In this Political Science Quarterly article, co-authors Jennie L. Schulze and Ognen Vangelov, with Professor David Haglund trace the remarkable trajectory of post-Communist Hungary over the past three decades, when the onetime “poster country� for successful liberalization in the erstwhile Soviet bloc managed to turn into the leading champion of illiberalism in the entire European Union (EU). They argue that a combination of internal and exogenous factors vitiated the earlier promise of EU “conditionality� to bring about Hungary’s transition to a stable liberal democracy.