Authoritarian populism, conceptions of democracy, and the Hungarian Constitutional Court: the case of political participation

ABSTRACT

Authoritarian populist actors rhetorically embrace a conception of democracy as unconstrained majority rule. The majoritarian conception of democracy challenges the role of independent constitutional courts as institutions safeguarding fundamental rights and the rule of law beyond majority rule. This article highlights how the tension between the countermajoritarian rationale of constitutional courts and them embracing a majoritarian conception of democracy provides an opening for the political success of authoritarian populists. The tension is particularly pertinent in decisions on petitions submitted by authoritarian populists, who themselves tend to invoke majoritarian democracy. Empirically, the article studies how the Hungarian Constitutional Court conceptualised democracy in the context of political participation leading up to the pivotal 2010 elections, which paved the way towards the rise of authoritarian populism in Hungary. Employing contextual analysis of decisions referring to democracy in relation to political participation, it shows that, even before the changes adopted by the post-2010 parliamentary majority, the Hungarian Court embraced a majoritarian conception of democracy in this segment of its decision making. Consequently, the Court's conception of democracy fed into authoritarian populist rhetoric. The findings caution courts when interpreting the meaning(s) of democracy and emphasise the potential and limits of judicial responses to authoritarian populism.

KEYWORDS:

• constitutional courts
• Hungary
• political participation
• conceptions of democracy
• interpretive institutionalism
• authoritarian populism

Acknowledgements

Earlier versions of this article benefitted from comments of the participants of the ECPR General Conference 2020, the IPSA World Congress 2021, research seminars at the Jindal Global Law School, Örebro University (School of Law, Psychology and Social Work), Washington State University (School of Politics, Philosophy, and Public Affairs) and WZB Berlin Social Science Center as well as of Darina Malová and several other members of the Comenius University in Bratislava (Department of Political Science). My appreciation goes also to the anonymous reviewers for their valuable feedback. The usual disclaimer applies.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Martin Shapiro, ‘Judicial Power and Democracy’, in Judicial Power: How Constitutional Courts Affect Political Transformations, ed. Christine Landfried (Cambridge: CUP, 2019), 21.

2 Hans Kelsen and Carl Schmitt, The Guardian of the Constitution: Hans Kelsen and Carl Schmitt on the Limits of Constitutional Law, trans. Lars Vinx (Cambridge: CUP, 2015), 43–78.

3 This paper empirically studies centralised CCs which have gained prominence gradually after World War I. After World War II, this form of constitutional review was adopted globally in different legal systems. See Tom Ginsburg, ‘The Global Spread of Constitutional Review’, in The Oxford Handbook of Law and Politics, ed. Keith E. Whittington, R. Daniel Kelemen, and Gregory A. Caldeira (Oxford: OUP, 2010), 81–98. Yet, there is no obvious reason for why most of the conceptual considerations raised would not apply to the decentralised model of judicial review as well, the most known example of which is the United States.

4 Carole Pateman, ‘Participatory Democracy Revisited’, Perspectives on Politics 10, no. 1 (2012): 7–19, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592711004877.

5 David Robertson, ‘The Counter-Majoritarian Thesis’, in Comparative Constitutional Theory, ed. Gary Jacobsohn and Miguel Schor (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2018), 189–207. The original formulation of the thesis comes from Alexander M. Bickel, The Least Dangerous Branch: The Supreme Court at the Bar of Politics, Second edition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986).

6 This is especially the case with abstract constitutional interpretation which allows to ‘read meanings’ into virtually any constitutional provision. For a classification of competences in the Central and Eastern European context, see Wojciech Sadurski, Rights Before Courts: A Study of Constitutional Courts in Postcommunist States of Central and Eastern Europe, Second edition (Dordrecht: Springer, 2014), 13–27.

7 Lin Chun, ‘Human Rights and Democracy: The Case for Decoupling’, The International Journal of Human Rights 5, no. 3 (2001): 19–44, https://doi.org/10.1080/714003726.

8 Gábor Halmai, ‘Populism, Authoritarianism and Constitutionalism’, German Law Journal 20, no. 3 (2019): 298–301, https://doi.org/10.1017/glj.2019.23.

9 David Prendergast, ‘The Judicial Role in Protecting Democracy from Populism’, German Law Journal 20, no. 2 (2019): 245–62, https://doi.org/10.1017/glj.2019.15.

10 Pablo Castillo-Ortiz, ‘The Illiberal Abuse of Constitutional Courts in Europe’, European Constitutional Law Review 15, no. 1 (2019): 48–72, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1574019619000026. The aim of authoritarian populists is not necessarily to eliminate CCs altogether; some intend to make CCs work in their favour via a range of strategies. For examples of these strategies, see Kim Lane Scheppele, ‘Autocratic Legalism’, University of Chicago Law Review 85 (2018): 545–83; David Kosař and Katarína Šipulová, ‘How to Fight Court-Packing?’, Constitutional Studies 6, no. 1 (2020): 133–64.

11 David Kosař and Katarína Šipulová, ‘The Strasbourg Court Meets Abusive Constitutionalism: Baka v. Hungary and the Rule of Law’, Hague Journal on the Rule of Law 10, no. 1 (2018): 83–110, https://doi.org/10.1007/s40803-017-0065-y.

12 Peter Van Elsuwege and Femke Gremmelprez, ‘Protecting the Rule of Law in the EU Legal Order: A Constitutional Role for the Court of Justice’, European Constitutional Law Review 16, no. 1 (2020): 8–32, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1574019620000085.

13 For example, Bojan Bugarič and Tom Ginsburg, ‘The Assault on Postcommunist Courts’, Journal of Democracy 27, no. 3 (2016): 69–82, https://doi.org/10.1353/jod.2016.0047; Jan Petrov, ‘(De-)Judicialization of Politics in the Era of Populism: Lessons from Central and Eastern Europe’, The International Journal of Human Rights, 2021, 1–26, https://doi.org/10.1080/13642987.2021.1931138.

14 For the concept of autocratisation as a regime transformation brought about by authoritarian populists (among others), see Anna Lührmann and Staffan I. Lindberg, ‘A Third Wave of Autocratization Is Here: What Is New about It?’, Democratization 26, no. 7 (2019): 1095–1113, https://doi.org/10.1080/13510347.2019.1582029.

15 Data were collected up to this point that incorporates the decision on the national consultation on ‘immigration and terrorism’ of 2016 (22/2016 [12. V.] AB). For a broader context see Gábor Halmai, ‘Abuse of Constitutional Identity. The Hungarian Constitutional Court on Interpretation of Article E) (2) of the Fundamental Law’, Review of Central and East European Law 43, no. 1 (2018): 23–42, https://doi.org/10.1163/15730352-04301002. This particular case did not include a reference to democracy in relation to political participation (it addresses the concept of ‘constitutional identity’ against the background of the discussion of the relationship between the European Union and the Hungarian legal order). Hence, it is not included in the empirical analysis.

16 See, in the Hungarian context, András Körösényi, Gábor Illés, and Attila Gyulai, The Orbán Regime: Plebiscitary Leader Democracy in the Making (London: Routledge, 2020).

17 From the voluminous literature, see the views of János Kis, ‘The Puzzle of “Illiberal Democracy”’, in Rethinking Open Society: New Adversaries and New Opportunities, ed. Michael Ignatieff and Stefan Roch (Budapest; New York: Central European University Press, 2018), 179–93; Tímea Drinóczi and Agnieszka Bień-Kacała, ‘Extra-Legal Particularities and Illiberal Constitutionalism – The Case of Hungary and Poland’, Hungarian Journal of Legal Studies 59, no. 4 (2018): 338–54, https://doi.org/10.1556/2052.2018.59.4.2. A debate in this literature pertains to whether 'illiberal democracy' and 'illiberal constitutionalism' are standalone conceptions of constitutionalism and democracy or oxymoronic, meaningless terms where the adjective undermines the substance of the noun.

18 Herman Schwartz, The Struggle for Constitutional Justice in Post-Communist Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002).

19 See, e.g., Emilia Palonen, ‘Performing the Nation: The Janus-Faced Populist Foundations of Illiberalism in Hungary’, Journal of Contemporary European Studies 26, no. 3 (2018): 308–21, https://doi.org/10.1080/14782804.2018.1498776.

20 Stephen E. Gottlieb, Unfit for Democracy: The Roberts Court and the Breakdown of American Politics (New York: NYU Press, 2016), 239.

21 Jean-Paul Gagnon, ‘2,234 Descriptions of Democracy: An Update to Democracy's Ontological Pluralism’, Democratic Theory 5, no. 1 (2018): 92–113, https://doi.org/10.3167/dt.2018.050107. This article uses the term ‘conceptions of democracy’ to capture subjectively perceived understandings of democracy. Here, ‘conceptions’ represent a middle ground between ‘understandings’ and ‘meanings’ of democracy, the former denoting more ‘objective’ and the latter more ‘subjective’ conceptions. Given that CCs provide legally binding interpretations of constitutional principles, their conceptions have a significance beyond subjective perceptions of individual or collective actors. On the distinction between ‘understandings’ and ‘meanings’ of democracy see Norma Osterberg-Kaufmann, Toralf Stark, and Christoph Mohamad-Klotzbach, ‘Challenges in Conceptualizing and Measuring Meanings and Understandings of Democracy’, Zeitschrift Für Vergleichende Politikwissenschaft 14, no. 4 (2020): 299–320, https://doi.org/10.1007/s12286-020-00470-5.

22 Freedom House, Varieties of Democracy, Bertelsmann Transformation Index (BTI), Polity IV, The Economist Intelligence Unit Democracy Index, to mention several well-known indexes. Of course, each of them has a more narrowly defined purpose and uses different methodologies, but they all pay attention to (specifically defined) characteristics of political regimes.

23 Michael Coppedge, Angel Alvarez, and Claudia Maldonado, ‘Two Persistent Dimensions of Democracy: Contestation and Inclusiveness’, The Journal of Politics 70, no. 3 (2008): 632–47, https://doi.org/10.1017/s0022381608080663.

24 Gerardo L. Munck and Jay Verkuilen, ‘Conceptualizing and Measuring Democracy: Evaluating Alternative Indices’, Comparative Political Studies 35, no. 1 (2002): 9, https://doi.org/10.1177/001041400203500101.

25 See, e.g., Marc Bühlmann et al., ‘The Democracy Barometer: A New Instrument to Measure the Quality of Democracy and Its Potential for Comparative Research’, European Political Science 11, no. 4 (2012): 519–36, https://doi.org/10.1057/eps.2011.46.

26 Munck and Verkuilen, ‘Conceptualizing and Measuring Democracy’, 9.

27 Wolfgang Merkel, ‘Is There a Crisis of Democracy?’, Democratic Theory 1, no. 2 (2014): 13–14, https://doi.org/10.3167/dt.2014.010202.

28 An example is Wolfgang Merkel's embedded democracy, see, e.g., Merkel, 14–17.

29 Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, The Federalist Papers (New York: Signet Classic, 2003).

30 This is especially the case in majoritarian electoral systems whereby for some constituencies it may become impossible to have any representation of their political views e.g. Thomas Quinn, ‘Throwing the Rascals out? Problems of Accountability in Two-Party Systems’, European Journal of Political Research 55, no. 1 (2016): 120–37, https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-6765.12118. In systems of proportional representation (with some exceptions, such as the single transferable vote system), representation might improve through coalitions but is not guaranteed either.

31 Cf. Pateman, ‘Participatory Democracy Revisited’, 14. Pateman hints at an important point that cannot be satisfactorily discussed here: the democratic ideal cannot be implemented by restricting participation to citizens, considering global migration and mobility. A modern notion of participation requires innovative tools for proportionately involving non-citizens as well in the decision making of states and political communities at a sub-state or supra-state level.

32 David Held, Models of Democracy, Third edition (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2006), 209–16.

33 The invention of representation is the key difference that, in Cartledge's slightly exaggerated terms, ensures that ‘“We, the People”, in any mass-popular sense are kept well away from any direct access to—let alone the regular daily exercise of—governmental power.’ Paul Cartledge, Democracy: A Life (Oxford: OUP, 2018), 306.

34 Such as in the over 800-page long Oxford handbook on the subject. André Bächtiger et al., eds., The Oxford Handbook of Deliberative Democracy (Oxford: OUP, 2018).

35 Andre Bächtiger et al., ‘Deliberative Democracy: An Introduction’, in The Oxford Handbook of Deliberative Democracy, by Andre Bächtiger et al., ed. Andre Bächtiger et al. (Oxford: OUP, 2018), 2, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198747369.013.50.

36 For more substantive accounts of deliberation, the philosophy of Jürgen Habermas, Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy, trans. William Rehg (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1998) provides a source for further exploration.

37 Stephen Elstub, ‘Deliberative and Participatory Democracy’, in The Oxford Handbook of Deliberative Democracy, ed. Andre Bächtiger et al. (Oxford: OUP, 2018), 186–202, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198747369.013.5.

38 Pateman, ‘Participatory Democracy Revisited’.

39 Thamy Pogrebinschi and David Samuels, ‘The Impact of Participatory Democracy: Evidence from Brazil's National Public Policy Conferences’, Comparative Politics 46, no. 3 (2014): 329.

40 Peter A. Hall and Rosemary C. R. Taylor, ‘Political Science and the Three New Institutionalisms’, Political Studies 44, no. 5 (1996): 936–57, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9248.1996.tb00343.x.

41 James G. March and Johan P. Olsen, Rediscovering Institutions: The Organizational Basis of Politics (New York: The Free Press, 1989), 160, 164.

42 Rogers M. Smith, ‘Historical Institutionalism and the Study of Law’, in The Oxford Handbook of Law and Politics, ed. Gregory A. Caldeira, R. Daniel Kelemen, and Keith E. Whittington (Oxford: OUP, 2008), 50, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199208425.001.0001.

43 Howard Gillman and Cornell W. Clayton, ‘Introduction. Beyond Judicial Attitudes: Institutional Approaches to Supreme Court Decision-Making’, in Supreme Court Decision-Making: New Institutionalist Approaches, ed. Cornell W. Clayton and Howard Gillman (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 4.

44 Cornell W. Clayton, ‘The Supreme Court and Political Jurisprudence: New and Old Institutionalisms’, in Supreme Court Decision-Making: New Institutionalist Approaches, ed. Cornell W. Clayton and Howard Gillman (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 21.

45 R. A. W. Rhodes, ‘Old Institutionalisms’, in The Oxford Handbook of Political Institutions, ed. Sarah A. Binder, R. A. W. Rhodes, and Bert A. Rockman (Oxford: OUP, 2008), 90–108.

46 Mark Thatcher and Alec Stone Sweet, ‘Theory and Practice of Delegation to Non-Majoritarian Institutions’, West European Politics 25, no. 1 (2002): 18–19, https://doi.org/10.1080/713601583.

47 These decisions were identified via keyword search and their list is on file with the author. The advantages of a keyword search as a basis for selection of the population of decisions under study is that it transcends the usual limitations posed by the types of proceedings or the judicial composition of the court. The keyword under study is ‘democracy’, based on the logic that an explicit reference to ‘democracy’ (rather than something else with the attribution ‘democratic’) is necessary to safely assume that the court thought about the particularities, or at least one selected issue within a broader case, in the context of democracy. The conceptions identified are then subject to scrutiny through a contextual analysis with the help of the particularities of the case in question and their juxtaposition with other key concepts.

48 For a discussion of this and other ‘ancillary’ CC powers, see Tom Ginsburg and Zachary Elkins, ‘Ancillary Powers of Constitutional Courts’, Texas Law Review 87 (2009): 1431–61.

49 László Sólyom and Georg Brunner, eds., Constitutional Judiciary in a New Democracy: The Hungarian Constitutional Court (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000); see also overview in Katalin Kelemen and Max Steuer, ‘Constitutional Court of Hungary’, in Max Planck Encyclopedia of Comparative Constitutional Law, ed. Rainer Grote, Frauke Lachenmann, and Rüdiger Wolfrum (Oxford: OUP, 2019), https://oxcon.ouplaw.com/view/10.1093/law-mpeccol/law-mpeccol-e802.

50 Gábor Halmai, ‘The Hungarian Approach to Constitutional Review: The End of Activism? The First Decade of the Hungarian Constitutional Court’, in Constitutional Justice, East and West: Democratic Legitimacy and Constitutional Courts in Post-Communist Europe in a Comparative Perspective, ed. Wojciech Sadurski (The Hague; London: Springer, 2010), 189–212.

51 Paul Blokker, New Democracies in Crisis? A Comparative Constitutional Study of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia (London: Routledge, 2013).

52 Venice Commission, ‘Opinion on the Fourth Amendment to the Fundamental Law of Hungary’, 15.6 2013, 17–29, https://www.venice.coe.int/webforms/documents/?pdf=CDL-AD(2013)012-e.

53 László Sólyom, ‘The Constitutional Court of Hungary’, in The Max Planck Handbooks in European Public Law: Volume III: Constitutional Adjudication: Institutions, ed. Armin von Bogdandy, Peter Huber, and Christoph Grabenwarter (Oxford: OUP, 2020), 416–17.

54 Katalin Kelemen, ‘Appointment of Constitutional Judges in a Comparative Perspective — With a Proposal for a New Model for Hungary’, Acta Juridica Hungarica 54, no. 1 (2013): 5–23, https://doi.org/10.1556/AJur.54.2013.1.2.

55 Gábor Halmai, ‘A Coup Against Constitutional Democracy: The Case of Hungary’, in Constitutional Democracy in Crisis?, ed. Mark A. Graber, Sanford Levinson, and Mark Tushnet (Oxford: OUP, 2018), 243–56.

56 Katalin Kelemen, Judicial Dissent in European Constitutional Courts: A Comparative and Legal Perspective (London: Routledge, 2017).

57 28/1990 (XI. 22.) AB, 2.

58 28/1990 (XI. 22.) AB, 2.

59 2/1993 (I. 22.) AB; see also András Szalai, ‘Manipuláció vagy korrekció? A népszavazás mint a parlamentáris kormányzat ellensúlya [Manipulation or Correction? The Referendum as a Counterweight to Parliamentary Governance]’, Pro publico bono - Magyar közigazgatás, no. 3 (2013): 140–42.

60 Gábor Halmai, ‘Referendum and Representative Democracy’, Fundamentum 12, no. 5 (2008): 5.

61 53/1996 (XI. 22.) AB, 2.

62 27/1998 (VI. 16.) AB, 5; see also Erdős Csaba, ‘Az országgyűlési képviselők szabad mandátumának alapjai és az intézménnyel kapcsolatos legfontosabb kihívások [The Fundamentals of the Free Mandate of the Parliamentary Representatives and the Most Important Related Challenges]’, Parlamenti Szemle 2, no. 2 (2017): 16.

63 Jogállam demokráciája as referenced in Hungarian.

64 67/1992 (XII. 21.) AB, 3.

65 52/1997 (X. 14.) AB. See also Halmai, ‘Referendum and Representative Democracy’, 6–7.

66 52/1997 (X. 14.) AB, 11.

67 844/B/2002 AB, 6; 441/H/2001. AB, 5, with reference to 27/1998 (VI. 16.) AB; 1/2002 (I. 11.) AB, with reference to 27/1998 (VI. 16) AB.

68 6/2000 (III. 17.) AB, 2: ‘[…] the tools of direct democracy serve to add to, and influence, the exercise of power by [parliamentary] representatives.’ This was a reference that the Court reproduced from the reasoning of the National Electoral Commission. A few minor cases are not elaborated here.

69 A somewhat new argument can be found in 2001, where the HCC explained that the certification procedure by the National Electoral Commission (NEC) for referendum petitions is a ‘legal guarantee’ served to ‘stabilise the constitutional democracy’. 32/2001 (VII. 11.) AB, 7. This term appeared in a technical (and politically uncontroversial) decision that invalidated the NEC's verdict on the ground that the signature forms for the petition to launch such a voting contained all proposed questions at once, not one by one. Hence, it does not counter the overall direction of the Court's case law towards a representative democracy with a strong partisan component.

70 39/2002 (IX. 25.) AB, 6.

71 59/2003 (XI. 26.) AB, 4. In this case, the Court invalidated the excessively short period for submitting complaints against electoral results by unsuccessful candidates (in that context, in a mayoral election).

72 According to two political scientists, this has become ‘the main politically – as well as theoretically – relevant problem of the year’. Gabriella Ilonszki and Sándor Kurtán, ‘Hungary’, European Journal of Political Research 47, no. 7–8 (2008): 998, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-6765.2008.00795.x. The period of increased concern for the impact and relevance of referenda begins in 2004, with the referendum held that year. See Zoltán Pozsár-Szentmiklósy, ‘Direct Democracy in Hungary (1989–2016): From Popular Sovereignty to Popular Illusion’, Acta Universitatis Sapientiae Legal Studies 6, no. 1 (2017): 111.

73 Halmai, ‘Referendum and Representative Democracy’, 16.

74 33/2007 (VI. 6.) AB, 8. Here, the Court argued that there is no need to modify the calibration of direct and representative democracy in the Hungarian system for the referendum to be permitted.

75 15/2007 (III. 9.) AB.

76 34/2007 (VI. 6.) AB.

77 13/2007 (III. 9.) AB. Unlike in the previous three cases, here the Court referred to its more pro-participation reasoning from the 1990s (28/1990 [XI. 22.] AB), thus slightly reducing the tension between the verdict and the reasoning.

78 László Komáromi, ‘Milestones in the History of Direct Democracy in Hungary’, Iustum Aequum Salutare 9, no. 4 (2013): 55.

79 Zoltán Tibor Pállinger, ‘Citizens’ Initiatives in Hungary: An Additional Opportunity for Power-Sharing in an Extremely Majoritarian System’, in Citizens’ Initiatives in Europe: Procedures and Consequences of Agenda-Setting by Citizens, ed. Maija Setälä and Theo Schiller (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 128; see also 119.

80 On the classification of these types of referenda in a comparative perspective, see Komáromi ‘Az országos népszavazás és az Alkotmánybíróság: Reflexiók az elmúlt negyedszázad gyakorlatára [The National Referendum and the Constitutional Court. Reflections on the Practice of the Last Twenty-Five Years]’, Alkotmánybírósági Szemle, no. 2 (2015): 80–81.

81 64/2009 (VI. 18.) AB, 8. This petition for an ‘approval referendum’ began with a popular initiative asking for the approval of an act already enacted by the National Assembly, which the Court found to be a prohibited subject for a referendum.

82 84/2010 (V. 20.) AB, 3. The decision approved a denial of the NEC to certify a petition.

83 63/2008 (IV. 30.) AB, 9, 12, 14, also Péter Smuk, ‘Pluralism Confined? Party Law Case Studies from Hungary’, in Constitutionalism in a Plural World, ed. Catarina Santos Botelho, Luís Heleno Terrinha, and Pedro Coutinho (Porto: Universidade Católica Portuguesa, Centro Regional do Porto, 2018), 99.

84 967/E/2006, 3-4. In this case, the Court understands the whole mechanism of Hungarian parliamentary democracy to be based on political party representation in the legislature.

85 2/2012 (II. 10.) AB, 2. This case is different in significance from a number of others in which the Court approved the NEC's negative decision on petitions asking to submit very specific legislative amendments to a popular vote in a referendum (1/2012 [II. 10.] AB, 2; 9/2012 [III. 9.] AB, 2).

86 No separate opinions were submitted to the decision either.

87 12/2016 (VI. 22.) AB, 6; for a more holistic overview of the Court's reasoning in the case, see Kriszta Kovács, ‘Hungary’, East European Yearbook on Human Rights 1, no. 1 (2018): 166–7.

88 19/2016 (X. 28.) AB, 3.

89 See Eszter Bodnár, Fruzsina Gárdos-Orosz, and Zoltán Pozsár-Szentmiklósy, ‘Developments in Hungarian Constitutional Law’, in The I·CONnect-Clough Center 2016 Global Review of Constitutional Law, ed. Richard Albert et al. (Boston: I•CONnect and the Clough Center, 2017), 79.

90 Maximilian Steinbeis, ‘The Return of the Hungarian Constitutional Court’, Verfassungsblog (blog), 2013, https://verfassungsblog.de/the-return-of-the-hungarian-constitutional-court-2/; see also Katalin Kelemen, ‘Hungary: Voter Registration Declared Unconstitutional’, Diritti Comparati (blog), 5 February 2013, http://www.diritticomparati.it/hungary-voter-registration-declared-unconstitutional/.

91 István Stumpf, ‘Rule of Law, Division of Powers, Constitutionalism’, Acta Juridica Hungarica 55, no. 4 (2014): 313–4, https://doi.org/10.1556/AJur.55.2014.4.1; István Stumpf, ‘The Hungarian Constitutional Court's Place in the Constitutional System of Hungary’, Polgári Szemle 13 (2017): 249, https://doi.org/10.24307/psz.2017.0314.

92 1/2013 (I. 7.) AB, 14, 15. The majority referred to an earlier decision of the Court about the importance of the stability of the electoral system (39/2002 [IX. 25.] AB).

93 Fővárosi közgyűlés in original.

94 26/2014 (VII. 23.) AB, 17. The Court discovered a violation of electoral equality as districts with substantial differences in population had the same number of deputies eligible to represent them. The reference echoed an older case (22/2005 [VI. 17.] AB).

95 Denotes an ornament that has pure aesthetic but not material function.

96 59/2003 (XI. 26.) AB, 9-10.

97 783/E/2002 (Judge Lévay joined by Judge Bragyova), 8; see also Eszter Bodnár, ‘Választójog és választási rendszer az Alaptörvényben [The Right to Vote and the Electoral System in the Fundamental Law]’, Magyar Közigazgatás – Szakmai fórum 3 (2011): 106.

98 755/B/1998 (Judge Kiss joined by Judge Balogh), 9.

99 Zoltán Tibor Pállinger, ‘Direct Democracy in an Increasingly Illiberal Setting: The Case of the Hungarian National Referendum’, Contemporary Politics 25, no. 1 (2019): 62–77, https://doi.org/10.1080/13569775.2018.1543924.

100 12/2016 (VI. 22.) AB, 6; for a more holistic overview of the Court's reasoning in the case, see Kovács, ‘Hungary’, 166–7. The second decision is 19/2016 (X. 28.) AB.

101 In this case, Judges Czine, Pokol, Stumpf and President Sulyok dissented, with Judge Szalay joining the latter two dissents. I thank an anonymous reviewer for prompting me to expand on these separate opinions.

102 Béla Pokol, ‘The Juristocratic Form of Government and Its Structural Issues’, in Verfassungsgerichtsbarkeit Und Demokratie: Europäische Parameter in Zeiten Politischer Umbrüche?, ed. Tamara Ehs, Robert Kriechbaumer, and Heinrich Neisser (Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 2017), 61–78.

103 Even though the article cannot derive conclusions on the practice after 2017, an HCC decision from July 2020 on the procedure of conducting referenda expresses a commitment to popular sovereignty and direct democracy but sees the latter as complementary to the exercise of power by the legislature. 22/2020. (VIII. 4.) AB, para. 21-22.

104 Cass R. Sunstein, Legal Reasoning and Political Conflict, Second edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 223; on the limited role of courts on social change, see Gerald N. Rosenberg, The Hollow Hope: Can Courts Bring About Social Change?, Second edition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008).

105 Drinóczi Tímea, Az alkotmányos párbeszéd: A többszintű alkotmányosság alkotmánytana és gyakorlata a 21. században [Constitutional Dialogue: The Theory and Practice of Multi-Level Constitutionalism in the 21^st Century] (Budapest: MTA Társadalomtudományi Kutatóközpont Jogtudományi Intézet, 2017), 221–2.

106 Tom Gerald Daly, The Alchemists: Questioning Our Faith in Courts as Democracy-Builders (Cambridge: CUP, 2017).

107 David Robertson, The Judge as Political Theorist: Contemporary Constitutional Review (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010).

108 Or Bassok, ‘The Two Countermajoritarian Difficulties’, Saint Louis University Public Law Review 31 (2012): 333–82; Two scholars specify the readiness to subordinate to public sentiment by judges as ‘judicial populism’. Alon Harel and Noam Kolt, ‘Populist Rhetoric, False Mirroring, and the Courts’, International Journal of Constitutional Law 18, no. 3 (2020): 759–62, https://doi.org/10.1093/icon/moaa055. It is not obvious, however, that popular and populist views should be treated as the same when evaluating the ‘degree of populism’ of a particular court, especially in light of authoritarian populism not actually endorsing meaningful, broad popular participation.

109 Shannon Ishiyama Smithey, ‘Strategic Activism: A Comparative View of Judges as Institution Builders’, in Open Judicial Politics, ed. Rorie Spill Solberg, Jennifer Segal Diascro, and Eric Waltenburg (Corvallis: Oregon State University, 2020), 378–99, https://doi.org/10.5399/osu/1118; see also András Sajó and Renáta Uitz, The Constitution of Freedom: An Introduction to Legal Constitutionalism (Oxford: OUP, 2017), 364–6.

110 Interview data allow to penetrate more deeply into the deliberative environment at the Court in the respective periods.

111 Gábor Halmai, ‘Unconstitutional Constitutional Amendments: Constitutional Courts as Guardians of the Constitution?’, Constellations 19, no. 2 (2012): 182–203, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8675.2012.00688.x.

112 As Arato points out, many of the early reforms introduced by the Orbán government were subject to domestic and international criticisms, that could (and on occasion even did) embolden the HCC to rule against the governing majority. Andrew Arato, Post Sovereign Constitution Making: Learning and Legitimacy (Oxford: OUP, 2016), 213–22.

113 Pepijn van Eeden, ‘Discover, Instrumentalize, Monopolize: Fidesz's Three-Step Blueprint for a Populist Take-over of Referendums’, East European Politics and Societies 33, no. 3 (2019): 705–32, https://doi.org/10.1177/0888325418800548.

114 Jan-Werner Müller, What Is Populism? (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016).

115 Bojan Bugarič, ‘Could Populism Be Good for Constitutional Democracy?’, Annual Review of Law and Social Science 15, no. 1 (2019): 42, https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-lawsocsci-101518-042927.

116 Sonja C. Grover, Judicial Activism and the Democratic Rule of Law: Selected Case Studies (Cham: Springer, 2020), 236.

117 Pállinger, ‘Direct Democracy in an Increasingly Illiberal Setting’, 69–70.

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Max Steuer

Max Steuer is an Assistant Professor at the O.P. Jindal Global University, Jindal Global Law School, India. He holds an LL.M. from the University of Cambridge, an M.A. from the Central European University and a PhD from the Comenius University in Bratislava. An interdisciplinary social scientist with a particular focus on democracy research, his research interests encompass, among others, constitutional adjudication in a comparative perspective (with an emphasis on constitutional courts), freedom of expression, militant democracy, and constitutionalism in the European Union. He has published in peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes in law, political science, sociology, and European studies.