The electoral defeats of Aleksandar Vučić and Viktor Orbán have demonstrated that even long-established systems built around institutional and media control can be challenged when public dissatisfaction develops into a broad political movement. However, the victories of Serbia’s Students’ List and Péter Magyar’s Tisza Party do not necessarily signal the defeat of nationalism or the triumph of liberalism, analysts say.
Speaking to Montenegro’s Vijesti, Florian Bieber, a professor of Southeast European history and politics at the University of Graz, and Vuk Vuksanović, a lecturer in foreign policy and grand strategy at King’s College London, said the election results exposed weaknesses in the political systems built around the two leaders. They also highlighted the challenges facing the forces that replaced them.
Bieber argued that the elections in Serbia and Hungary demonstrated that electoral autocracies can be removed through elections despite the advantages accumulated by those in power over many years.
“In both countries, voters voted against both the leaders and the systems,” Bieber said. In Serbia, he added, citizens had clearly expressed a desire for functioning institutions rather than another powerful leader replacing Vučić.
Vuksanović said voter fatigue had combined with structural weaknesses in the political systems established by the two leaders.
“Certain leaders eventually become so omnipresent that citizens develop a natural desire for change, even if only as an expression of the wish to break the political monotony,” he told Vijesti.
When a system built around one leader begins to weaken
Serbia’s early parliamentary elections on October 25 saw the Students’ List, which emerged from an almost two-year protest movement, secure more than half the vote and defeat the coalition led by Vučić’s Serbian Progressive Party (SNS).
The protests that gave rise to the student movement began after the collapse of the canopy at the railway station in Novi Sad in November 2024, which killed 16 people. Public anger subsequently developed into a broader movement against corruption and the abuse of state institutions.
In Hungary, Magyar, a former member of Orbán’s Fidesz party, won a two-thirds parliamentary majority with his Tisza Party in elections on April 12, ending Orbán’s 16-year rule.
Both governments had enjoyed substantial institutional advantages, but public dissatisfaction eventually proved stronger than their ability to control political competition.
Bieber noted that neither election took place under fully equal conditions. International observers from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) also identified advantages enjoyed by governing parties, the misuse of state resources and media bias in both countries. In Serbia, observers additionally reported pressure on voters and incidents of violence.
“Although the elections were neither free nor fair, and those in power were certainly unwilling to give them up, strong citizen mobilization and external constraints prevented them from resorting to forms of repression seen in Belarus and elsewhere,” Bieber said.
He described both political systems as having been built around strongman leaders, combining formal democratic institutions with authoritarian practices. However, he argued that democratic backsliding had gone considerably further in Serbia, where Vučić had relied more heavily on force.
Bieber contrasted the two leaders’ approaches, saying Orbán had not resorted to hooligans, violent groups or organized criminal networks in the way he alleged Vučić had.
He also argued that the constant political mobilization and warnings about external threats that had sustained both governments eventually lost their effectiveness.
Vučić repeatedly warned of threats from abroad, keeping Serbia in what Bieber described as a state of “psychological emergency.” Orbán, meanwhile, invoked alleged threats from Brussels, migrants and George Soros to maintain an atmosphere of fear.
“In both countries, people had had enough and stopped believing in the parallel reality created by these leaders,” Bieber said.
How new political forces overcame polarization
One of the central questions raised by the election results is how relatively new political movements managed to attract voters with different ideological views, while traditional opposition parties had struggled for years to seriously challenge Vučić and Orbán.
Bieber said both the Students’ List and Magyar understood that defeating long-serving leaders required a broader political appeal rather than a narrow ideological program.
Their campaigns focused on issues that had generated widespread public dissatisfaction, particularly corruption, allowing them to attract voters who might previously have supported the governing parties.
“Vučić and Orbán prospered because of political polarization, which kept opposition parties on the defensive,” Bieber said.
Vučić had been able to position himself as more pragmatic than far-right parties such as Dveri and DSS, while simultaneously presenting himself as more conservative and nationalist than the pro-European opposition.
The student movement and Magyar, Bieber argued, refused to play along with that political divide and instead turned the competition into a campaign against corruption.
Another advantage was that neither carried the political baggage of traditional opposition parties.
“Citizens who were skeptical of the opposition considered both Magyar and the Students’ List legitimate, but for different reasons: Magyar because he came from within the Fidesz establishment, and the Students’ List because it did not operate as a traditional political organization and nominated people without political baggage,” he said.
Neither Magyar nor the Students’ List represents a conventional liberal alternative. Bieber argued that classical liberal positions enjoy the support of only a minority in societies shaped by years of nationalist and authoritarian propaganda.
Any political force seeking a majority, he said, must therefore build a much broader coalition.
Their success came from recognizing that a traditional ideological alternative would not be sufficient to defeat the governing parties. Instead, they offered a different political vision and shifted the focus of public debate.
Vuksanović highlighted another important factor: their ability to attract support beyond major cities and traditional opposition strongholds.
“Both winning movements understood that Hungary is not just Budapest, just as Serbia is not just Belgrade,” he said. Their campaigns reached more conservative and rural communities rather than relying exclusively on urban and liberal centers.
International allies cannot replace voters’ support
The defeats of Vučić and Orbán have also raised questions about the limits of international support, particularly their relationships with U.S. President Donald Trump and political circles associated with his administration.
Vuksanović said the relationship between Orbán and Trump had a different character from Vučić’s efforts to strengthen ties with Washington.
Orbán, he argued, represented an ideological model whose influence extended beyond Hungary’s geopolitical importance. Vučić’s approach to the Trump administration, by contrast, was primarily motivated by the need to secure an international partner while facing a serious domestic political crisis.
Nevertheless, Vuksanović stressed that international alliances have limited influence when voters decide their countries’ futures.
“Ultimately, citizens vote primarily on the basis of what is happening in their own countries. Their decisions are shaped by problems in their own backyards, not by major geopolitical issues,” he said.
He also pointed to differences in the role of foreign policy in the two elections.
In Hungary, the prospect of restoring relations with Brussels played a role in the campaign. In Serbia, foreign policy had little influence on the election, he argued.
The European Union, which had tolerated Vučić for years, may not have supported him this time, Vuksanović said, but neither did it actively support his opponents.
The winners face a more difficult test
Although the Students’ List and Magyar managed to unite broad coalitions of dissatisfied voters, Bieber warned that the political formula that secured their victories might not be sustainable once they assume responsibility for governing.
The broad alliances they built around shared objectives do not necessarily provide a lasting foundation for governing, he said.
“What made it possible to defeat Vučić or Orbán cannot serve as the basis for long-term governance,” Bieber argued.
He expects new political parties representing different parts of the political spectrum to emerge in both countries.
Serbia’s political landscape is particularly unusual, he said, because neither of the two dominant electoral forces represents a conventional political party.
The Students’ List is not a party and does not seek to become one, while the SNS is a governing party without the clear ideology and organizational structures needed to function effectively in opposition, according to Bieber.
He believes this situation could create space for new political forces across the ideological spectrum.
Bieber also highlighted the difference between the internal organization of Magyar’s movement and the Students’ List.
“Magyar’s movement was largely a one-man project, dominated by him and with little internal democracy. By contrast, the Students’ List represents an exceptional experiment in democratic organization and bottom-up decision-making,” he said.
He suggested that the student movement’s experience could open a broader debate about how democracy functions in Serbia and how citizens can participate more directly in political decision-making.
Between liberal principles and national identity
The political model that could emerge after the defeats of Vučić and Orbán is particularly relevant at a time when nationalist and populist forces are gaining influence in several Western European countries.
Vuksanović said it remained to be seen how far the Serbian experience might inspire political movements elsewhere.
He argued that the student movement had transformed Serbia’s political landscape and challenged the conventional division between liberal and nationalist forces.
The movement’s approach, he said, did not require people to abandon their national identity or equate it with chauvinism and exclusionary nationalism.
“What the student movement advocated could perhaps serve as a model for a compromise between the liberal and the national: affirming liberal principles, such as the rule of law, within the framework of the nation-state rather than in the name of abstract internationalist ideals,” Vuksanović said.
He illustrated the idea by describing a Christian conservative wearing a cross standing alongside a young woman from Novi Pazar wearing a hijab, with both wrapped in the Serbian flag.
“That could perhaps be one of the most important lessons of the Serbian experience for the wider world,” he concluded.
The central challenge for both Serbia and Hungary is now whether the broad movements that brought political change can turn their shared opposition to corruption and entrenched power into functioning institutions, sustainable governing structures and a political vision capable of accommodating voters with different ideological and national identities.
