Emergency powers in a hybrid regime: the case of Hungary

Abstract

How should we understand the Hungarian government’s activities since the beginning of the Covid-19 crisis? This article reviews Hungary’s emergency law, and the decrees passed under the emergency authorisation to date, as well as the ending of the state of emergency and the subsequently introduced new statutory emergency regime to ask how Hungary’s actions in recent months should be understood. As the paper demonstrates, bringing in insights from political theory to inform constitutional law approaches to legislative practice can help shed some light on the enigma of Hungary’s apparent legislative ‘restraint’.