Quarter of Hungarians support the idea of dictatorship

Recent survey suggests that a quarter of Hungarian respondents would support the idea of dictatorship in Hungary. Pew Research Center conducted a global survey, as a reaction to the recently growing fear about the state of democracy around the world, investigating how committed people are to democracy and what they think about nondemocratic alternatives, 24.hu reports. 41,953 people responded to the survey from 38 countries. Responses were collected between February and May, 2017.

Political scientists have been warning the world about democratic recession for quite some time now, and it is feared that even the most consolidated democracies might be open to authoritarian politics.

One thing became clear from the results of this survey; voters could be just as threatening to democracy as their leaders bending towards some form of authoritarianism.

Commitment to democracy

Based on the survey’s results, Hungarians did not seem to be very committed to democracy. Only 18% of Hungarians participating in the survey were completely committed to democracy, while 60% of the people might consider some kind of authoritarian system, 15% reject democracy altogether. This is quite distressing compared to the world average (based on the 38 participating countries): 23% of people said to be committed to democracy, 47% were less-committed to democracy and only 8% of the people reported not to be democrats. The Swedish seem to be the most committed democrats (52%) while Russia was the least democratic nation (7%) out of the 38 participating countries.

Results show that more educated people tended to be more committed to democracy than the less educated respondents.

Out of all the respondents from the 38 countries, 8% reported to be nondemocratic, while within Hungarian participants the number is almost double, 15 % of people reported to be non-democrats. This 15% of people support the idea of a small group of competent politicians leading the country. Responses were similar in South Korea, Japan, Spain, Israel and Chile, where people would also support a leadership consisting of only a few competent people.

Shockingly, quarter of the Hungarian participants reported that they would support the idea of one person leading the whole country without any kind of parliamentary restriction or supervision, in other words: dictatorship.

Satisfaction with the way democracy is working

53% of Hungarians reported not to be satisfied with the way democracy is working in Hungary, 44% reported to be satisfied. This is a fairly good ratio with respect to the European average.

Photo: pewglobal.org

Participants from France, Greece, Spain and Italy were less satisfied with the way democracy works in their countries than Hungarians.

Surprisingly, besides Scandinavian nations, Sub-Saharan African countries were the most satisfied with how democracy is working in their countries.

Trust in the ruling government

9% of the Hungarian respondents had complete trust in the current Hungarian government, and 48% of people reported to have some trust in the government. The percentages are similar to the averages in Germany and Sweden.