Can Autocrats Be Stopped? – And What if Not? A View from East Central Europe Di, 27. Januar 2026

The world has been experiencing a wave of autocratization at least since the global financial crisis of 2008-2009. In Hungary, this process started in 2010 when Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz gained a parliamentary majority that enabled a single political party placed under centralized top-down control to alter the constitutional system as a whole. The world since then has followed suit. Hungary has become a model for authoritarian populists across the globe. They have conquered the federal government in the US and have been exerting growing influence in key western democracies like France, Germany, Italy and the UK. The question hence arises: Can liberal democracies deal with the seemingly ever-increasing challenge of democratically elected autocrats?

Zoltán Ádám (b. in 1971) is a Hungarian political economist and a Senior Research Affiliate at the ELTE Centre for Social Sciences, Institute for Political Science in Budapest. He was an Associate Professor at Corvinus University of Budapest from 2016 until 2023, when university authorities terminated his contract with immediate effect, following his defence of academic integrity in ethical procedures he initiated against three high-ranking university managers. He holds degrees in economics from Debrecen University, political science from Central European University, public administration from Harvard Kennedy School and sociology from ELTE University Budapest.

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