Romania and Hungary’s Recent Elections: the Rinse and Repeat Alternating Electoral Wins of Liberalism and Nationalism |
CounterPunch Exclusives
CounterPunch Exclusives
Romania and Hungary’s Recent Elections: the Rinse and Repeat Alternating Electoral Wins of Liberalism and Nationalism
Photograph Source: © European Union, 1998 – 2026
Romania was late to politics which saw parties representing the left and right unite against liberals. But unite they did this week, in what the founder of Russia’s former “National Bolsheviks,” Alexander Dugin, presciently described in 2008 as movements “against the center.” Dugin predicted these left/right alliances would crush liberalism. Instead, they mostly acted performatively to knock off liberals while nationalists opportunistically seized state power to chiefly benefit themselves in new clientelist clans, rather than acting as transformative agents for advancing any national interest. The result was to just replace one set of elites (usually anchored to global interests) with another set of elites (typically anchored at the national level).
Meanwhile, two weeks prior, neighboring Hungary saw populist-right Viktor Orban replaced by his former understudy Péter Magyar and his Tisza center-right party, promising the return of Hungary to the pro-EU camp. But, the 2026 parliamentary elections were the first in post-communist Hungary where left parties failed to garner the minimum vote necessary for legislative representation.
European electorates have increasingly proved fickle in the 21st century, and more so since the 2008 financial crash. Electorates no longer are anchored to parties as they were in the previous century, where parties in power often implemented party programs and represented real class interests, at least they did before the European Union and........