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This paper aims to examine the manifestations and abuses of the exceptionalist legal order in Hungary during the period of the COVID-19 pandemic. Since the refugee crisis of 2015, the Orbán regime has been using the instruments of exceptional governance in a continuous way, which has become more and more pronounced in the context of the crises of recent years, especially the COVID-19 pandemic. In this paper, the author first presents the literature on the state of exception and its use by authoritarian populist regimes. Then, the author will discuss how the Orbán regime employs the tools of exceptional governance in an authoritarian manner, with a particular focus on how the tools of exceptional governance have become part of the constitutional structure. Finally, the author will explain the risks and anti-democratic dangers of the use of extraordinary measures of governance without checks and balances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes how the incumbent authoritarian populist Orbán government started to navigate itself from an anti-climate to a conservative green position. First, the theoretical background of environmentalism and democracy/autocracy will be investigated. It is to say that the relationship between democracy and the environment is quite contradictory, although democracy has a demonstrable effect on the quality of the environment and sustainability, it is not worth absolutizing. That is why we should put an emphasis on the environmental approach of authoritarian regimes, here as a case study of the Hungarian regime. From 2010, the Orbán regime elaborated an ambiguous attitude toward the environment and green politics; on the on hand, it was characterized by climate denialism and demolition of environmental institutions, on the other hand, the super-majority behind the regime accepted the Fundamental Law with several green elements. In the second half of 2019 and early 2020, the regime started to create a new conservative green agenda. This authoritarian populist greening is not based on eco-authoritarian traditions. This paper challenges the notion that authoritarian populist actors are hostile to environmental policies. The Orbán regime proved adaptive in the case of the climate emergency and is about to elaborate its own climate agenda. At the same time, the regime is unable to face the real nature of the climate and ecological emergencies. The crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has been used by the regime to rule by decree based on exceptional powers. In fact, the regime relied on exceptional governance before the COVID-19 crisis, ever since the migration crisis of 2015. The authoritarian populist regime recognized the political opportunities of exceptional governance in terms of overlapping crises and that is why it is characterized by authoritarian climate populism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines the CSOs – government relations during the COVID-19 pandemic, first introducing how the pandemic affected the already authoritarian regime in Hungary and how this regime utilized the epidemic to extend and fortify its power. Then the paper presents the antecedents of the relationship between civil society and government in the frame of the National System of Cooperation (NSC). This relationship is unilaterally dominated by the government, and it may appear as a "4C strategy": Cooptation, Coercion, Crowding out, Creation (the creation of a new, loyal civil society). Exploring the civil society and government relations during the pandemic, the study will conclude that there was no government attempt to coordinate the activities of CSOs or to try to harmonize sectoral cooperation from a broader perspective. The occurrences demonstrated the explosion of solidarity and the carnival of solidarity. These forms of solidarity, however, remain informal and leave deepening structural problems untouched. The paper presents the results of an empirical research which was conducted between March and September of 2020. The nodal points of the research include the resilience and flexibility of the organizations, their efforts to assist during the emergency and lockdown, as well as the issues of networking and the nature of their relations with the national and local authorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to explore the political theoretical background o f governing populism in Hungary. It has been argued here th a t th e political success o f Viktor Orbán's Governments a re based on mixing th re e main political theoretical pillars: 1) the concept o f the Political elaborated by Carl Schmitt; 2) the Weberian concept leader democracy; 3) and political constitutionalism. What is common in these th re e tendencies is the promise o f repoliticisation. I will elaborate in this study th a t elitist populism and illiberal democracy are the tw o core concepts which can synchronize and converge the various (and sometimes contradictory) political theoretical backgrounds o f Orbán's regime. I also p u : forwa rd here th a t the populist promise o f political leadership is inhe rently false, because instead o f repoliticisation, populist forces monopolize political representation and liquidate political responsioility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the Hungarian environmental and energy democracy from the regime change in 1989 to 2015. The main pillars of environmental democracy (access to information, public participation and access to justice) have been strengthened and the Aarhus regulations have been incorporated to the Hungarian legal system. This study argues that environmental democracy belongs to the normative-empirical theories of democracy. I elaborate on the constitutional and legal bases of environmental democracy and I argue that, since 2010, several restrictions have been carried out about the environmental democracy by the Hungarian governments. Since the projected extension of the Paks Nuclear Power Plant, these restrictions have increased. Despite of the strong legal foundations, the Hungarian environmental policy and environmental democracy have been in continuous regression and under attack. This paper proposes two main hypotheses. According to the first, the Hungarian environmental democracy has been evolved through legal constitutionalism (which is a main constitutional tendency in the United States), and its restrictions have been in conjunction with the constitutionalist era since 2010. The other hypothesis concerns the energy democracy, which means - in the United States and Germany - socializing and democratizing the methods of energy production and consumption without harming or endangering the environment or people. It has been argued that the prevailing of the Aarhus pillars in the field of energy policy (i.e., energy democracy) has a huge impact on the environmental democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]