The Consequences of Political Mislabelling: How Hungary Challenges the Left-Right LRECON Spectrum

Hungary’s Fidesz party, led by Viktor Orbán, challenges conventional political categorization, often leading to mislabeling of its political ideological position in media and academia. How can one make sense of its true ideological position and the consequences of this mislabeling? This paper assesses the political positioning of Fidesz through datasets examining the Central and Eastern Europe region, in comparative analysis with Western Europe. The findings reveal that Fidesz, often labeled as “radical right”, exhibits left-leaning economic policies alongside authoritarian social stances. This mislabeling exposes the limitations of the LRECON (left-right) axis in understanding certain political landscapes and argues for the incorporation of the GALTAN (authoritarian-libertarian) axis. Mislabeling Fidesz as right-wing allows political discourse by Orbán and the global community to obscure the party’s authoritarian tendencies. This paper suggests that recognizing the multidimensional nature of politics beyond the conventional left-right framework and reassessing classification methods may lead to more accurate political categorization to help expose and identify authoritarian parties.