András Körösényi, "The Orbán Regime: Plebiscitary Leader Democracy in the Making" (Routledge, 2020)

As Hungary's opposition parties form themselves into an unlikely pre-electoral coalition, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán faces the first genuine challenge to his "illiberal" rule since 2010.

This is the second of three interviews with authors of new books in English about Orbánism. In The Orbán Regime: Plebiscitary Leader Democracy in the Making (Routledge, 2020), András Körösényi uses Max Weber's Plebiscitary Leader Democracy model to explain how this charismatic nationalist-conservative has not only held on to power for so long but come to dominate the domestic political culture. “The Orbán regime has turned out to be a natural laboratory for studying PLD", say the authors.

Körösényi is a senior research fellow at the Centre for Social Sciences and Professor of Political Science at Corvinus University in Budapest.

*The author's own book recommendation is Men on Horseback: the Power of Charisma in the Age of Revolution by David A. Bell (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020).

Tim Gwynn Jones is an economic and political-risk analyst at Medley Global Advisors.

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