244 μ¢¤³£ ¬μμ¬
¿nancial crisis has subsided, and far
more Hungarians are now returning
than are leaving. A host o economic
indicators—record-low unemployment,
record-high female employment, rising
real wages, robust ³² growth—show a
much more positive picture than the
one Diamond oers. So do important
social indicators, such as an increasing
number o marriages, a declining
number o divorces, a dramatically
declining number o abortions, and a
rising fertility rate. Hungarians are a
freedom-loving people, and these
trends depict a country o optimism
and con¿dence, not one where our
liberty has been taken from us.
Diamond’s bias against Hungary
illustrates a larger problem that ex-
plains why democracy promotion has
taken on such a negative connotation in
so many parts o the world: it has
become blatantly political. In his 1982
speech to the British Parliament, U.S.
President Ronald Reagan made a
forceful case for promoting democracy
as part o the United States’ foreign
and security policy. Recognizing one o
the core weaknesses o the Soviet
Union, Reagan sought to promote
liberty and democracy to win the Cold
War. That goal was explicitly tied to a
clear national interest. In recent years,
however, as U.S. engagement in central
and eastern Europe has waned, political
interests have hijacked the democracy-
promotion agenda. In the name o
democracy promotion, groups directly
funded by the Hungarian American
billionaire George Soros or closely
aliated with his Open Society Foun-
dations promote an ideologically driven
agenda. These groups carry out work
that has no democratic mandate and noLetters to the
Editor
HOW DEMOCRATIC IS HUNGARY?
To the Editor:
In his essay “Democracy Demotion”
(July/August 2019), Larry Diamond
laments the decline in prominence o
U.S. democracy promotion. It is
refreshing to have an American expert
lift a mirror to the United States,
writing that the country “has to repair
its own broken democracy” before it
can take up again the mantle o democ-
racy promotion internationally. But
Diamond betrays his biases when,
expressing concern about “the wave o
illiberal populism that has been sweep-
ing developed and developing countries
alike,” he claims that Hungarian Prime
Minister Viktor Orban “has presided
over the ¿rst death o a democracy in
an ¤ member state.”
The death o democracy in Hungary?
That’s a dramatic claim, as ill informed
as it is oensive. Diamond and other
critics o Orban who assert that Hun-
gary is no longer a democracy rely on a
set o Çawed arguments that are inca-
pable o explaining a host o other facts
about today’s Hungary.
For example, voter participation in
Hungary has been going up, not down.
Last year’s parliamentary elections saw
the highest turnout since 2002. In
elections for the European Parliament
this past May, Hungarians again
showed up in record numbers to vote,
and a party barely two years old won
ten percent o the vote. The surge in
emigration that followed the 2008
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