KickBack - The Global Anticorruption Podcast

This podcast series features in-depth interviews

Author: KickBack

This podcast series features in-depth interviews with a wide range of corruption experts, on questions such as: What have we learned from 20 years of (anti)corruption research? Why and how does power corrupt? Which theories help to make sense of corruption? What can we do to manage corruption? How to recovery stolen assets?
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Language: en

Genres: Science

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139. Áron Hajnal & József Péter Martin on systemic corruption in Hungary
Friday, 17 October, 2025

Hungary, once seen as a democratic success story is now widely recognized as one of the EU's most corrupt member states. Regular KB host Liz David-Barrett sits down with József Péter Martin and Áron Hajnal to examine how Viktor Orbán built a system of state capture, and why the EU struggled to respond. They discuss their research evaluating the effectiveness of EU conditionality measures, the challenges of tackling corruption when it's built into the regime itself, and what might happen in Hungary's crucial April 2026 elections. Find Áron and József’s article here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10999922.2025.2554409?scroll=top&needAccess=true#d1e186