In recent years Hungary’s political leadership, under the direction of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, has pursued a resolutely illiberal mission. In The Illiberal Mission, author Heino Nyyssönen depicts the ideological core and practices of this extraordinary authoritarian system, showing how Orbán and his supporters have manipulated history, culture and the rule of law in order to promote and implement their illiberal vision. The book also looks beyond domestic politics and media, assessing Hungary’s recent foreign policy and its relations with the European Union. The latter has been a source of simmering tension: should the European Union continue to tolerate and indeed subsidise a Member State so dismissive of its own principles and methods? And how far is it willing to go in its attempts to placate Member States?
The Illiberal Mission will be of interest to all those studying contemporary politics in Central Europe, the recent history of the European Union, and the future of Hungary, ‘a laboratory for political ideas, post-truth and political propaganda’.