Four years ago, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s authority was at its peak. After 12 years in which he systematically dismantled Hungary’s democracy and replaced it with an autocratic system concentrating political power and illicit wealth in the hands of family members and loyalists, Orban’s party, Fidesz, secured a fourth consecutive supermajority in the 2022 elections. Shortly after, he institutionalized rule by decree because of the war in neighboring Ukraine—the third such declaration issued by Orban under the cover of a state of emergency. The opposition, meanwhile, was fragmented. Without credible leaders, unhappy voters drifted into apathy as Orban built what we have described in our research as a “mafia state”—a characterization now adopted by the opposition and even referenced by Orban himself in a campaign ad depicting him as the crime boss in The Godfather . Today, the picture has changed considerably.…