The Potential of Movement Strategies to Shape Governance. A Comparative Case Study of Hungarian Housing Struggles across Neoliberal and Illiberal Regimes

Movement strategy is a prominent area of movement outcomes research. Yet existing frameworks either define strategy as forms of collective action, or distinguish strategies solely by the levels of confrontation or organization. What remains underexplored is how the combination of movements’ orientation to state power and their approach to constituency power jointly shapes outcomes. This paper addresses this gap by developing a 2x2 framework that makes strategy analysis systematic based on these two dimensions. Specifically, it examines how two contrasting strategies – one combining ideological party alignment with a mass base (integrative-representative) and one combining tactical party engagement without a mass base (conflictual-advocative) – influenced the conservative shift in housing governance in Hungary between 1990 and 2024. The research is designed as a comparative case study of two prominent movement organizations, the conservative National Association of Large Families (Nagycsaládosok Országos Egyesülete, NOE) (1987-present), and the leftist The City Is For All (A Város Mindenkié, AVM) (2010-present), using 773 media articles, 364 organizational documents, and four semi-structured interviews. This paper contributes an original 2x2 typology of movement strategies and demonstrates that the integrative-representative strategy holds greater governance impact, as a mass base combined with long-term party alignment makes a constituency indispensable within a political bloc.