Lehet Más a Politika (LMP) in Hungary: a viable alternative to the post-communist state-party?

Political parties face many challenges in our contemporary democracies, where their environments have transformed over the last decennia. Generally speaking, after the fall of state socialism in 1989, most political parties in Western Europe have increasingly been affected by a process that could be dubbed ‘consensualization’, or in other words: they generally became less political, and hence less intertwined with what is considered ‘society’, ‘the public’ or ‘the people’. This trend, of dissociation between ‘society’ and ‘party politics’, is empirically perhaps best visible in the general decay of party membership. As the above already suggests, there is much to be said for tracing this development to the implosion of state socialism in the centre and east of Europe (CEE). Indeed, the key problems at stake perhaps still find their most radical expression in the region. The establishment of multi-party democracy ‘from above’ during transition meant that state funding emerged as the prime financial resource for parties. Therefore, in CEE, there has never been much incentive for recruiting members, and the yawning ‘chasm’ between civic society and political elite, already in place during the party-state, continued after 1989 with a series of state-parties. It is currently already more than 10 years ago that Kopecký and Van Biezen described this vicious circle of post-communist state-party dependencies. ‘Because they originate within the state, and are endowed with the key task of reforming the state, they start to build up their role almost exclusively within state institutions. State structures in the post-communist period offer little resistance to party interference, so political parties, or elites associated with them, engage in mostly unsuccessful rentseeking behavior. And finally, because they can extract resources from the state, parties can afford to insulate themselves further from society.’ (Van Biezen and Kopecký 2001; cit. Kopecký 2006, p. 254) Today the situation has not improved much – but the consequences of the situation have become increasingly evident, especially where the 'vicious circle' has had been most detrimental, such as in Hungary. Most such ‘consequences’ are articulated on the populist right, with its typical forms of strong top-down hierarchical intraparty organisation, attractive to the alienated parts of the lower and middle classes. Jobbik is of course the example in Hungary. But in 2010 the country also saw the remarkable rise of LMP, or ‘Politics Can Be Different’. In 2014 LMP again surprised many by winning enough support to cross the threshold, despite internal splits. As part of a PhD research project to green politics in CEE, this paper presents detailed research to LMP’s origins and history, the internal split ahead of 2014, its internal organisational structure, the networks it relies on, its different factions, ideology, membership, levels of participation, and its relation with the European Green Party (EGP). Besides our focus such clear-cut intra-party and institutional features, we also employ new procedures to determine ‘politicality’ in discourse. Our data-set consists of internal party documents, online material, and around 20 in-depth interviews with leading members. Does LMP really present a viable alternative?