The Authoritarian Market Playbook

For more than a decade, lawyers and political scientists have extensively studied the “authoritarian playbook” – the instruments, methods and processes used by autocrats such as Hungary’s Viktor Orbán to capture established democracies. However, so far, the impact of autocratic economic governance on the rule of law has been surprisingly underexplored in the legal field. The respective electoral wins of Donald Trump in 2016 and 2024 illustrate that economic policies are often at the heart of authoritarian actors’ electoral success and ideological goals. Even more so, this is certainly true for Hungary, as Orbán’s political regime is deeply rooted in crony state capitalism and institutionalized corruption.

In this contribution, we analyse the case of Hungary as a role model for authoritarian market interference in the EU. Our aim is to start and stimulate a fresh political-legal discussion about populist economic policies, and how they affect the legal and economic order based on the rule of law in the EU and its Member States. To the extent the length of this blog allows, we demonstrate with concrete cases the functioning of the economic governance of the Hungarian government and how it creates market distortions in Hungary as well as in the EU’s internal market. We argue that a more economic law and policy-focused approach must be pursued if the EU and its institutions are serious about tackling and solving its rule of law crisis.