Parliamentary Affairs Vol. 62 No. 2, 2009, 318– 334
Advance Access Publication 20 January 2009
Political Polarisation and Populism in Contemporary
Hungary1
BY EMILIA PALONEN
ABSTRACT
This article investigates the polarisation that dominates Hungarian politics and
divides the political spectrum into two hegemonic camps. It explores frontier-building in Hungarian politics since 1989 in order to further an understanding of recent
political developments. The aim of this paper is not to discuss the demands of
regular political riots, but to put the problem into its proper context and longerterm perspective. It grasps the logic of polarisation as a bipolar hegemony and a
political tool in postcommunist Hungary, demonstrating how schematic political
identifications and polarisation itself have been constructed. Finally, it considers
some of the problems polarisation poses for democracy.
HUNGARIAN politics seems to be in constant turmoil. The 2006 elections led to a ‘lying Prime Minister’, street riots and an economic crisis.
Yet, the institutionalisation of the parliament has progressed, and postcommunism seemed to develop politicians’ dissidents to professional
politicians.2 However, dissident and anti-parliamentary tactics prevail.
Parliamentary discussions seem far removed from the electorate, which
is motivated to go to the polls and referenda by a political culture that
fosters a black-and-white vision of politics and a revolutionary panache.
A global comparison at the turn of the millennium demonstrated that
disillusionment in democracy is most prevalent among East Europeans.3
In Hungary this feeling of disillusionment has been concretely experienced and fought against: in autumn 2006, a series of riots broke out
after the Hungarian Prime Minister Ferencs Gyurcsány admitted to
having lied to the public. The riots continue on days of public commemoration. This oppositional attitude is a consequence of the kinds of politics and strategies of construction of political identities employed by the
dominant parties to keep themselves in power—or at least a step away
from power: competing populisms or bipolar hegemony.
This knowledge is to supplement the existing studies on political
parties and cleavages in Hungary—even in its regional context.4
András Körösényi distinguished three cleavages in Hungarian politics:
the religious–secular cleavage, the political class or nomenklatura
Parliamentary Affairs Vol. 62 No. 2 # The Author [2009]. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the
Hansard Society for Parliamentary Government; all rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail:
[email protected]
doi: 10.1093/pa/gsn048
Political Polarisation and Populism in Contemporary Hungary
319
cleavage and the urban–rural cleavage.5 However, the cleavages do not
seem to match the frontier between the parties on the so called ‘left’
and ‘right’. As Gil Eyal, studying Czechoslovak break-up in 1990–
1992, demonstrates following Pierre Bourdieu that there are no
pre-given meanings to left or right, nor pre-given political communities,
but these are constructed in the political process itself—and, indeed, as
George Schöpflin has argued that these do not carry similar meanings
in postcommunist Eastern Europe as in the West.6 The existing research
on political polarisation in Hungary has pondered whether there are
‘two Hungarys’, what these two Hungarys might be and even whether
they can be reconciled.7 This article tries to find out how and why
these two Hungarys are constructed.
The aim of this paper is to understand ‘what is going on’ in
Hungary, and to disseminate this knowledge for a better understanding
of what could be going on elsewhere. It is an investigation by an outsider, non-Hungarian frequent visitor and researcher, in the totalising
situation and culture, where political scientists are seen as experts on
party policy, compromised to take sides. As was discussed in the
closing session of the Hungarian Political Science Association (PSA)
annual conference in June 2007, the line between political scientists,
publicists and political actors is blurred. Some political scientists have
held ministerial and MP posts. This is reflected even in the
English-language literature.8 Furthermore, there is a recent trend
among political scientists in Hungary to establish their own firms, to
supplement the existing range of think-tanks that do research on
current politics and whose funding structure and reflections bear a
relation to specific parties.
Instead of merely describing the bipolar situation, this article reveals
its logic in the everyday sense of the word. It also tries its best to stay
outside of the muddles of polarisation itself. The focus is on ideological
context and the processes through which cleavages produce frontiers,
rather than the parties or cleavages themselves. It will serve as the
background for an understanding of anti-parliamentary developments
in Hungary. This article puts forward a concept of polarisation as a
‘bipolar hegemony’, which differs from Sartori’s view of polarisation
as fragmentation or divergence to relevant fields, in order to create a
number of ‘poles’.9 Rather, it draws on the theories of Ernesto Laclau
and Chantal Mouffe. For them hegemony is constructed through the
creation of unity, where it would not be found before, through the
articulation commonality and a political frontier.10 The proposed
concept of bipolar hegemony—gathering differences along a single
frontier that functions as the source of common identification—should
be useful for thinking about the phenomenon of competing populisms
in contexts beyond Hungary.
For reasons discussed below, answering the question of why polarisation occurs in Hungary, this project is not satisfied with the common
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claim of it neither being an eternal Hungarian divide nor one born and
simply inherited in the peasant riots of sixteenth century. Nor does it
suffice to claim that it is a mere postcommunist legacy. Rather, the
article discovers polarisation as a political tool for the postcommunist
elites, while carrying elements and producing illusions of both.
Polarisation as a logic and a tool
The term polarisation has entered the vocabulary of Hungarian politics
during the recent years. From the late 1990s, there has been a steady
division of the political spectrum into two camps that continuously
produce themselves as a political unit through the construction of the
other camp as their counterpart. These are named ‘left’ and ‘right’,
denoting the Socialists and Liberals against the right-wing ‘civic’ camp
and (neo)conservatives, respectively. Since both camps are constructed
around tendentially empty and merely relational concepts of nationhood and the people, the situation could be termed as one of competing populisms, to follow Laclau—and Daniele Albertazzi and Duncan
McDonnell et al. developing on his thought.11
This situation of polarisation cannot be grounded on the mere legacy
of communism with its bipolar world view. Neither can it be attributed
to the already existing and substantive cleavages, which Kitschelt et al.
argue in their study drawing on data from the mid-1990s differ
between the elites and population in Hungary. Referring to fragmentation or unconcentratedness of policy issues by ‘polarisation’, in contrast
to the usage here, Kitchelt et al. worry about the lack of polarisation,
in their terms: ‘Because Polish and Hungarian politicians cannot polarise electoral competition around economic issues in the face of reformist postcommunist parties that embrace essentials of market
capitalism, they have sufficient incentives to construct a single powerful
socio-cultural divide on which to display meaningful programmatic
differences and employ those to attract voters.’ The argument shows,
however, polarisation in our terms is produced at the elite level: the
politicians constantly reproduce the situation of polarisation and
without pluralising or fragmenting electoral competition.12
Zsolt Enyedi has argued that cleavages are often products of political
agency, and can be culturally formed: ‘The isolation between the
groups comes into existence because the socio-structural categories
(denominations, classes, etc.), collective identities, political attitudes
and leadership, strengthening each other, draw a wall between the
groups.’13 Hungarian political parties are not following cleavage lines,
rather they create their own.14 This article deals with the polarisation
in Hungary as a self-imposed cleavage which has specific contents
assigned to it at times, but these contents vary. What remains is the
form of polarisation, which in itself offers the tool for political
differentiation.
Political Polarisation and Populism in Contemporary Hungary
321
In fact, polarisation is a political tool—articulated to demarcate
frontiers between ‘us’ and ‘them’ and to stake out communities perceived as moral orders. Polarisation is a situation in which two groups
create each other through demarcation of the frontier between them.
The dominant political frontier creates a point of identification and
confrontation in the political system, where consensus is found only
within the political camps themselves. Polarisation is reproduced in all
political and social contexts with an intensity that distinguishes it from
mere two-party politics. It is a totalising system, as it aims to dominate
the existing systems of differences and identities. Similar logic can be
found in other polarised contexts, such as those in the USA or Italy.
The situation constitutes a problem for democracy insofar as democracy is seen as the articulation, combination and promotion of political
values, demands and preferences that direct policies and seek to find a
ground beyond the political elites, not mere regular elections.15
The Hungarian party system and the beginnings
of polarisation
In Hungarian politics, fragmentation or extreme differentiation after
the ‘revolution’ of 1989/1990 contributed to the need to create again a
positive, motivating and engaging feeling of unity in politics. The
heightened sense of ‘us’ and ‘them’, the denial of the legitimacy of the
‘other’ and the necessity of strong ties between the members of the us
to form a single community (as opposed to a pluralist network of
different interlinked communities) is part of the legacy of the previous
totalitarian era’s black-and-white positioning. This was combined with
a complex electoral system designed in the round-table talks with the
democratic opposition and the power-holders, and—when used
towards this aim—enables large parties to claim prominence through a
list of elements, high regional threshold and regional constituencies:
majoritarian elements dominate proportional ones. The elections take
two rounds, first in single-member constituencies, where if no one
gains 50 per cent of the vote there will be a second round, and second
in multi-member regional ones on a vote list. A system of top-up seats
ensures that the votes cast in single-member constituencies would not
be wasted: votes that were not cast to the winner of the constituency
get recycled. There is a threshold of 5 per cent, but the real threshold is
often higher.16 The electoral system gives an asset to large units and
coalitions.
Polarisations left and right have strongly announced significations:
‘Left’ refers to the Socialist Party (MSZP), which fosters liberal economic policies (as social democrats in most European countries), and to
the value (e.g. human rights) and economically liberal Free Democrats
(SZDSZ). ‘Right’ refers to the moderate and radical nationalist and
‘conservative’ parties— in terms of traditional values of religion,
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morality and ethno-nationalism (the Hungarian Democratic Forum,
MDF; Fidesz and the radical nationalist MIÉP and Jobbik). In the
2006 electoral campaign, the main centre-right party, Fidesz, had most
etatist-economic policies, whereas MDF and the liberals supported neoliberalism. Instead of conventional notions, the left and right are ‘based
primarily on attitudes towards the Hungarian nation’ in a rather precommunist fashion.17 The Hungarian ‘right’ argued to be defending
the nation and national values, the extreme right being anti-Western
and isolationist, and the ‘left’ is seen as socialist, internationalist, cosmopolitan and anti-nation, at best civic in its outlook regarding the
nation. The discursive divide provided at least an illusion of ideological
substance and a claim to differentiation, as each accused the other side
of being too national or too cosmopolitan.
Often the two sides in Hungary are signified as the urbanist and the
national–populist sides (urbánusok and népiek), following a distinction
made within the dissident groups in the 1980s, but with roots in the
interwar period, particularly Hungarian literary tradition and canons,
and even in the Hungarian peasant revolts of the sixteenth century and
anti-Habsburg riots of the seventeenth century.18 This however, is an
essentialist claim that wants to restore an illusion of grounds for this
difference. Broadly speaking, all major parties in Hungary make reference to the nation, maintain a sense of community and foster liberal
economic policies. Curiously, the electorate of each of the Hungarian
parties seems to have similar understandings of the national past, and
postcommunist parliamentary debates are still quite heavily focused on
the past.19 Thus, differentiation is found somewhere other than the
actual future-oriented policy debates: it is made through politics of
memory.20
External forces (the Soviets versus the ‘West’) that once functioned
as the ‘constitutive outside’ (a tool for identity-building) no longer exist
for mainstream political parties.21 In internal politics the powerholders versus opposition should have paved the way to multi-party
contestation.22 In Hungary, the two populist coalitions continuously
construct themselves against each other. Avoiding policy preferences,
the parties or camps exist through their common opposition to one
another, with a consequent normative-ideological logic: as you are the
bad ones, we are the good ones. The momentum is maintained through
continuous politicising of notions such as nation, identity, the past and
the ‘people’.
‘Those who are not with us, are against us’
The late 1960s and 1970s saw a transformation in Hungary to goulash
communism and a relative degree of economic prosperity. The political
leader János Kádár transformed the Stalinist slogan ‘those who are not
with us are against us’ into ‘those who are not against us are with
us’.23 The 1980s was a period in which strong dissident movements
Political Polarisation and Populism in Contemporary Hungary
323
were established that were then transformed into political parties. To
limit our study to the parties in the current Hungarian parliament, the
democratic opposition formed SZDSZ, the reform socialists continued
as the Socialist party and the more nationally minded dissidents formed
MDF. Fidesz became the anti-system, anti-establishment youth party,
whose membership was first restricted to those under 35 years.
Nevertheless, the Hungarian transition, or as the Hungarians prefer
to call it—the ‘change of system’ (rendszerváltás), was a moment of
national unity in the wake of the confrontation between power-holders
and dissidents under state socialism. All sides sat at the round-table
and negotiated a common future, a moment of recognising that ‘we are
the people’ or ‘the nation’, in an inclusive rather than exclusive
manner. Mass movements emerged around reburial of Imre Nagy, the
leader of the failed 1956 revolution, now acknowledged as a national
fight for independence, in contrast to the ‘counterrevolutionary’ status
it had had under the Soviet loyalist reform communist János Kádár.24
The unity was soon lost. The first Hungarian government ultimately
considered Nagy and the revolution reformist–communist and consequently not of national value.25 The search for new uniting forces led
to a situation of polarisation in which two political units emerged. The
Stalinist mode of confrontation resurfaced.
When the Hungarian party identifications were being formed in
1990s, the rhetorical strategy of Hungary’s first postcommunist Prime
Minister József Antall of MDF was to construct political identities and
coalitions with clear-cut borders, a practice that harmonises with the
strategies of the communist era.26 Differences between the regime and
the dissidents were articulated and identified, at least at the rhetorical
level, though in reality they were often blurred. Hungarian politics was
not polarised from the start. In fact, many issues and events broke with
the existing distinctions or created new political frontiers, for instance
the Taxi Blockade as a protest against raising petrol prices in the early
1990s.27 Nevertheless, the search for fixed political frontiers or cleavages contributed to a full-scale polarisation of Hungarian politics by
the late 1990s or early 2000s. Polarisation offered both camps or
parties an illusion of the stability of political identities. The political
elites articulated the political frontier between the ‘left’ and ‘right’ in
their rhetoric, often claiming merely to represent a traditional
Hungarian political divide, by way of political strategy.
An emphasis on nationhood was taken up by the conservative government (between 1990 and 1994) and the extreme right. The dividing
line in Hungary is often located in the 1994 elections, when the ‘liberal
pole’ disappeared: the ‘right-wing’ liberal Fidesz joined the conservative
national camp and the left-liberal SZDSZ became a coalition partner
of the victorious Socialist party. Both ‘left’ parties arguably had common
roots. The leading intellectuals from both parties signed the Hungarian
Democratic Charter in September 1991 as a ‘counter-offensive against
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the authoritarian and racist tendencies of the right-wing government’,
an oppositional action in which Fidesz, notably, did not participate.28
The two parties also projected a common vision based on liberal
economic policy. Members of the SZDSZ had been steering the
Kádárist regime of the 1980s towards a Thatcherite and in the MSZP
governments a Blairite economic policy, rather than a policy based on
a social democratic model. From 1994 to 1998 and 2002 to 2008,
economic cooperation between the Socialists and the Free Democrats
was enhanced in the national government.
Intensifying polarisation 2002 –present
Although common features can be found on both sides, it is notable
that the polarisation itself exists not as much through the articulation
of these features but through the rejection of the other camp. This is
palpable in the negative campaigning at the time of the general elections as well as between elections. Seen in retrospect, polarisation in
Hungary took the most visible and concrete form at the time of the
elections of 2002.29 The election spring was marked by the drastic
character of the opposition between the two-party blocs (through negative campaigning), as well as the emergence of polarised politics in
everyday praxis. Ordinary citizens had to take sides in various realms
of everyday life, from hobbies and pastimes to the workplace and
family discussions.30 A prime example of this in 2002 was the
kokárda, a cockade worn widely around 15 March to commemorate
the revolution of 1848. The national symbol was fully monopolised by
the right-wing: anyone not wearing it was seen as a supporter of the
left. In polarisation there is no middle ground. One has to choose
sides. The political opponent is turned into an enemy, with an illegitimate and threatening position.31
The political slogans followed the pattern of competing populisms:
‘Forward Hungary’ and ‘The future has started’ were the key slogans for
Fidesz, which also brought forward a civic/citizen/bourgeois polgári
ideology. This key term managed to gather connotations including a
sense of excellence and achievement, critique of the transition and
national elements with a more progressive western-oriented twist of conservatism.32 It was anti-communist and against a lack of excellence. It
played with a notion of civicness that differed from that of MSZP, who
focused on ‘Hungary’. They sought to reclaim the nation as those living
within the borders of Hungary, some 10 million Hungarians citizens, as
opposed to the cultural nation consisting of some 15 million ethnic
Hungarians living both in Hungary and in the region outside its borders.
The situation changed a little in 2006, as Fidesz, now part of the
opposition, made reference to normal people emberek instead of
relying on polgári or ethnic Hungarian notions. The habitus of the
Fidesz leader Orbán changed. Once in the opposition he changed his
managerial look to that of a man from the countryside. The Elite was
Political Polarisation and Populism in Contemporary Hungary
325
now represented by those in power, and they had to be opposed in a
manner quite similar to the strategy the Socialists had employed in
their rhetoric four years earlier. For the Socialists ‘New Hungary’
became the work they had started and also wanted to continue. The
Hungarian Socialist party’s image was a combination of a party for the
‘normal people’ and party of ‘public managers’, drawing on the status
during the socialism of an elite of professional politicians. In the meantime in both elections negative campaigning centred around arguments
that one side was nationalist and the other opposed to the nation.
Similarly, both sides argued that the other focused only on accumulating wealth in the hands of a certain elite, while they fought the corrupt
establishment as the other side using anti-elite rhetoric.33
To some extent the general elections in 2006 demonstrated a temporary break in polarisation in Hungarian politics. The Socialists (winning
42/43 per cent in the first round and 47 per cent in the second) and
their junior coalition partner, the SZDSZ (which won 7 and 3 per cent
in the first and second rounds, respectively), emerged the victors in the
elections, defeating Fidesz (44 and 47 per cent in the first and second
rounds, respectively) and the MDF, which received 5 per cent of the
vote on the first round turning it into a surprise success in the elections.
The turnout was 62 per cent in the first round and 64 per cent in the
second. Despite the negative campaigning by all parties and strong
‘coalition’ and ‘opposition’ identifications, questions of policy became
slightly more prominent than they had been before.34
Similarly, journalists, publicists and political scientists have been supporting polarisation because of its simplified and exciting match-like
character, and were reluctant to engage with actual policy issues or
multiple and varied identifications. Nevertheless, a breaking moment
for polarisation in the 2006 election was the four-party TV-debate on
the state channel two days before the elections. It followed the debate
of the previous night with the leaders of the two main parties, in
which Socialist PM Ferenc Gyurcsányi defeated Viktor Orbán by challenging his position on the basis of his previous arguments.35 Fidesz
had gone far in its ideological rearticulation, turning from a radical
liberal party into a national conservative one and then to a centrist
populist one. Orbán, Gyurcsány, the liberal Gábor Kuncze and the
MDF leader Ibolya Dávid participated in the four-leader debate. Dávid
was clear and concise. The aim of the debate was to tease out policy
differences, and finally one by one the parties had to reveal what they
supported—not simply what or whom they opposed. Dávid became
one of the icons of the elections, successfully confronting Orbán’s and
Fidesz’s increasingly populist policies. She argued that the MDF is a
neo-conservative party, and following the elections promoted the establishment of a ‘new’ right-wing.36 Fidesz had been openly against the
MDF’s success and for a wide centre-right party, but it needed MDF’s
support in the second round of the elections.
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Defying pre-election polls, the elections brought in a multi-party
parliament. Even traditional supporters of the large parties voted for
one of the two small parties. Also many MDF supporters had been
voting for the Socialists in those constituencies in which the MDF
candidate had stepped down. Traditionally, this constituted something
of an unholy alliance. Part of the MDF’s success was due to a
campaign run by the Political Capital think-tank, arguably promoting
Thatcherite politics in Hungary that could have provided a link between
the Blairite Gyurcsányi’s Socialists and Dávid’s ‘neo-conservative’
MDF.37 Yet the link could also be found in the reformist but rather
conservative attitude of both parties.38 Polarisation requires consensus
on both sides of the main frontier, there is little space for diversity.
This was now broken on the side of the Hungarian right. Later,
half-way through the parliamentary season, the coalition government
of the Socialists and the Liberals was to break.
Recent products and problems of polarisation
After the elections, Hungarian politics fell into turmoil. First the news
broke out in June that the economic situation in Hungary was worse
than what the PM and the Finance Minister had claimed before the
elections, and a new financial program consisting of tough measures
was proposed by the parliament.39 On 26 May the PM spoke to the
party crowd using strong language and admitting in a self-critique of
the party that ‘we lied morning, noon and night’.40 A close reading of
the speech would indicate that his intention was to legitimate new policies and reforms. Election promises could not be kept. The party
crowd was the obvious first point of contact for the millionaire party
leader to project a new era in the rhetorical style that combined of
popular speech and swearwords. The PM admitted to having lied to
keep the party in power, which was sensible for the audience considering the all-or-nothing conditions of political polarisation. The PM
admitted to having lied in order to maintain the status quo until the
elections, but now he wanted reforms. Judging by the economic situation and the election promises, it is clear that the reforms would have
been too hard to legitimate without revealing how bad the economic
situation was. Gyurcsány was making a virtue out of his lie and a distinction between his government and that of the previous Socialist government of Péter Medgyessy (PM 2002–05), from whom he had taken
over shortly before the elections.
The speech was leaked on 18 September, first by the Hungarian state
radio and then throughout the Hungarian media. As it was impossible
to access the audio file on many internet sites because of high demand,
transcripts were offered. Demonstrations were called in front of the
parliament calling for the resignation of the lying PM. Nights of riots
followed. The premier argued to the media that, in fact, it was not he
but the whole political elite that had been lying, promising prosperity
Political Polarisation and Populism in Contemporary Hungary
327
and avoiding reforms, and he was the first one who had been brave
enough to admit his mistakes and would therefore not resign.41
As sentiments of dissatisfaction remained, the political opposition
planned extra-parliamentary constitutional reforms. On 1 October, the
Hungarian president asked the Socialist PM to proceed for a vote of
confidence in the Parliament. In the vote on 6 October Gyurcsány
finally apologised publicly, and with the backing of his own party and
the junior coalition partner SZDSZ won the vote of confidence (207
MPs voting for and 165 against). The PM would stay in power with a
reform agenda. In the meantime some 50,000 demonstrators called by
the opposition leader Orbán were waving Hungarian flags outside the
parliament. The storm was nevertheless not over. The official commemoration of the revolution of 1956 was hijacked by rioting
Hungarians on 23 October 2006. It offered an occasion for the continuous display of the bipolar situation—political differentiation that
had been articulated in the early 1990s through the interpretation of
the 1956 revolution as a ‘democratic’ or a ‘mere reform communist’
event. The same event was repeated a year later.
The usage of the ‘Hungarian card’ and the mass-mobilisation by the
right is nothing new. This was already a familiar pattern in a situation
in which the opposition has for years kept large sections of population
mobilised by turning the power-holding political elite into an enemy.
In addition to creating a strong picture of the enemy, both camps of
the political elite have been overly confident about the Hungarian
economy and the possibilities that the country would offer to anyone
who would be ready to vote for them, covering over the points of
hypocracy from the black-market to ‘voluntary service charges’ or
‘gifts’ at hospitals and schools. The PM had shaken the country, not
only by revealing the actual state of the economy but also by going
against the traditional tactic of addressing the opposite side as liers.
The emperor was revealed to be without cloths and fantasies were shattered. The political leader, as the uniting father-figure of the left, lost
much of his esteem. By calling everyone in the political elite a liar, he
also broke the frontier of polarisation that had been structuring political identifications in Hungary.
Nevertheless, the system of polarisation did not collapse. Viktor
Orbán and the Hungarian right were quick to respond to the situation
and reconstruct the frontier. Furthermore, the situation of polarisation
was maintained on the left, where, because of the tight confrontation
by the right, there was no space for internal critique and real contestation of Gyurcsány’s position.42 It was difficult for the Socialists and
the Liberals to agree on a common candidate. This was demonstrated
in the presidential elections in summer 2005, when the two parties did
disagree on that point and the opposition candidate László Sólyom
won the post of President of the Republic. Had the PM lost the vote of
confidence, the Fidesz-backed president would have had the power to
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nominate another candidate to form a government and enjoy the
backing of the parliament. If unsuccessful, the parliament could have
been dissolved and new elections called. This scenario was precisely
what the Hungarian right wanted. After all in local elections on 1
October, Fidesz, which had been leading in the polls from June, gained
50 per cent or more in all the 11 regions apart from Budapest.43 In a
tight situation they could have secured a victory in national elections.
The case of Gyurcsány demonstrates how the situation of polarisation eliminates space for internal critique, and again shows how political leaders—in this case both the PM and Viktor Orbán—can use it
to their advantage. The questions of the nature of the reforms and the
tactics through which the aching economy in Hungary should be
healed were left unanswered. After the incident, the Socialist party
launched a discussion of its own character. Focus on values, policies
and common grounds would offer a useful means of contesting the
situation of polarisation, in which the discourses of the parties are primarily constructed in a negative fashion—through the opposition of
the political other, the counterpart.
Finally, in 2008, the drift on the left about economic policy led to a
break-up of the government. The liberal party that left the coalition
faced a crisis: the leadership fight polarised the party between economic and social liberalism. The previous party leader János Kóka, who
had been advocating neo-liberal policies, remained for the time being
the head of the parliamentary faction, partly as an attempt not to
break the unity of the party. The new leader, Gábor Fodor, one time
room mate of Viktor Orbán and member of the inner core of the
Fidesz, left the party in late 1993, when he lost the power contest to
Viktor Orbán and his turn towards a more populist nationalist line.44
His appearance and quote on the SZDSZ party website captured the
ethos of polarisation: ‘We need to forget that parties are for themselves. We represent the citizens ( polgár) of a nation, with national
interests, and according to European traditions.’ Fodor was rejecting
the usual accusation levelled at the SZDSZ of being anti-national,
elitist, intellectual and cosmopolitan. Yet, by negating the frontier, he
reaffirmed that such an imagined divide existed.45
Anti-parliamentary tactics
Do personalist style of elections lead towards an authoritarian governance? asked the András Körösényi recently in the Hungarian PSA’s
journal.46 Political polarisation produces strong leaders due to the lack
of contestation from within the party or coalition. They in turn secure
their position by strengthening the polarisation. This has been the main
rhetorical strategy of Viktor Orbán, a key politician in postcommunist
Hungary, the leader of the Fidesz party and in 1998–2002 the
Hungarian PM.47 The black-and-white positioning was Orbán’s
strength from the beginning of his sky-rocketing political career as the
Political Polarisation and Populism in Contemporary Hungary
329
key figure of Fidesz in 1989. Orbán as an innovative ideologist—to
follow Quentin Skinner’s terminology48—has been transforming his
party from the position of the anti-elitist anti-communist youth party
in the early 1990s to the leading national centre-right party since 1993
to the European progressive nationally minded civic party in 1998–
2002, to the etatist-conservative force from 2006. He has been always
able to reposition the party and rearticulate the core values, generally
keeping and even increasing the number of supporters. As PM, Orbán
ruled as his Italian counterpart Silvio Berlusconi, with esteem and in
confrontation only with the enemy; once in opposition in 2002, he
hardly visited the Parliament.49 Brought up in dissident Hungary and
having made his first success by rapidly gaining a mass support for a
student alternative initiative, turning it into a mass party, he chose to
work outside the parliament. The civic initiatives that were proposed
were against the elite and the power-holders—where the elite he
opposed could also be understood as the inheritors of state socialism.
Orbán himself was young enough to disassociate himself from the
democratic opposition, the alter-elite of the socialist system, that had
been teaching and supporting him in the late 1980s, the SZDSZ-bound
intellectuals.
In the parliament, the investigation committees that had been used
for monitoring and rapports have not been used much since the Fidesz
term in office 1998–2002, as there is a disagreement between the
opposition on the membership of these committees. From the parliamentary the consultation has moved to the field. Especially after 2002
a number of civic initiatives were created. Many of them claimed to be
independent from the parties, but contained a propagandist antigovernment rhetoric similar to that of Fidesz and were openly supported by Orbán and Fidesz. The rallying and gathering of names for
the referendum on the right of citizenship to the ethnic Hungarians in
the near areas of Hungary (and by extension by the Workers Party, the
privatisation of hospitals) took place in December 2004. The National
Consultation of 2005 sought to reveal how badly things are in
Hungary. The Village parliaments programme was to strengthen the
Fidesz power in villages and create an anti-government sentiment, rallying on the point of the Hungarian left being cosmopolitan,
Budapest-bound. The referendum on the payment of visits to the
doctor, university fees and hospital fees in 2008 brought success to the
parliamentary opposition.
The referendum in 2004 failed to get a large enough turn out and to
secure a win for either of the issues. It demonstrated a lack of interest
in the ‘national question’, but a more weight on the question of privatisation. Fidesz wanted to expand the rights to citizenship, in a move to
increase the number of its own potential voters and to spend public
funds outside the country’s borders, if one were to believe the
Hungarian left. The Hungarian right in contrast accused the left for
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being populist and selfish, not wanting to share the wealth of the
nation with those they saw as culturally belonging to it. The referendum in March 2008 was successful: half of the eligible voters voted,
with 41–42 per cent of the eligible voters agreeing with the cases
related to the maintenance of the free health and education system.
After the referendum opposing government policy, the ruling Socialists
made bold promises on the health system and pensions, which in turn
led to the liberal coalition partner to withdraw from the government.
And yet in turn the right had a reason to criticise the left of populist
overspending.
‘When an adversary promises to crack down on crime or lower taxes
and yet increase spending on public services, it is ‘populist’. When
one’s own side does so, it is dealing with country’s problems.’50 In a
similar way, as the right was creating a demonising image of the left,
the Hungarian left has been accusing the right of being elitist, feudalist,
nationalists, expansionists, anti-semitists and xenophobes as well as
populist. They are suspicious of the right not efficient enough of economic policy and of spending state money on national symbols and
ethnic minority abroad. Increasingly in the period from 2002, when
Fidesz has been in opposition, their rhetoric has become increasingly
anti-elitist, choosing to represent the general ethnic Hungarianness,
whereas while in power they emphasised polgári qualities, which contained a certain proudly Hungarian western-oriented sense of excellence. Particularly in 2002, the contestation was between two
coalitions that both claimed expertise, two alternative elites that saw it
from an anti-elitist point of view. Two sides claim the other for being a
populist and an elitist in turn.
Competing populisms
A recent understanding of populism disassociates it from ‘specific
social bases, economic programmes, issues and electorates’. Daniele
Albertazzi and Duncan McDonnell defined populism as ‘an ideology
which pits a virtuous and homogeneous people against a set of elites
and dangerous ‘others’ who are together depicted as depriving (or
attempting to deprive) the sovereign people of their rights, values, prosperity, identity and voice.’51 They define ‘ideology’ in William’s terms
as ‘a set of beliefs’, similarly as Laclau, whose work they also draw on.
In this sense, already, the above account shows how there is clearly a
contestation populism. Usually, but not exclusively, populism is attributed to small radical parties, which often rally on nationhood and antielitism, and are very successful in using media in order to put their
message through. Alternatively, one of the main parties is seen as a
populist. In Hungary there are two.
‘The populist leader promises solutions, but, above all, clearly identifies the enemies (the scapegoats), attributes responsibilities and offers
assurance.’52 Both the sides profess this rhetoric. People and elite can
Political Polarisation and Populism in Contemporary Hungary
331
be argued to mean almost anything. Populism is a hegemonic formation
where a party or a coalition of parties has a discursive content based on
concepts so overburdened with signification that their specific meaning
is lost on the one hand, yet the integrity of the party is maintained by
the production of a strong maximum representation of difference to the
other through a political frontier.53 This frontier maintains the identity
of both groups. Therefore it is also important for each of them.
They profess black-and-white rhetoric on the people and the elite,
the tendential empty stances on values and policies and a stark
confrontation with the political adversary.
Mény and Surel argue that three political conditions are decisive for
contemporary populism: the crisis of the structures of political intermediation, the personalisation of political power and the increasing role of
the media in political life.54 These elements are strongly present, in
Hungary where there is at least an illusion of a permanent crisis in the
political structures, politics is personalised around key political leaders,
and the media plays a crucial role in the reproduction of political polarisation. But how does political polarisation in Hungary differ from other
societies where equal facts can be true? Pasquino insists on investigating
the extent of these developments and their connections. The other conclusion to draw is that mainstream populism and even compering populisms are a (future) development in more established democracies.
When Chantal Mouffe studied Austrian politics, she did not simply
focus on the emergence of Jöerg Haider’s FPÖ as the populist force.
Rather, she was interested in the dynamics between the two established
parties in Austria.55 Mouffe discovered how the two parties had such
an agreement for power-sharing, that underneath the superficial conflict there was a de facto consensus about what was going on.56
Austrians identified politically with the cultural concept of the party
beyond any substantive or policy-content, yet was based on the idea of
a friendly—perhaps misinformed—enemy. Haider contested what
could be said in public and the range of existing references.
Postcommunist politics in Hungary are politics of a bipolar hegemony and competing populism. A ‘hegemonic formation’ fixes a
maximum amount of meanings together or blocks them out of it.57 In
the political rhetoric identities, symbols and history carry meanings for
the two poles. The two camps of the bipolar hegemony sustain themselves through their opposition to one another rather than through
their content. Polarisation can be seen as a system of dual consensus,
reproducing the typical problems of consensus. Political polarisation
was contested in Hungary in 2006, when four parties were voted into
the parliament, contradicting the trend in the last decade towards a
two-party parliament. Later events in autumn 2006, however, showed
that polarisation exists despite some moments of contestation through
its continuous rearticulation as a means of constructing political identities and differences.
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Polarisation solves the initial problem of fragmentation, lack of
unity, by instituting a frontier that sustains two communities as a
bipolar hegemony. It requires constant rearticulation and, therefore,
constant antagonism on that frontier, since new cleavages or demands
would otherwise emerge that would distort the situation of polarisation. Consequently, to maintain polarisation, any new cleavages or
demands must be articulated into the existing system. By stagnating the
political articulation of demands, by prioritising one frontier over the
others, polarisation creates consensus on the two sides of the frontier.
As Mouffe argues consensus produces problems to democracy, understood as open-ended contestation in a political forum not mere electoral choice. It merely fixes the contestation between two poles
without letting any room for questioning the positions themselves or
debating policy-content. Similar to the one-party system or consensus,
polarisation and bipolar hegemony bracket out less important demands
and maintain an illusion of unity, rejecting anything that might shake
internal cohesion.
In Hungary, institutional factors and historical legacies contributed
to the problematic. Attempts to question the divide or establish a third
force against both of these camps merely reaffirmed the situation of
polarisation. Polarisation allows the political elite to create their identifications without focus on or popular control of the contents of their
discourses, values and policies, or the conflicting demands of the population. This is why it persists in Hungary.
University of Jyväskylä
Finland
[email protected]
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I would like to thank Ernesto Laclau, Sarah Birch, Aron Buzogány, Ivan Krastev and Marci Shore, as
well as the four anonymous referees at Parliamentary Affairs for their comments on earlier versions
of this paper. My warm thanks also go to Jason Glynos, Aletta Norval, Heino Nyyssönen, János
M. Kovács, Márton Szabó and Árpád Szakolczai for their comments on my work, as well as to
George Schöpflin for inspiration from the start. Support from the Körber Foundation, Hamburg, a
Junior Fellowship ‘History and Memory in Europe’ at the IWM, Vienna and Junior Fellowship from
the Collegium Budapest, as well as the Academy of Finland project ‘Nations and their others: Finns
and Hungarians since 1900’ have enabled me to pursue this project in 2005 –2006 and 2008.
U. Korkut, ‘The 2006 Hungarian Election: Economic Competitiveness versus Social Solidarity’,
Parliamentary Affairs, 60, 2007, 675 –90; C. Chiva, ‘The Institutionalisation of Post-Communist
Parliaments: Hungary and Romania in Comparative Perspective’, Parliamentary Affairs, 60, 2007,
187 –211; B.I. Tamas, From Dissident to Party Politics: The Struggle for Democracy in
Post-Communist Hungary, 1989 –1994, Columbia University Press, 2007.
Gallup Millennium Survey 1999, http://www.gallup-international.com/ContentFiles/millennium5.asp
The left parties have been studied usefully by Grzymała-Busse; and the centre-right parties by Hanley
et al. S. Hanley et al., ‘Sticking Together Explaining Comparative Centre-Right Party Success in
Post-Communist Central and Eastern Europe’, Party Politics, 14, 2008, 407 –34; A. Grzymała-Busse,
Redeeming the Communist Past: the Regeneration of Communist Parties in East-Central Europe,
Cambridge University Press, 2002.
A. Körösényi, Government and Politics in Hungary, CEU Press, 1999.
G. Eyal, ‘The Making and Breaking of the Czechoslovak Political Field’ in L. Wacquant (ed.), Pierre
Bourdieu and Democratic Politics:the Mystery of Ministry, Polity Press, 2005, pp. 151 –77;
G. Schöpflin, Politics in Eastern Europe, 1945 –1992, Blackwell, 1993.
Political Polarisation and Populism in Contemporary Hungary
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Z. Enyedi et al., Két Magyarország? Osiris, 2005.
For instance, the ideology and practices of the Hungarian Socialists have been covered mainly by
András Bozóki—a minister of Cultural Heritage under the first Gyurcsány government of the
Socialists. The main English-language works on Fidesz are by the UK-based scholars George
Schöpflin and Brigid Fowler, a Fidesz MEP and his parliamentary advisor.
This is opposed to Sartori’s usage of ‘polarisation’ but of ‘centre-fleeing’: in Hungary the two poles
do push each other away, but while doing so they remain by the frontier, leaving little ‘ideological
distance’ between them and competing over the same signifiers. It resembles a bi-partite political
system, but—crucially—there are more than two parties involved; G.. Sartori, Parties and Party
Systems, vol. 1, Cambridge University Press, 1976, esp. 98 –130 and 273 – 93.
E. Laclau and C. Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, Verso, 1985; E. Laclau, On Populist
Reason, Verso, 2005.
Laclau, op. cit., n. 10; D. Albertazzi and D. McDonnel, Twenty-First Century Populism; the Spectre
of Western European Democracy, Palgrave, 2008.
H. Kitschelt et al., Post-Communist Party Systems: Competition, Representation, and Inter-Party
Cooperation, Cambridge University Press, 1999, p. 267.
Z. Enyedi, ‘A voluntarizmus tere. A pártok szerepe a törésvonalak kialakulásában’, Századvég, 9,
2004, 3– 27, 6.
Tamas, op. cit., n. 2.
Chantal Mouffe has been influential in demonstrating some of the problems in narrow understandings
of democracy; C. Mouffe, Democratic Paradox, Verso, 2000.
Hanley et al., op. cit., n. 4; B. Fowler, ‘ESRC “One Europe or Several?” Programme Briefing Note
2/02’, 2002. http://www.one-europe.ac.uk/pdf/bn2-02fowler.pdf; F. Millard, ‘Hungary: Politics of
Negotiated Design’ in Sarah Birch et al. (eds), Embodying Democracy: Electoral System Design in
Post-Communist Europe, Palgrave-Macmillan, 2002, pp. 48 –66.
Hanley et al., op. cit., n. 4.
T. Fricz, A népi urbánus vita tegnap és ma, Napvilág, 1997; J.M. Kovács, ‘Uncertain Ghosts:
Populists and Urbans in Postcommunist Hungary’ in Berger and L. Peter (eds), The Limits of Social
Cohesion; Conflict and Mediation in Pluralist Societies: A Report of the Bertelsmann Foundation to
the Club of Rome, Westview Press, 1998, pp. 113 –45; M. Szegedy-Maszák, Irodalmi Kánonok,
Csokonai Press, 1998; Tamas, op. cit., n. 2.
This is shown by Mária Vásárhelyi’s survey study. Anna Grzymala-Busse writes about the ‘usable
pasts’, which are brought into post-1989 politics; these are used for political differentiation. This idea
is echoed in the literature on Hungarian politics. M. Vásárhely, Csalóka emlékezet, A 20. század
történelme a magyar közgoldolkodásban, Kalligram, 2008.
Grzymala-Busse, op .cit., n. 19; H. Nyyssönen, Presence of the Past in Politics; ‘1956’ in Hungary
after 1956, SoPhi, 1999; E. Palonen, ‘Constructing Communities: Politics of the Postcommunist
City-Text of Budapest’, Tr@nsit Online, 34, 2006, http://www.iwm.at/index.php?option=
com_content&task=view&id=416&Itemid=516; E. Palonen, ‘The City-Text in Post-Communist
Budapest: Street Names, Memorials and the Politics of Commemoration’, GeoJournal, 2008, 73,
219 –30.
P.L. Berger (ed.), The Limits of Social Cohesion; Conflict and Mediation in Pluralist Societies.
A Report of the Bertelsmann Foundation to the Club of Rome, Westview Press, 1998.
Already in the mid-1990s, Raimo Väyrynen discussed the emergence both of multi-polarity and of
political volatility and populism in domestic politics after the ‘erosion of bipolarity in international
relations’; R. Väyrynen, ‘Review Essay: Bi-polarity, Multipolarity, and Domestic Political Systems’,
Journal of Peace Research, 32, 1995, 361 –71.
L. Andor, Hungary on the Road to the European Union: Transition in Blue, Praeger, 2000, p. 7.
K. Benziger, ‘The Funeral of Imre Nagy: Contested History and the Power of Memory Culture’,
History & Memory, 12, 2000, 142 – 64; Nyyssönen, op. cit., n. 20.
Benziger, op. cit., n. 24; Palonen, op. cit., n. 20.
It followed the Schmittian dichotomy of ‘naturally associated parties’ and ‘unnatural connections’ in
his government. L. Lengyel, Pártházból palotába, Helikon, 1998, 13.
M. Szabó, Tarsadalmi mozgalmak és politikai tiltakozás, Rejtjel, 2001.
Andor, op. cit., n. 23, p. 51.
Since it has been carefully studied by a number of Hungarian scholars in the fields of both politics
and sociology, for example, M. Sükös and M. Vásárhelyi (eds), Hol a határ? Kampágnystratégiák és
a kampányetika, 2002. Élet és Irodalom, 2002; S. Kurtán et al. (eds), Magyarország politikai
évkönyve 2003, Demokrácia kutatások magyar központja, 2003.
Fowler, op. cit., n. 16.
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C. Tóth and G. Török, Politika és kommunikáció, A magyar politikai napirend témai a 2002-es
választások elõtt, Századvég, 2002.
Hanley et al., op. cit., n. 4, p. 428.
Hanley et al. make this claim about the centre-right in Hungary and Czech Republic, but it was
equally true of the left in Hungary. In other words, it has been a strategy of the centrist parties on
both sides; Hanley et al., op. cit., n. 4, p. 429.
See for example Korkut, op. cit., n. 2.
Magyar television 6 and 7 April 2006. The press reported, though, that the ‘experts’ thought that the
‘event’ was boring, not to repeat (e.g. Népszava 8 April 2006).
Dávid Ibólya, ‘Dávid Ibolya országgyú´lési választásokat értékeló´ beszéde 2006. május 13-án, az MDF
Országos Választmányi ülésén’, 13 May 2006, http://www.davidibolya.hu/fooldal/cikk/cikk.
phtml?cikkid=4508&rovatid=15
Magyar Narancs, 25 May 2006.
Tamás finds this link already looking at the 1980s. Tamas, op. cit., n. 2.
15 June 2006 MTI archive.
Gyurcsány, Balatonoszod, 26 May 2006, MTI archive.
For example Mark Mardell, BBC Europe, 21 September 2006.
Although in 2006 before the local elections on 1 October and even the general elections in April, one
of the MSZP veterans, József Sipos, was contesting the ‘new, liberal reforms’ that Gyurcsányi government was putting forward. He was ousted from the party. HVG 14 October 2006, p. 8; 21 October
2006, p. 114.
For example Szonda Ipsos, http://www.szondaipsos.hu/en/polvelkut/partok
Tamas, op. cit., n. 2, pp. 86, 161.
Similar to a previous party leader Demszky; E. Palonen, ‘Articulating the Frontier in Hungarian
Politics: Budapest Mayor Demszky on 15 March’, Central European Political Science Review, 2006,
20, 140 –65.
Article published in the Hungarian Political Science Association’s journal; A. Körösény, A demokratikus elitizmus konszenzusán túl, Polikatudományi Szemle, 4, 2007, 7 –28.
E. Palonen, ‘Fidesz diskurzus és Budapest: Határteremtés és térfoglalás’, trans. Z.G. Szú´cs and G. Pál,
in M. Szabó (ed.), Fideszvalóság. l’Harmattan, 2006, 13 –39; B. Fowler, ‘Concentrated Orange:
Fidesz and the Remaking of the Hungarian Centre-Right, 1994 –2002’, Journal of Communist
Studies & Transition Politics, 3, 2004, 80– 114.
Q. Skinner, Visions of Politics, Vol. 1, Regarding method, Cambridge University Press, 2002.
According to the Hungarian parliament’s web pages, Viktor Orbán, as the leader of Fidesz, but an
oppositional politician, made eight interventions during 2002 –2006, while he had in two years alone
after 2006 made 12 of them. As a PM during 1998 – 2002, Orbán boasted 166 interventions, demonstrating the focus outside the parliament ever since in opposition; Dr Orbán Viktor, http://www.parlament.hu/internet/plsql/ogy_kpv.kepv_adat?p_azon=o320&p_ckl=38
D. Albertazzi and D. McDonnel, ‘Introduction: The Spectre and the Spectre’ in Albertazzi and
McDonnel (eds), op. cit., n. 11, p. 2.
Ibid., p. 3.
Ibid., p. 25.
Laclau, op. cit., n. 10.
Y. Mény and Y. Sure, Par le peuple, pour le peuple, Librairie Arthème, 2000; also quoted in
Guianfronco Pasquino ‘Populism and Democracy’ in Albertazzi and McDonnel, op. cit., n. 11, p. 26.
C.f. R. Wodak and A. Pelinka, The Haider Phenomenon in Austria, Transaction Publishers, 2002.
Mouffe, op. cit., n. 15.
Laclau and Mouffe, op. cit., n. 10.
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