Orbán and democracy

Viktor Orbán's party has lost in a landslide and he has conceded the election. An opposition party will form a government in Hungary. How should we update our priors about Orbán and his time in power, in light of this information? A few relevant thoughts: A bunch of prominent conservative commentators (Ross Douthat, Tyler Cowen) suggested it was evidence that Orbán's Hungary was a democracy after all. This led to a strong (to put it mildly) counter-reaction from many liberals. In a Bayesian framework, "Orbán concedes" does update our priors about him and his rule directionally away from authoritarianism. One can imagine a different leader, who was more of an authoritarian running a more autocratic state, refusing to concede and attempting to remain in office. Orbán did not do that. At the very least, conceding is not evidence that increases our prior he was an autocrat. As a formal matter, the conservative commentators are suggesting that P(concedes|autocrat) is very small;…