Standing Up to Orbán? Business Resistance to Anti-LGBTQ Legislation in Hungary

• In Event: You Spin Me Right Round, Baby, Far-Right Round

Abstract

Can private business help to defend liberal democratic rights from retrenchment in an adverse and hostile environment? Are businesses or business representatives willing to use strategies of ‘loud voice’ against a state with coercive power? How do LGBTQ-friendly businesspeople navigate this space; what kind of politics do we observe in this realm? Our paper attempts to answer these questions and make an original contribution to the literature by examining business opposition to anti-LGBTQ legislation in Hungary, a country that presents a stark example of democratic decline. Since 2010, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has consolidated power and transformed Hungary from a poster child of democratization to an illiberal and authoritarian state, a hybrid regime of electoral autocracy. Orbán has also passed two major pieces of anti-LGBTQ legislation: the ban on same-sex marriage in Hungary's new (2012) constitution and the Orban administration: Act LXXIX of 2021.


Our research strategy is to interview people who are involved with three major campaigns/initiatives for LGBT rights in Hungary: the Budapest Pride March; the pro-LGBT Hatter Society; and the employer network/ initiative WeAreOpen. Our approx. 30 interviewees reveal that many companies are actively supporting LGBTQ people in various ways within the confines of their own companies. Yet these same businesses and business organizations are very hesitant to publicly support LGBTQ causes. To the extent that there is loud voice, it takes place without directly criticizing the government or the anti-LGBTQ legislation. The subsidiaries of large multinational companies with branch operations in Hungary are much more engaged than domestic capitalists, but even large MNCs are afraid of the Orbán government. In sum, we observe something like ‘quiet’ or even ‘silent protest.’ These strategies allow employers to recruit and retain LGBTQ+ employees, but whether they have helped to slow or stop democratic backsliding and the erosion of LGBTQ and other minority rights in Hungary is open to question.

Our paper speaks directly to the theme of APSA’s 2024 conference, as it sheds light on the power of democratic retrenchment and of political movements that target minority rights. Corporations are powerful actors in advanced capitalist states, but they have largely retreated in the face of the aggressive hardball tactics of Hungary’s illiberal authoritarian government, to the detriment of LGBTQ people and LGBTQ rights in Hungary.

Authors

• Nicolas Hernandez, University of Delaware

• Daniel Phillip Kinderman, University of Delaware