By Kutup Aytekin
In Hungary and Poland, Fidesz and PiS remained popular over several years and won subsequent elections. Both of these parties radically changed their countries’ welfare systems. In this essay, Kutup Aytekin scrutinizes these systems while sketching out their flaws. He argues that these flaws in the social policy of autocratizing regimes endanger their longevity by providing potential challengers with an opportunity to contest the incumbent. He concludes by noting that while such challengers succeeded in both countries, their social policy visions still need improvement.
In my previous essay I scrutinized the emerging welfare states within authoritarian and autocratizing regimes led by right-wing political parties. That piece stipulated that contrary to the conventional wisdom that associates democracy with more elaborate welfare systems, emergent autocratizing regimes such as Hungary and Poland successfully formulated and implemented their own welfare agenda. This entailed restructuring the welfare system according to new political priorities, funding new social programs, and changing the tax regime. Ultimately, a significant number of new welfare initiatives undertaken by these regimes proved fairly popular among the broader public. These right-wing populist parties continued to implement their social policy agenda as they kept winning successive elections.
However, despite the sustained support these regimes enjoyed, and despite the popularity of some of their welfare initiatives, their overall welfare framework still has certain flaws. In fact, some of these flaws undermine these regimes in the long run while strengthening the opposition’s prospects to contest the incumbent. Three flaws are particularly salient within the broader welfare system that the autocratizing parties built: First, these welfare regimes exclude certain population segments they deem undesirable. Second, these policy programs increase inequality, particularly in Hungary. Third, their agenda results in chronic disinvestment in critical areas.
The exclusionary nature of these states’ welfare regimes stems from their ideological convictions. These regimes choose to selectively mitigate the economic insecurities of the population, extending protection to those deems worthy of support while withholding it from “others” deemed unworthy. For example, PiS’s pioneering and revolutionary family policy in Poland excludes caregivers who are considered ideologically undesirable, such as single parents and queer families. Moreover, PiS’s family policy seeks to restrict women’s reproductive rights, particularly abortion. Similarly in Hungary, Fidesz’s social policy systematically placed groups deemed “unproductive” at a disadvantage, including the racialized poor, the unemployed and the disabled.
In addition to their exclusionary nature, these new welfare regimes may heighten inequalities. This has been the case particularly in Hungary. The “fiscal welfare” system that Orban built embraced a flat income tax, which disproportionately benefited the more affluent while penalizing lower-class people. For example, the government ensured that the pension prospects of those in well-paid jobs were more stable, while cutting off the most vulnerable groups from the social security system. Similarly, Fidesz’s family tax allowance systematically benefited the middle-class while lower-class suffered from poor labor market opportunities or low income. Unlike Hungary, Poland’s welfare regime under PiS was mostly redistributive and equalizing. However, certain accounts also pointed out that PiS’s flagship welfare initiative, Family500+ program, disproportionately benefited more affluent families since the 2019 program extension.
The exclusionary nature and inequality-enhancing elements of these welfare regimes have been detrimental to many. However, their most important flaw lies elsewhere. As Szikra and Öktem point out, these welfare regimes are built through large-scale restructuring. While such reordering enables these regimes to fund prioritized policy initiatives, it also leaves critical public services – such as healthcare and education – in a chronically underinvested state. This was the case both in Poland and Hungary.
In Poland, PiS’s pivot towards popular cash-based initiatives damaged public health and education. Regarding healthcare, Poland’s public spending on health was 5.7% of GDP in 2023, which lagged behind other Eastern European peers, such as Slovakia, Czechia, and Estonia. Consequently, around 9 percent of poor Polish households spent a “catastrophic” amount of their income on health. In Poland, around 20000 people who could be saved with proper medical intervention die every year due to chronic disinvestment in public healthcare. The situation was highly similar, if not worse, in Hungary under Fidesz where the centralization and bureaucratization of welfare also took its toll on public health and education. Fidesz’s health policy empowered the private sector and facilitated its expansion while contributing to the deterioration of the quality and accessibility of public healthcare. Health spending per capita was only half the EU’s average in 2025 under the party’s rule. In education, Fidesz also implemented significant budgetary cuts, while contributing to the segregation of Roma children.
Although certain aspects of these welfare systems were popular with PiS and Fidesz voters, their flaws became a matter of public controversy. Emergent discontent could then be channeled by the opposition to undermine the legitimacy of both ruling parties. In their ultimately successful election campaigns, both Donald Tusk and Péter Magyar problematized the crumbling of public services and promised to fix them.
For Tusk’s KO, acknowledging and problematizing the problems of public health and the education system was an essential component of its campaigning strategy. Thus, one of the main promises of the Polish opposition was to increase investment in these sectors while raising the incomes of those employed in them. Moreover, Tusk emphatically re-politicized the abortion issue. Doing so enabled the opposition to take issue with PiS’s more restrictive and exclusionary aspects of social policy and garner support from the electorate. Crucially, Tusk abandoned his formerly hawkish stance on PiS’s flagship family program, promising to expand cash-based welfare programs. In other words, the Polish opposition doubled down on the previous administration’s popular social policy while problematizing disinvestment in healthcare.
The deterioration of the public services in Hungary was even more important for Magyar’s election campaign. By problematizing the unsanitary hospital conditions, deaths from preventable diseases, and long waiting times, Magyar sought to highlight the flaws of Fidesz’s social policy. To press these points, he made surprise visits to public hospitals to publicly document the poor state of the health care system. More broadly, his Tisza party promised to alleviate social inequality by reforming the regressive income tax. The party also took issue with Fidesz’s exclusionary family policy, promising to extend protections to single parents and families raising children with disabilities. Overall, Magyar’s campaign exposed the crumbling of critical public services and the exclusionary aspects of Fidesz’s social policy while appealing to the broader electorate by promising to fix these issues.
These episodes offer a blueprint for contesting and dethroning autocratizing regimes. However, the overall welfare policy framework these movements offer still lacks a fully articulated vision. Doubling down on their predecessors’ popular policies and exposing their shortcomings may be popular during the campaigning period, but a lack of clarity of vision may ultimately prove politically risky. A more coherent ideology and program could help these parties better communicate their purpose to their base, better plan reforms, and figure out what kind of welfare system they want to build. Properly resolving these issues would contribute to the longevity of their rule, as the importance of welfare policy and shielding the electorate from crises will only increase in the future.
Kutup Aytekin is Assistant Editor in the Political Economy and Inequalities section of the Review of Democracy.
This article is published under the sole responsibility of the author, with editorial oversight. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the editorial team or the CEU Democracy Institute.
