Party patronage as a mechanism of democratic backsliding: Evidence from Hungary

Democratic backsliding and autocratisation have become major trends across world regions. Central and Eastern Europe, especially Hungary, is widely seen as a paradigm case of democratic backsliding. Much of the emerging literature has focused on populist political parties in government office as drivers of backsliding, while institutions and international factors such as the European Union act as potential constraints. Yet we still know little about the mechanisms and instruments that are deployed by illiberal political leaders when dismantling democratic governance. This is an important omission in that the link between political intentions and backsliding outcomes remains caught in a black box. In this paper we argue that party patronage plays an essential role for the understanding of democratic backsliding. Party patronage understood as appointments by political parties to positions in the public sector, we argue, is systematically deployed by illiberal political leaders to control the state for the sake of changing rules and procedures to their own advantage and channelling the allocation of goods including jobs to their supporters. Accordingly, we expect to observe the appointment of partisan loyalists across state institutions and deeply into their state apparatus – often following on from or accompanying political appointments to regime-critical institutions that tend to be off-limits in consolidated democracies. We explore the relationship between democratic backsliding and party patronage by focusing on the case of Hungary. We present appointment data for senior political and administrative positions in the ministerial bureaucracy. The data covers more than 1800 appointments for the period from 1990 until 2022. It provides evidence for the quantitative and qualitative change of patronage appointments since 2010 when the FIDESZ-KDNP alliance led by Victor Orban came to office, with signs of change going back to 2006. Our empirical exploration demonstrates that patronage is not only a key instrument and ‘proximate cause’ of democratic backsliding, but also an early warning sign for those interested in predicting and potentially preventing it.