Driven by politics: agenda setting and policy-making in Hungary 2010–2014

Abstract

A general assumption about the policy making process in Hungary is that in the past four years it has been largely dominated by political initiatives originating from the government and the ruling party. That is, policy change has been primarily driven by political initiatives of the power centre, instead of being responsive to the concerns of the public. In our study, we are empirically testing the hypothesis about the politically driven policy change, using the media agenda and legislative agendas of the Hungarian Comparative Agendas Project. We identified the important policy changes as those topics to which the media has provided a larger-than-average coverage on a yearly basis. Outstanding coverage has been usually linked to one policy issue, and in most of the cases, we found some kind of policy decision related to the issue. However, locating the policy decision or the first interpellation related to the given issue we found that they usually preceded the media coverage-that is, instead of the media agenda pulling the policy agenda, the general logic is just the opposite: media is talking about the policy initiatives of the government. Only a few cases show the 'textbook case' of increased media coverage spurring political interest.

When Populist Leaders Govern: Conceptualising Populism in Policy Making

“…The legislative style of Fidesz effectively limited the possibility of the opposition to influence the decision making. Between 2010 and 2014 not one bill or legislative amendment proposed by the opposition parties was upheld by the parliamentary majority, which is unprecedented in the history of Hungarian democracy since 1990 (Boda & Patkós, 2018).…”

Punctuated equilibrium and progressive friction in socialist autocracy, democracy and hybrid regimes

“…Yet, when it comes to another region with a turbulent past and multiple regimes changes, Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), similar studies are few and far between (for two exceptions see (Boda and Patkós 2018;Sebők and Berki 2018). In light of this gap in the literature, the dual purpose of this article is to conceptualise policy dynamics for settings beyond liberal democracy and to extend the external validity of previous research on policy dynamics both in a geographical and historical sense.…”

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Coping with a Closed and Politicized System: The Advisory Roles of Political Scientists in Hungary

“…Since in an illiberal system, the centre of power does not tolerate institutionalized checks and balances, civil society is weak and often dependent on party politics and the government. Non-governmental policy actors have little influence on the policymaking process, which is dominated by the central executive (Boda & Patkós, 2018;Hajnal et al, 2018b). Since civil society cannot influence domestic policymaking directly (Bartha et al, 2020), the effect of such actors is conveyed through the media or through international organizations.…”