Defending Democracy: LGBTQI Rights Mobilization and the Defeat of Illiberalism in Hungary (with Sam Whitt)

Viktor Orbán’s loss in the 2026 Hungarian parliamentary elections has been widely interpreted as a major setback for illiberalism in global politics.

Many have attributed his loss to Péter Magyar’s strategy of avoiding the culture wars and instead mobilizing voters on bread-and-butter campaign issues. However, these narratives overlook the critical role that LGBTQI-rights mobilization played in building support for Magyar and defending Hungarian democracy—most notably the 2025 Budapest Pride, which became a focal point for mass anti-Orbán opposition. A multi-wave cross-sectional survey of Hungarians from immediately before and after the Pride, and then before and after the parliamentary elections, shows how Pride helped galvanize support for Magyar by heightening concerns that restrictions on LGBTQI rights could spill over into broader democratic erosion. Our findings complicate simplified narratives that defeating illiberalism requires avoiding minority-rights causes. Instead, they underscore the central role of LGBTQI mobilization in Orbán’s electoral defeat.

Meet our speaker

Phillip M. Ayoub is Professor in the Department of Political Science and School of Public Policy at University College London (UCL), where he also serves as Co-editor of the European Journal of Politics & Gender.

He received his PhD in Government from Cornell University in 2013, following a BA from the University of Washington and MA degrees from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Cornell University, and has previously held positions at the European University Institute, Drexel University, and Occidental College. His research bridges international relations and comparative politics, focusing on transnational politics, sexuality and gender, norm diffusion, and social movements, and he is the author of When States Come Out: Europe’s Sexual Minorities and the Politics of Visibility and co-author of The Global Fight Against LGBTI Rights: How Transnational Conservative Networks Target Sexual and Gender Minorities. His work has received numerous honours, including an ISA Best Book Award, three APSA Best Book Awards, two APSA Dissertation Awards, an EUSA Dissertation Award, a Council for European Studies Best Article Prize, and fellowships from the ISRF, Fulbright Schuman, Humboldt, Cornell, Mellon, and Max Weber programmes.

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