For more than a decade, Hungary has been held up as a case study in democratic backsliding under Viktor Orbán – a system often described as an ‘informational autocracy’, where elections remain but the media and public sphere are tightly controlled.
Now, after a historic electoral defeat for Orbán’s Fidesz earlier this month, the mood is shifting. But whether this moment marks a clean break, a fragile opening, or something more complicated is still an open question – especially for those who have spent years organising under pressure.
At openDemocracy, we are also trying something slightly different. Rather than covering movements only through moments of visibility or ‘wins’, this series is an attempt to document what organisers are actually doing, learning and grappling with in real time – the strategies, tensions and trade-offs that rarely make it into traditional reporting, but are often the most useful for others organising elsewhere.
