Political Governance: Conceptualizing the Governance Style of Illiberal Politics

The term “political governance” (in Hungarian: politikai kormányzás) sounds familiar to the observers of Hungarian politics. At first, the governance of Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány, later, that of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán were qualified as “political” and the concept is also used in the Hungarian political science literature (see Körösényi et al., 2015; Müller, 2014; Pesti et al., 2015). This chapter explores the meaning and the implications of the term in question, both at the conceptual level and in the Hungarian context. Firstly, I will present those strands of scholarship that can provide a theoretical basis for the concept—as the term “political governance” is seldom used in the international literature. I will also argue that political governance can be meaningfully located among possible styles of governance that I propose to define alongside and relative to the importance of policy actors influencing policy decisions. Secondly, drawing on the results of a major empirical study that I conducted on the patterns of Hungarian policy making and governance, I will describe the features and emergence of political governance in Hungary. This chapter argues that this concept has considerable analytical strength to allow for interpretations of the governance style of the post-2010 emerging illiberal era in Hungary. The policy making implications of political governance will also be discussed to offer insights on the question of to what extent this specific type of governing is responsible for policy disruptions and dismantling.