The relationship between academic freedom and government policy effectiveness in Hungarian higher education after 1990

Abstract Background and purpose This paper examines the evolution of academic freedom in Hungary from the political regime change of 1990 to the present, based on an analysis of higher education legislation. It aims to assess the extent to which changes in academic freedom correlate with the performance of the Hungarian government and broader autocratization processes. Theoretical framework The analysis builds on the findings of Lyer et al. (2023), which suggest that the decline of university autonomy is associated with wider political trends, particularly autocratization and political polarization. Accordingly, the central hypothesis is that academic freedom in Hungarian higher education co-moves with the degree of governmental autocratization. Methods The study applies a legal–institutional analysis of the main higher education acts (1993, 2005, 2011) and their major amendments (1996, 2015, 2021, 2022). On this basis, a composite indicator of academic freedom in Hungary is constructed and compared over time with the Government Watch Index (GWI). The results are further validated using Hungary’s annual values of the international Academic Freedom Index (AFI). Results The findings reveal a strong and robust correlation between the decline of academic freedom and the deterioration of government performance. This relationship also holds when academic freedom is measured using the AFI. The erosion of academic freedom is particularly pronounced over the past decade. Conclusions The study concludes that the erosion of academic freedom in Hungarian higher education over the past three decades—especially since 2010—has closely tracked Hungary’s broader dynamics of governmental autocratization.