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This is the fifth election in a row in which a party has gained a two-thirds majority in Hungary’s unicameral parliament – and the first time it is not Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party, but the newly emerged centre-right Tisza party led by Péter Magyar. A two-thirds majority has long been the magic of Hungarian politics. Namely, it means domestically unlimited power. Now, the new government will have all the means to change the fundamental constitutional setting in Hungary: to amend the constitution (or even adopt a new one), to appoint constitutional judges and other state officials, and to adopt and amend so-called “cardinal laws”. But the magic of the two-thirds majority is based on an assumption that has turned out to be a lie over the years: that such a special majority guarantees compromise. As a first step towards a truly functioning pluralist democracy, it is time to disenchant the two-thirds majority. In this blog post, I will show why and how.

The reasons for Tisza’s landslide victory are complex, but there are at least two obvious sets of voter motivations. One is practical, including economic difficulties, systemic corruption, and, alongside these, dysfunctional public services. The other is principled: Hungarians realised that after 16 years of rule-of-law backsliding under Fidesz rule, the country was standing on the brink of open dictatorship, and that this election was the last moment at which this could be reversed. That is why the most important task of the new Tisza government is to prevent Hungary from reaching this point again. The disenchantment of the “magical” two-thirds majority is a crucial element here. While a few of the most important decisions should be subject to stricter and more complex majority requirements, the vast majority of decisions currently requiring a two-thirds majority should instead be regulated by simple-majority legislation. These are the so-called cardinal laws.

What are cardinal laws and what were they used for?

Cardinal laws have existed since the democratic transition, although under the name of “two-third laws”. The original idea behind these special laws was to secure political compromise when regulating some crucial constitutional matters, such as the justice system, elections, parties, constitutional court, citizenship and so on. When Fidesz came to power in 2010, they kept these laws, renamed them as “cardinal law” and, additionally, they qualified several policy issues as cardinal as well, for example migration and asylum, pensions, or certain taxation rules, raising the number of cardinal laws above thirty.

Now, as two-thirds parliamentary majorities seem to have become the new normal in Hungary, it is time to realise that the rationale behind the magical two-thirds majority requirement has been a lie. Just like cardinal laws, since 2010 constitution drafting and amending does not require compromise anymore. Fidesz knew that but showed how seriously they took the need for compromise: they did not raise the majority requirements neither for cardinal laws, nor for constitution making and amending, but used their two-thirds legitimation to ignore any meaningful dialogue with the opposition.

The consecutive Fidesz-governments instead cemented their random policy preferences in cardinal laws expecting that a future government with simple majority would not be able to change them. Moreover, they also codified controversial fundamental rights restrictions in cardinal laws: this was especially apparent in the year preceding the 2026 general election. For instance, under the rhetoric of fighting “foreign agents” and combined with an amendment of Article G) of the Fundamental Law the justice minister was empowered in cardinal law (§§ 9/B and 9/C, inserted in 2025) to suspend the Hungarian citizenship of Hungarians who also hold the citizenship of a third country, if they “pose a threat to the public order”. Or, municipal communities received the right via cardinal law to determine who may settle in the locality and under what conditions. This is particularly controversial given that the meaningful competences and financial autonomy of local governments have drastically been cut by the Fidesz-governments.

Learning to make compromises without cardinal laws

The reason why two-thirds majority laws were perceived as the primary guarantee for compromise lies in the Hungarian electoral system. Since the democratic transition, Hungary has had a mixed system, where roughly half of MPs are elected in single-member constituencies (SMCs) according to majority voting, while the rest are elected from party lists under proportional representation: each voter has two votes, one for the candidate in their district and the other for the party list.

After coming to power in 2010, the Fidesz supermajority made some tricky changes to the system to make it more majoritarian and less proportional, and to favour the strongest party: the second round was abolished in the SMCs, so that a mandate could also be won by relative majority in the first round, and winning candidates also received compensatory votes on their party lists. Such an electoral system provides stable majorities, and it also helped Fidesz repeatedly turn its simple parliamentary majority into a two-thirds majority over the years. What they did not anticipate was that, at some point, Fidesz might no longer be the strongest party. Now it is the new strongest party, Tisza, that can benefit from these electoral rules.

Under these circumstances, where a governing party has no need to cooperate with others – not only in ordinary legislation but even on key constitutional issues – it is no wonder that Hungarian political culture has increasingly been characterised by deepening divisions, while the pursuit of compromise has practically disappeared. It is indeed desirable to encourage politics, especially at the legislative level, to seek compromise. However, as demonstrated above, cardinal laws have proven to be unsuitable instruments for that.

Instead, what would guarantee compromise (and, along with it, an improvement in political culture) is a shift towards a more proportional electoral system, where even a simple majority requires compromise within a governing coalition. Such a scenario would also make cardinal laws unnecessary. At this point, it is worth recalling that a two-thirds majority in parliament practically means unlimited power in the Hungarian constitutional setup. Therefore, one should always be wary when a single party holds such a majority alone – be it the national-populist Fidesz or the centrist-technocratic Tisza. The biggest test of the democratic commitment of the new Tisza government will be whether it is willing to dispel the magic of the two-thirds majority, which it also holds, by abolishing cardinal laws and creating a new, more proportional electoral system.

In a proportional setting, coalition governments will become the norm, and ordinary legislation will also require compromise between multiple parties. After the initial difficulties, such an arrangement could help transform hostility between parties, at least in part, into a more constructive form, and it would also have an important benefit for voters. They would no longer be forced to vote tactically, holding their noses, but could instead vote for their preferred party, thus allowing Hungary to move towards genuine democratic pluralism.

Whether or not electoral reform ultimately takes place, the large number of two-thirds laws makes little sense in either case. At the same time, precisely in order to protect the foundations of the democratic system from a potential Fidesz-rule 2.0, narrowly defined exceptions are needed. Moreover, the very concept of cardinality should also be reconsidered, so that special majority requirements are not defined solely within parliament, in terms of the number of MPs, but also involve additional sources of democratic legitimacy beyond parliament.

Matters that indeed require enhanced compromise – beyond parliament alone

First and foremost, the 15 constitutional amendments adopted in the 14 years since the entry into force of Hungary’s not-so-new Fundamental Law – many of them controversial and driven by the party-political interests of Fidesz – demonstrate that the current two-thirds threshold for constitutional change (and for adopting a new constitution) is too easily reached. Even if the electoral system were to be reformed to make it more proportional, decisions of this magnitude should be subject to more demanding safeguards. These need not be limited to higher parliamentary thresholds; they could also include confirmatory referendums or the establishment of a separate body, such as a constitutional assembly, to play a contributory role.

As for cardinal laws, three key areas stand out where genuinely enhanced compromise among political forces remains essential.

To avoid what has happened over the past fifteen years – namely, that the Constitutional Court has been rendered dysfunctional or even weaponised by the ruling party – the rules governing its composition and operation should be regulated at a higher level, but in a way that ensures genuine compromise. In the event of a switch to a proportional electoral system, the current two-thirds majority will probably suffice; if the system remains unchanged, however, the threshold should be raised further, for example to four-fifths, with the detailed rules designed so that it is not in the parliamentary opposition’s interest to boycott the appointment process. Involving actors beyond parliament in the appointment of constitutional judges should also be considered.

What I wrote four years ago still holds: the main problem with the Hungarian constitution is not its text, but the fact that it does not function. And it has not functioned largely because of those who were meant to operate the constitutional system – above all, the constitutional judges. If the independence and proper functioning of the Constitutional Court are restored, there is no need to designate another twenty or thirty laws as cardinal, not even crucial ones such as laws on the judiciary or the parliament. In that case, given that the fundamental principles of democracy and the rule of law are codified at the constitutional level, simply enforcing the constitution is enough.

More generally, if the Constitutional Court functions normally again, it will be capable of protecting the rule of law and institutional integrity. What I do not trust it to protect, however, are certain core aspects of popular sovereignty. That is why laws governing parliamentary elections and the competences of local governments should be safeguarded so that their adoption – and any substantial, fundamental changes to them – are subject to requirements beyond a simple parliamentary majority.

As a first step, the electoral system should be made more proportional, and the competences of local governments – overhauled during the Fidesz era – should be restored, together with the necessary financial autonomy. These arrangements should be put in place together with safeguards that require direct approval by those affected, and the same safeguards should apply to any future changes. This should take the form not of higher parliamentary thresholds, but of external approval mechanisms: citizens should be able to approve electoral laws in a referendum, and any moves toward centralisation should be conditional on the approval of a certain proportion of local and/or territorial governments, depending on the subject.

Such safeguards would also require a constitutional amendment, not only in terms of the legislative process and the actors involved but also because the current framework is highly restrictive regarding referendums: it treats electoral laws as excluded subjects and sets a high, fifty percent validity threshold.

The main lesson of the past sixteen years is that institutions can be captured all too easily by the magical two-thirds majority. Even if this parliamentary supermajority is finally disenchanted, the most effective democratic safeguards will not lie in institutions alone, but also – alongside them – in the people themselves. Counter-majoritarian checks should be complemented by additional tools to keep elected governments under control; tools that carry more immediate democratic legitimacy and are rooted in majoritarian logic.

It is a relief that Hungary has moved beyond the threat of autocratisation. The task now is to counter autocratic populism in the future. This requires drawing on multiple layers of democratic legitimacy and popular sovereignty as checks on the elected majority – whether two-thirds or a simple majority – after so many years of populists misappropriating the authority of the people.

The post The Big Lie of Two Thirds Majority appeared first on Verfassungsblog.