people than the Venezuelan Congress and root out government corruption. He also sided with those who attempted two coups against the democratically elected government in 1992, saying:  “With all my heart and all my soul, I send greetings. Boys, it was all worth it . . . for your honor, for your sacrifice, and for the honor of the nation we all love.”

This is another similarity to Trump’s behavior, who refers the insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol on January 6 2021 as martyrs and heroes. The MAGA movement regards the J6 rioters who have been sentenced and imprisoned as falsely punished.  

The Leader’s Party Gains Absolute Control of The Legislature 

Both Hungary and Venezuela have unicameral legislative bodies. Hungary has a National Assembly, with the Prime Minister as leader of the strongest party to form a ruling coalition. Venezuela has a president whom a plurality of votes can elect. There is no prime minister. 

However, both Orbán and Chávez have found ways to obtain supermajorities in the legislative bodies, which allow them to change the electoral laws, including the constitution that gives the president ultimate authority to make regulations governing elections.

Orbán and Chávez are not classic dictators because their power derives from the political parties they formed, which most voters, or the plurality, anyway, support in elections. So, on paper, both have democratic republics; however, they are ruled by autocrats. 

Hungary

In Orbán’s first year of his second term in 2010, he quickly moved to modify election rules.

With Fidesz having an elected supermajority in the National Assembly, his party wrote and adopted a new constitution, the Fundamental Law of Hungary, without a public vote. The law changed the country’s electoral laws, asserted government control over independent media, and made other procedural changes that tipped the election process to favor Orbán’s party. 

The existing constitution would not allow these changes, so Orban deemed it obstructionist. Likewise, Trump has expressed frustration with the U.S. Constitution’s stopping him from becoming president to pursue his changes. He called for the “termination” of parts of the Constitution to overturn the 2020 election and allow him to be president again. 

As opposition groups began to look for ways to circumvent Orbán’s restrictions to reach the public, Fidesz changed the new Constitution nine times in the first six months after its adoption. According to Professor András Bozoki, a former Fidesz spokesman, those changes destabilized legal security, responsiveness, and accountability.

In Orbán’s third year in office, his ruling Fidesz party had Hungary’s parliament adopt constitutional changes. The opposition parties boycotted the vote, saying that the changes undermined democracy.

Among other measures, the government restricted political advertisements during election campaigns in publicly run media, particularly radio and television channels that the government controls or owned by businesses aligned with the Fidesz party.

From a hardcore base of one-third of voters, Fidesz has won four national elections, claiming between 45% and 55% of votes since 2010, and maintaining a supermajority to pass legislation. Similarly, because of our U.S. federal allocation of Senate representation, Republicans need fewer total votes to control the Senate, which allows them to block Democrats’ SCOTUS appointments and legislation. 

Venezuela

Chávez ’s first term as president began in 1999 after he won his election with 56% of the popular vote—the largest percentage of any winning candidate in four decades. His first decree asked citizens to convene a National Constituent Assembly (ACN in Spanish) to write a new constitution. His request came as a referendum, which received a 92% vote for approval, along with adopting the electoral system proposed by Chávez. 

As Wikipedia describes, “Of the 1,171 candidates standing for election to the ACN, over 900 were opponents of Chávez. Chávez’s supporters won 52% of the vote; despite this, because of voting procedures chosen by the government beforehand, supporters of the new government took 125 seats (95% of the total), thus giving them a supermajority.” 

The ACN met for three months, during which the delegates gave themselves the power to abolish government institutions and dismiss officials perceived as corrupt or operating only in their own interests.

 If a leader or a party gets to define corruption and who is dismissed, then you have taken the first step to control a government based on loyalty to the person with that power. The ACN also proposed replacing the two-house Congress with a single National Assembly and creating an “emergency commission” to reorganize the Judicial Power. 

These actions concentrate government power upon fewer people and thus make it easier to diminish the presence of dissidents. In a similar effort, the ACN proposed substantially reducing the legislative branch’s powers and transferring them to the president.

The ACN’s proposed new constitution was approved by 72% of voters in a referendum, but turnout was very low at 44%. Before ACN’s proposed constitution was submitted for a public vote, Chávez launched an antipoverty program, including road and housing construction and mass vaccination. The voters responded gratefully to these benefits, and Chávez was reelected with a 60 percent vote in 2000.

Chávez created the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) after being reelected to another term in 2006. He won with 63% of the vote and the support of roughly twenty other parties. However, the three largest coalitions did not join PSUV, citing concerns about the party’s lack of diversity of thought.

Those concerns were reflected in a 2008 Human Rights Watch report citing threats of revenge. Chávez intimidated the media, labor unions, and civil society by disregarding the separation of powers. Trump is also well known for intimidating others. Would he continue with a vengeance by becoming president again? 

When Chávez died in 2013, Vice President Nicolás Maduro ran to replace him. He received a slight drop in the percentages that Chávez had been receiving but still won with 51% of the vote. However, PSUV maintained substantial control of the National Assembly due to changes in voting rules and the manipulation of public and private media. 

Under Maduro, authoritarian measures increased. For instance, major political parties and some opposition figures were barred from running for office. His Supreme Court also dissolved parliament and temporarily assumed its powers. This brings us to the courts, the last branch of government to secure authoritarian rule.

Appoint judges loyal to a leader or sideline the courts

Hungary

The Constitutional Court is Hungary’s most important court. Parliament elects its justices, and it is not part of the judicial system. It helped shape the legal framework of the political transition after state socialism.

As per the court’s preamble, its main tasks were to guarantee that people be ruled by laws that protect their fundamental rights under a constitution and create a balance between the branches of government. The court was created before Orbán was elected in 2010, so his party did not control the parliament and appoint the judges.

The court insisted on a media law guaranteeing public access to impartial information. This law led to the creation of public television and radio stations that were to be independent of the state and private economic influence. This objective was undermined after Fidesz dominated parliament. 

Consequently, an overarching loyalty to Orbán replaced the balance between executive, legislative, and court powers. This transition was initiated when Orbán’s 2011 new constitution overturned earlier Constitutional Court rulings and limited the court’s right to challenge laws passed by parliament in the future.

The new constitution also changed the retirement age for judges. According to the Associated Press, it forced hundreds of judges into early retirement and vested responsibility for appointing new judges through a single political appointee. 

Human Rights Watch reported that “the Orbán government has packed the Constitutional Court with its preferred justices.” Trump has followed along similar lines, with nearly 90% of Trump’s appellate judges appointed to the Circuit Courts being members of the right-wing Federalist Society.

In 2020, Orbán was granted emergency powers to bypass the courts and suspend elections. Meanwhile, his parliament mandated harsh penalties such as jail for up to five years, aimed at anyone disseminating false news or “anyone who intentionally spreads what the government classifies as misinformation.” 

Subsequent legal reforms passed by Fidesz’s supermajority allowed Orbán, who had won his fourth straight election in 2022, to amend the constitution as president. 

Venezuela

In 1999, the new National Constituency Assembly restructured the nation’s judiciary, claiming the power to fire judges. It expedited corruption investigations against over several thousand judiciary officers.

Subsequently, the Venezuelan judiciary was overhauled with judges sympathetic to Maduro’s rule. The National Assembly no longer appointed them. Instead, judges were installed after passing public examinations under the scrutiny of PSUV. 

By 2020, Venezuela’s Supreme Court justices, loyal to Maduro, ordered the takeover of the nation’s two most influential opposition parties just before parliamentary elections.

Economic and Social Crisis Leads to Needing a Strong Central Authority

The transformation from democratic to authoritarian rule finds fertile ground during an economic or social downturn when the government fails to secure the trust and confidence of the population in resolving the hardships that emerge. 

Many voters have lost their confidence in our democracy due to the economic downturn resulting from COVID. Currently, polls show that most voters (68%) are unhappy with how our democracy works. 

Orbán came to power in Hungary with such despair. He was elected after the worldwide financial meltdown of 2008-9 struck the average citizen. Hungary’s national currency depreciated by 23 percent, and household debt increased by 4 percent of national GDP. 

A few years later, a wave of asylum-seeking immigrants started in 2012. The flow peaked in 2015 with about 400,000 migrants, mostly from predominantly Muslim countries.

Foreign, non-Christian migrants provided a perfect enemy to blame for causing Hungary’s domestic problems. Orbán was then reelected in 2018 on a campaign singularly focused on stopping what he described as a “Muslim invasion threatening the national security, social cohesion, and Christian identity of the Hungarian nation.”

In Venezuela, during Maduro’s first term in office, extreme poverty increased when the price of oil collapsed in 2014. Until then, oil export revenue accounted for 25% of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP). Chávez used this single source of revenue to build a welfare state that benefited many who had been ignored by the centrist parties that had controlled the government for two decades. 

However, the oil revenue crisis contributed to shortages in food, medication, and other necessities. The U.N. estimates that 7.7 million Venezuelans have fled the country since 2015. 

Maduro responded by preventing the major opposition parties from electorally challenging him and exposing his misuse of state funds. Opposition parties were treated as enemies, not democratic opponents, akin to Trump attacking Democrats as radicals that are “enemies of the democracy” and are “running a Gestapo administration.”

Lessons for Americans

Former Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson described Hungary as a “country with a lot of lessons for the rest of us.” He’s right – for studying how a party takes control of all government branches to extinguish debate.

When one party has the power to eliminate laws that protect diversity of thought, then we have a nation like Venezuela or Hungary. Who wants that?

No politician is praising Maduro, but Orbán? Well, Trump hosted him at Mar-a-Lago this March, saying,  “There’s nobody that’s a better leader than Viktor Orbán.” Trump admires his autocratic style: “This is how it will be. And that’s the end of it, right? He’s the boss. He’s fantastic.” 

If Donald Trump wins in November, we can expect such a “fantastic” president.