In a Nutshell

Hungary’s 2026 general election has produced a historic shift: for the first time in five consecutive electoral cycles, a two-thirds parliamentary supermajority has been secured by a party other than Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz, this time by the centre-right Tisza party of Péter Magyar. Writing in Verfassungsblog, constitutional scholar Beáta Bakó explains that this electoral threshold has long been treated as a guarantor of democratic compromise in Hungary, yet in practice it has functioned as an instrument of unchecked power.

Under the current constitutional architecture, a two-thirds majority grants its holder the ability to amend the constitution, appoint key judicial officials, and entrench policy preferences in so-called “cardinal laws”.

Bakó argues that rather than perpetuating this system, the incoming Tisza government faces a defining test: to dismantle the very mechanisms that enabled its predecessor’s dominance. This would mean reducing the scope of cardinal laws, raising the bar for constitutional amendments beyond a simple parliamentary supermajority, restoring the independence of the Constitutional Court, and, most structurally, shifting toward a more proportional electoral system that makes coalition-building and genuine compromise the norm rather than the exception.

Our Take

Hungary’s transition illustrates, with rare clarity, one of the central warnings embedded in the 451 Institute’s work: that a supermajority is not, in itself, a safeguard against majority overreach. It can just as easily become its vehicle. The real question is never who holds the majority, but how decision-making is structured to prevent that majority from eroding the foundations it was elected to protect. The Tisza government now holds the same concentrated power that Fidesz is said to have used to weaponize cardinal laws, pack courts, and restrict fundamental rights. The democratic credibility of Hungary’s recovery will depend entirely on whether it chooses to dismantle that architecture rather than inherit it.

For the 451 Institute, this is precisely the terrain where systemic design matters most: robust checks and balances, meaningful separation of powers, and legitimacy frameworks that require genuine consensus on foundational rules are the infrastructure of democracy itself.

European policymakers and institutions watching Hungary’s transition should resist the temptation to declare victory simply because the electoral pendulum has swung. Durable democratic resilience requires structural reform, not just a change of majority.

Read the full story at Verfassungsblog: https://verfassungsblog.de/the-big-lie-of-two-thirds-majority/