Portrait of Viktor Orbán - Prime Minister of Hungary
Abstract
Viktor Orbán is the European politician who has most worked to promote the notion of "illiberal democracy", which Fareed Zakaria already explored in an article in Foreign Affairs in 1997. According to this concept, rights and freedoms, countervailing powers and intermediary bodies must not stand in the way of "popular will", which is of course captured by a strong leader. In Orbán's case, who stands behind the doctrine? What are his motivations, his references, his practices? An excellent expert of Central and Eastern Europe, Jacques Rupnik, head of research at Sciences Po’s Center for International Studies and Research (CERI) and professor at Sciences Po Paris, shares his insight.