The Economy Is on the Ballot in Hungary

Viktor Orban has been the prime minister of Hungary since 2010. In those 16 years, he has become an international symbol of populist governance, including among officials in the Trump administration. But the specifics of Orban’s economic record have often escaped notice. Has Orban changed Hungary’s economic trajectory? Does Orban’s concept of national capitalism contradict itself? And what has Orban’s courtship of Russia and China accomplished? Those are just a few of the questions that came up in my recent conversation with FP economics columnist Adam Tooze on the podcast we co-host, Ones and Tooze. What follows is an excerpt,…