How Orbán’s Informal Power Machine Cracked From Within

Hungary shows that hybrid regimes fall not only when voters turn, but when loyalists stop believing the patron is untouchable

14 May 2026

Visegrad Insight Fellow

Viktor Orbán’s defeat did not simply end 16 years of rule. It exposed the brittle logic of the informal power system in Hungary, where loyalty lasted only as long as elites believed the regime would outlive accountability.

Orbán’s hybrid regime projected the image of invulnerability for one and a half decades. It was a hyper-centralised political machine built on constitutional engineering, media capture, clientelist corruption and the systematic erosion of institutional checks and balances.

And yet, the regime collapsed through electoral means and much faster than many had expected.

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Edit Zgut-Przybylska

Visegrad Insight Fellow

Dr. Edit Zgut-Przybylska is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology (IFIS) in the Polish Academy of Sciences (PAN) and a visiting fellow at CEU Democracy Institute. Her research interest covers informality and populism in the context of democratic backsliding and the constraining role of the European Union. She is also a visiting lecturer at the Foreign Service Institute of the US State Department. Synthetic versions of her work are available on POLITICO EUROPE, Foreign Policy and Visegrad Insight. Edit held a re:constitution fellowship 2022/2023, a Rethink.CEE fellowship at the German Marshall Fund of the United States and a Visegrad Insight Fellowship. She previously worked at Political Capital Research Institute and prior to that, she was a journalist at various media outlets in Hungary.

How Orbán’s Power Machine Cracked From Within

Hungary shows that hybrid regimes fall not only when voters turn, but when loyalists stop believing the patron is untouchable