ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the trajectory of the Hungarian social protection system from a hybrid welfare state to a punitive workfare regime between 1998 and 2017. The overview of the main institutions and measures of the social protection system reveals that the declared ideologies and practices fundamentally diverged, and essential changes occurred even within a governmental cycle after the systemic change in 1989. Before 2010, when Viktor Orbán came into power with a two-thirds majority, a frequently changing welfare state functioned in Hungary resembling the European social model. Since 2010, the democratic system of checks and balances was systematically abolished with a drastic concentration of power and a harsh re-centralisation process. The social protection system focuses on targeting the upper and middle classes, glorifying the traditional family model and marginalising the most vulnerable groups of society.
