Legitimising Authoritarianism: Bonapartism, Orbán and Modern Democratic Politics

Abstract

This thesis shows how contemporary democratic politics inherently creates room for authoritarian politics to appear. As seen in many examples across the world, authoritarian-populists have managed to co-opt democracy to strengthen their autocratic rule. This paper argues that instead of hybrid regime theory, which is too focused on the ways in which liberal democracy is subverted, the concept of Plebiscitary Leader Democracy best explains this phenomenon. Two cases, the Second French Empire of Napoléon III, and Viktor Orbán’s Hungary, serve to highlight this development. Through the application of a broader historical perspective, this paper shows that these two cases resemble an illiberal counterrevolution against liberal democracy, the result of a perception that modern democratic system fail to guarantee stability. In the aftermath of widespread social unrest, economic instability and previous revolutionary moments perceived to have been left unfinished, both leaders were able to acquire charismatic authority and rise to power. Subsequently, through the utilisation of this continuous crisis narrative, populist rhetoric, and plebiscitary politics, they manage to maintain democratic legitimacy, transforming the nature of democracy in the process. That is not to say they are truly democratic systems, but that they are only capable of appearing from within the structure of democracy - they are born of the inherent logic of democratic systems to search for stability and legitimacy in times of crisis.