Why political parties encourage participatory opportunities? Evidence from Hungary

There is much evidence about the increasing distance between citizens and political parties in representative democracies. Recent studies illustrate that political parties seek to narrow this gap by developing a strong online presence and by supporting a broad range of participatory options for their members and citizenry in general. However, we know little about why some parties pursue this avenue while others do not. This paper aims to explain why parties provide participatory options to citizens. To this end, it focuses on Hungary because the party system is a mix of established and new parties, which allows observing how different types of party organizations enhance participation of their members. At the same time, liberal democracy in the country faced important challenges over the last decade, which polarized parties and segments of society. Our study provides an analytical framework to explain the main reasons to use participation practices. It uses 28 semi-structured interviews with political elites from the parliamentary Hungarian parties. Our results highlight important differences between established and new parties targeted and indicate that the use of participatory practices is driven by a series of ideological values and strategic reasons.