Paul Krugman thinks so:
Last month the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development documented a sharp drop in public support
for democracy in the “new E.U.” countries, the nations that joined the
European Union after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Not surprisingly, the
loss of faith in democracy has been greatest in the countries that
suffered the deepest economic slumps.
And in at least one nation, Hungary, democratic institutions are being undermined as we speak.
One of Hungary’s major parties, Jobbik, is a nightmare out of the 1930s:
it’s anti-Roma (Gypsy), it’s anti-Semitic, and it even had a
paramilitary arm. But the immediate threat comes from Fidesz, the
governing center-right party.
Fidesz won an overwhelming Parliamentary majority last year, at least
partly for economic reasons; Hungary isn’t on the euro, but it suffered
severely because of large-scale borrowing in foreign currencies and
also, to be frank, thanks to mismanagement and corruption on the part of
the then-governing left-liberal parties. Now Fidesz, which rammed
through a new Constitution last spring on a party-line vote, seems bent
on establishing a permanent hold on power.
He presents a textbook case in how to establish a tyrannical totalitarian government:
Fidesz [the new ruling party in Hungary] is relying on overlapping measures to suppress opposition. A
proposed election law creates gerrymandered districts designed to make
it almost impossible for other parties to form a government; judicial
independence has been compromised, and the courts packed with party
loyalists; state-run media have been converted into party organs, and
there’s a crackdown on independent media; and a proposed constitutional
addendum would effectively criminalize the leading leftist party.
Taken together, all this amounts to the re-establishment of
authoritarian rule, under a paper-thin veneer of democracy, in the heart
of Europe.
