Yes. I get that. But perhaps that’s only because they don’t have to. It seems to me a pretty big deal that they have rigged the drawing of jurisdictional lines, rigged the Courts to eliminate any possibility of remedy… 1/

to ensure Congress is a safe job program for those Congressional leadership wants it to be. 2/

If Orban didn’t need to control the media or weaponize prosecution to secure his continued position, perhaps he too would not have bothered. 3/

Indeed Eastern European democracies (Romania is what I know) enjoy an extraordinary free, circus-like, tabloid press that engenders cynicism rather than deliberation. 4/

Does that make them healthy democracies, or is the media just captured in a different way than it has been in Hungary? 5/

I agree that it’s not the same, it’s importantly better. It’s important per se that people don’t feel persecution for their political activity, regardless of whether that political activity is likely to be effective. 6/

And in the United States, there have been meaningful shifts of party control despite the absurd degree of incumbency bias. In Romania as well. The US and Romania have been importantly “more democratic” than Hungary. 7/

But they do bear some pretty uncomfortable similarities. The health of a democracy is its legislature, full stop. Elections of kings are never meaningful democracy. 8/

If its sufficient to soft-capture legal norms surrounding elections, to capture the courts in “just” that domain, to eviscerate legislative democracy, does the fact that the icier tools that entrenched “elected kings” require remain sheathed say much good about the health of the democracy? 9/

Or is “competitive authoritarianism” at the legislative level just a more pleasant form of eviscerated democracy than what a head-of-state requires to ensure job security, so in neither case is there much democracy, but when it’s through a frozen legislature, there are fewer dark side effects? /fin