What grew while democracy was shrinking?

György Hámori, Roots and Wings Foundation

When Hungary’s parliamentary elections in April 2026 brought an end to sixteen years of Viktor Orbán’s government, much of the commentary understandably focused on politics. Analysts tried to explain why an apparently entrenched regime had finally been defeated. They pointed to inflation, corruption, the deterioration of public services, the emergence of a credible opposition, and an unprecedented level of civic mobilization.

All of these explanations are important. But in the weeks following the election I found myself returning to a different question. Not what changed during the campaign, but what had already changed inside Hungarian society long before anyone imagined that such an election result was possible. Looking back, it seems that while democratic institutions were gradually weakening, civil society was quietly learning and perhaps we were looking in the wrong place.

For years, Hungary served as a case study of democratic backsliding. We measured shrinking civic space, documented attacks on independent institutions, counted restrictive laws and watched the increasing concentration of political and economic power. These developments were real and deeply consequential.

Yet beneath this story another one was unfolding. Less visible, less dramatic, but perhaps equally important. It did not begin with a political movement. It did not have a strategy or a manifesto. It emerged through hundreds of small adaptations made by organizations, journalists, community leaders and ordinary citizens trying to continue their work under increasingly difficult circumstances.

“Yet beneath this story another one was unfolding. Less visible, less dramatic, but perhaps equally important. It did not begin with a political movement. It did not have a strategy or a manifesto. It emerged through hundreds of small adaptations.”

It is adaptations like these that are central to emerging conversations around Possible Now. To quote from a blog of Jenny Hodgson of the GFCF: “There is another story too, quieter, longer in the making, and far less visible…Across the world, communities and their organizations have been building their own alternatives…These are not just coping mechanisms but rather living systems, rooted in context and sustained by relationships. Most importantly, they enable groups to resource and sustain their ambitions and their struggles on their own terms.”

Independent media may be the clearest example. As state advertising gradually became inaccessible to critical outlets, many had little choice but to reinvent themselves. Instead of relying primarily on commercial income, organizations such as Partizán, Átlátszó and Direkt36 slowly built communities of readers and viewers willing to support independent journalism directly. Membership programmes, recurring donations, crowdfunding, live events, podcasts, books and merchandise became not simply additional income streams but expressions of a different relationship with audiences. Readers no longer merely consumed journalism. They sustained it.

A similar transformation happened across civil society. Crowdfunding, ambassador fundraising and recurring monthly giving gradually became part of the everyday fundraising vocabulary of Hungarian organizations. Fifteen years ago these approaches were still considered relatively novel. Today they have become standard practice for many organizations seeking greater independence and resilience.

Community philanthropy also took root during this period. Community foundations appeared in cities across Hungary, creating new opportunities for local giving and local decision-making. Giving circles emerged. Live crowdfunding events brought neighbours, businesses and local initiatives into the same room, not only to raise money but to strengthen relationships and a shared sense of responsibility for their communities.

“The innovation was that organizations increasingly stopped asking only where funding would come from and started asking who their community was. The difference may sound subtle, but it changes almost everything.”

Looking back, I wonder whether the real innovation was never any of these individual methods. The innovation was that organizations increasingly stopped asking only where funding would come from and started asking who their community was. The difference may sound subtle, but it changes almost everything.

When your community becomes your primary source of legitimacy, funding becomes inseparable from participation. Donors become members, readers become supporters, volunteers become ambassadors, and fundraising becomes another form of civic engagement. This shift extended beyond philanthropy.

Their activities were often described as entrepreneurial responses to financial pressure. They certainly were. But they also reflected something deeper: a growing understanding that long-term resilience depends on relationships rather than individual grants. Perhaps this is why one of the most remarkable civic developments of the past two years did not emerge from established civil society at all.

When the Tisza Islands[1] appeared across Hungary in 2024 and 2025, many observers treated them primarily as a political phenomenon. In reality, they also reflected capacities that society had been quietly developing for years. Thousands of people began organizing locally, learning together, building trust, raising small amounts of money, helping neighbours and persuading fellow citizens one conversation at a time.

None of this required large institutions or significant financial resources, it required relationships. Seen from this perspective, the extraordinary civic mobilization that accompanied the 2026 elections did not emerge from nowhere. It grew in a society that had already spent more than a decade experimenting with new forms of participation, new ways of resourcing public life and new understandings of community.

“None of this required large institutions or significant financial resources, it required relationships.” 

Ironically, the pressures placed on civil society by an increasingly authoritarian system may have accelerated this process. Organizations that once relied heavily on institutional donors had to diversify. Independent media had to build direct relationships with audiences. Local communities had to discover their own capacity to organize and contribute. None of these developments were planned. They emerged because existing models no longer worked.

This does not mean that democratic backsliding was somehow beneficial. The damage done to institutions, public trust and democratic culture was immense and will take many years to repair, but it does suggest that pressure can sometimes produce unexpected forms of civic learning.

Today, much of the discussion in Hungary understandably focuses on rebuilding institutions. That work is essential. Yet I hope we also pay attention to the quieter innovations that emerged over the past sixteen years. More specifically, and returning to the conversations on Possible Now, I hope that the “experiments and innovations that have emerged through the cracks of the dominant system are not dismissed as small and one-off, but as part of a larger system of new practices, patterns and signals that, when seen together, point in a new direction altogether.”

If there is one lesson I take from this period, it is that democracy is sustained not only by constitutions, elections or public institutions. It is also sustained by thousands of small acts through which people gradually learn that public life belongs to them.

Hungary’s democratic opening did not begin on election day. In many ways, it began years earlier, when journalists started asking readers to become supporters, when communities decided to finance their own initiatives, when organizations stopped seeing fundraising simply as resource mobilization and began understanding it as community building.

Perhaps that is one of the most enduring forms of resilience that community philanthropy can offer: not simply new ways of giving, but new ways of belonging.

By: György Hámori, Program and Partnerships Manager at the Roots and Wings Foundation.

[1] “Tisza Islands” refers to the grassroots local organizing network across Hungary linked to the Tisza political movement. In the lead-up to the April 2026 elections, these independent groups engaged in local community-building (ie. organizing social events and town-hall style meetings), distributed information to voters and mobilized others at the hyper local level as volunteers and supporters.