Hungary’s Over-powerful Government Party and the Desperate Opposition

Abstract

This paper focuses on Hungary’s illiberal regimes from the perspective of the opposition – a perspective we believe has been under-scrutinized so far. It argues that in order to understand the regime’s success it is crucial to explain why opposition parties have been unable to offer a credible alternative. The paper argues that the opposition is in a trap with three unfavourable factors mutually strengthening each other and undermining its ability for success. They are (1) the cartel party system; (2) the weak social embeddedness of opposition parties; and (3) lack of their presence in local politics. At the same time, we also point out that the rise of a tiny joke-party’s success (The Hungarian Two-Tailed Dog Party) highlights that these obstacles can be overcome even with very limited resources. Nevertheless, it is still unclear if the Dog Party’s innovative approach to doing politics could be ‘institutionalized’ – i.e. if it offers a feasible model strategy for opposition parties – or it is only an efficient way of mocking and criticizing how the political system operates.

The traditionalism–modernism value conflict in Hungary and Slovakia – a comparative analysis from a longue durée perspective

“…Péter Eszterházy was a renowned Hungarian writer, speaks about the over-politicization of public and private spaces: political ideologies' "natural rules and reflexes predominate everywhere" (Eszterházy 2018). This is close to the thought of political researchers who are also liable to assess negatively the Hungarian "self-overappreciating" or "over-powerful" feature of political ideologies, causing the predominance of parties (partocracy), where public opinion is not capable of constraining the power of politics (Fricz 1998;Susánszky, Unger, and Kopper). 17 The Slovak intelligentsia is also critical towards their political climate.…”