A Hybrid Judiciary in a Hybrid Regime: A Case Study on Hungary

HANELT, Etienne. A Hybrid Judiciary in a Hybrid Regime: A Case Study on Hungary. In Nuffield Early Career Workshop in Socio-Legal Studies, Nuffield College, University of Oxford. 2023.

Basic information

Original name

A Hybrid Judiciary in a Hybrid Regime: A Case Study on Hungary

Authors

HANELT, Etienne (276 Germany, guarantor, belonging to the institution)

Edition

Nuffield Early Career Workshop in Socio-Legal Studies, Nuffield College, University of Oxford, 2023

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Other information

Language

English

Type of outcome

Prezentace na konferencích

Field of Study

50501 Law

Country of publisher

United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

Confidentiality degree

není předmětem státního či obchodního tajemství

References:

Web nakladatele

RIV identification code

RIV/00216224:14220/23:00133122

Organization unit

Faculty of Law

Keywords in English

courts; hybrid regime; rule of law; Hungary; informal institutions

Tags

rivok

Tags

International impact

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Abstract

V originále

Hybrid regimes occupy a middle ground between democracies and autocracies. We argue that the same applies to their rule of law. Just as hybrid regimes maintain the façade of democracy, they sustain judiciaries that seemingly mirror those of a functioning Rechtsstaat. Due to constitutional and international demands for judicial independence, informal means are used to exercise control over judges, making a focus on legal characteristics insufficient to detect their actual functioning. Through an in-depth case study of Hungary’s judiciary after 2010, we show that ‘constitutional tinkering’ and informal clientelistic networks, used to control the executive and legislative branches, were also applied to the judiciary. Still, they remain underdeveloped because of the domestic and external restraints of judicial independence. Since reliable hard data is not available, we build our paper on interviews with Hungarian judges conducted in 2022. Based on these, we test the validity of existing theories and leverage thick descriptions to explain the means of control over judges.

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Links

101002660, interní kód MU

Name: Informal Judicial Institutions: Invisible Determinants of Democratic Decay (Acronym: INFINITY) Investor: European Union, ERC (Excellent Science)