The Structure of Political Competition in Hungary

Has the structure of political competition in Eastern Europe changed over time and adjusted to the structure of political competition in Western Europe? Or is it still distinct and can be characterized by a “reversed” left-right axis? In this article, I focus on the evolution of the Hungarian political competition. The structure of the political competition in Hungary has been rather stable in comparison with other Eastern European countries and is defined by two political camps led by Fidesz respectively by MSZP. Another important feature of the Hungarian political competition is the centrality of cultural issues in comparison with economic issues. Literature has suggested that vote choice in Hungary and elsewhere in Eastern Europe is only weakly rooted in voters’ socio-economic characteristics and rather influenced by voters’ values and ideologies. In this article, I aim to analyse whether and how voters’ economic and cultural values and attitudes drive their support of Fidesz and MSZP. I first analyse how the position of Fidesz and MSZP have changed over time on a general left-right axis based on a computerized content analysis of party manifestos using Wordscore. Next, I study whether voters with economically left and culturally liberal attitudes cast their vote for MSZP and voters with economically right and culturally conservative attitudes opt for Fidesz and how the voter bases of these two parties have changed over time relying on existing Hungarian election studies.