Hungary's ruling party has just lost power in a country of fewer than 10 million people, and much of Taiwan's commentary has focused on a pro-European line defeating a pro-China, pro-Russia one. That framing misses the more instructive lesson entirely.
Outgoing Prime Minister Viktor Orbán was not only a close ally of Beijing and Moscow — he was also an icon of America's MAGA movement. Former President Donald Trump actively backed him, and Vice President JD Vance traveled to Hungary to campaign in person. The defining feature of the Hungarian case is not its foreign policy alignment. It is the systematic transformation of a democratically elected government into an authoritarian one.
Hungary as a Textbook Case of Democratic Erosion
Hungary's significance in political science stems from Orbán's open promotion of what he called "illiberal democracy" — a model in which formal elections persist, but the institutional safeguards of liberal democracy are progressively dismantled.
These safeguards include judicial independence, freedom of expression, and checks and balances between branches of government. When these erode, a country may retain the appearance of democracy while losing its substance. Turkey offers a parallel example: when opposition leaders are jailed on disputed charges and rival presidential candidates imprisoned, the country can no longer be meaningfully classified as democratic, regardless of whether elections are held.
Understood as a spectrum rather than a binary, Hungary's experience shows that democratic backsliding is a gradual process. Around 2018, European Union leaders began formally criticizing Budapest for undermining the rule of law — years before the more visible disputes over Ukraine aid.
The methods Orbán employed were incremental: compelling independent judges into early retirement, absorbing regulatory bodies, nationalizing media outlets, and allowing allied oligarchs to acquire private ones. These steps progressively stripped Hungary's democratic institutions of their oversight functions. Orbán's Fidesz party governed uninterrupted for 16 years. Its eventual electoral defeat was driven primarily by corruption — the near-inevitable consequence of governing without accountability — compounded by economic mismanagement that left Hungary last among EU members in economic performance.
Taiwan's Parallel Vulnerabilities
Measured against the conduct the EU and Western observers attributed to Orbán's government, Taiwan's own institutional record over the past decade invites scrutiny.
During the eight years when the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) controlled both the executive and a legislative majority under former President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), the legislature largely abandoned its oversight role. The government used its appointment power to influence nominally independent agencies — including the Control Yuan, the National Communications Commission (NCC), and the Central Election Commission (CEC).
The NCC exercised authority over media licensing in ways critics described as politically selective:revoking licenses for outlets critical of the government while approving channels with DPP ties despite unresolved legal disputes. The CEC, on at least one occasion, disqualified referendum proposals submitted by opposition parties. The Control Yuan rarely investigated government misconduct. And despite the overall media environment being broadly favorable to the administration, authorities invoked the Social Order Maintenance Act to pursue individuals who had criticized the government on social media.
These patterns brought Taiwan measurably closer to the "illiberal democracy" end of the democratic spectrum.
The Current Standoff and Its Structural Meaning
The situation under President Lai Ching-te (賴清德) differs from Hungary's trajectory in one critical respect: the DPP has retained the executive but lost its legislative majority. Opposition parties have used their parliamentary position to push institutional reforms — raising the threshold for Constitutional Court rulings, scrutinizing nominees to independent agencies, and declining to forward candidates for Control Yuan positions.
These moves are fundamentally aimed at restoring checks and balances — preventing any single party from concentrating unchecked power in the executive. The structural tension underlying the fierce partisan confrontation of the past two years is a contest over whether Taiwan's oversight mechanisms can be rebuilt.
Complicating this picture, however, is the Lai administration's own conduct. President Lai and Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) have behaved as though they retained the unconstrained authority the DPP enjoyed during the Tsai era. Faced with legislative resistance, the administration has on multiple occasions declined to countersign, implement, or officially promulgate legislation passed by the opposition-controlled legislature. This "refuse-to-execute" posture — rare by international standards — itself represents a novel form of executive overreach, and provides its own case study in illiberal governance.
Why the United States Has Not Followed the Same Path
Political scientists once assumed "illiberal democracy" was a risk confined to newer democracies. The Trump era has tested that assumption in one of the world's oldest constitutional systems.
Yet the United States has not crossed into illiberal territory — precisely because its oversight mechanisms have functioned. Trump announced reciprocal tariff negotiations without congressional authorization; the Supreme Court's conservative majority ruled the tariffs unconstitutional. Trump pressed the Federal Reserve (Fed) to cut interest rates; Fed Chair Jerome Powell held firm on independent professional judgment. When Trump sought grounds to remove Powell — U.S. law requires demonstrated misconduct before a president can dismiss an independent agency head — the Justice Department requested subpoenas for a building renovation investigation. Federal courts rejected those requests twice, explicitly citing improper purpose.
The Pentagon restricted press access, barring journalists from citing unapproved information under threat of credential revocation. The New York Times sued, and a federal court ruled the policy unconstitutional in March of this year. Even the attorney general, a MAGA appointee, complied with a congressional resolution to release the Epstein files — documents politically damaging to Trump — before being dismissed. That dismissal was within the president's lawful authority; the independent institutions themselves were not subordinated.
The pattern that emerges is consistent: courts, independent agencies, and media organizations each enforced institutional boundaries. That infrastructure, not the character of any individual officeholder, is what has preserved American democratic function under pressure from a norm-breaking president.
What the Hungary Lesson Actually Is
Hungary's incoming government has signaled that rebuilding independent oversight institutions will be its first priority — a recognition of how much institutional damage the Orbán era inflicted.
Taiwan faces a similar, if less advanced, challenge. Framing Hungary's election as simply "another pro-China government falling" is a deliberate misreading of what the case actually demonstrates. The enduring lesson is not about foreign policy alignment. It is about whether democratic institutions — courts, independent agencies, media, and legislatures — retain the capacity and the will to constrain executive power, regardless of which party holds it.
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