Politics

May 4, 2026 Jan-Werner Mueller

Advocates of liberal democracy everywhere are celebrating Péter Magyar’s triumph over Viktor Orbán. But among the lessons to draw from the Hungarian experience, the most important may be that toppling an illiberal populist is not as straightforward as much of the press coverage has made it seem.

PRINCETON—Péter Magyar’s landslide victory in Hungary has triggered a global outpouring of commentary that sometimes reads like a trashy banner ad: “This one secret technique will make your far-right populism problem disappear!” Hungary’s experience supposedly demonstrates that one need only focus on the incumbent’s corruption or unite the opposition in order to triumph.