Reclaiming “the People”? Tisza’s Counter-Strategy to Orbán’s Populism in Hungary’s New Realignment

For over a decade, Hungarian opposition parties have consistently failed to challenge Fidesz’s hegemonic populism. Despite recurring economic crises, rule-of-law conflicts and widespread corruption allegations, Orbán’s illiberal project remained electorally dominant while the opposition fragmented often portrayed as a cosmopolitan, anti-national elite. The sudden breakthrough of Péter Magyar’s Tisza party in the 2024 European Parliamentary and municipal (confined to Budapest) elections poses a clear puzzle for populist realignment in East-Central Europe: why does this new actor succeed where a decade of opposition politics failed? Theoretically, the paper draws on the literature on ‘dealing with populists’ which charts a range of counter-strategies against populism available for domestic and external actors, and on work explaining ‘populist success’ which theorizes about different variables contributing to populist actors’ endurance in power. Building on these frameworks, this study argues that Magyar’s Tisza departs from earlier opposition along four dimensions that together may amount to a potential realignment of the populist space. First, it redefines “the people”: not as Fidesz’s ethnocultural nation besieged by external enemies (Brussels, migrants, liberal cosmopolitans, etc.), but as civic citizens robbed by a narrow “mafia state” and entitled to fair institutions and EU funds. This moves the core of antagonism from external cultural enemies (and their alleged domestic representatives) to a domestically rooted oligarchic network. Second, Tisza shifts from primarily actor-oriented strategies (e.g. negative coalitions and personalized anti-Orbán tropes) to a supporter-oriented strategy, explicitly courting disillusioned Fidesz voters rather than treating them as incorrigible. Third, it is more grievance-responsive, linking rule-of-law reforms and EPPO membership directly to everyday injustices such as stolen public money, unequal opportunities and insecure services, instead of presenting institutions mainly as abstract European norms. Fourth, Tisza innovates organizationally and communicatively, building a new territorial network of local “islands” and using personalized but pro-institutional messaging that contrasts both with Fidesz’s state-party machine and the fragmented, urban-centered, often reactive strategies of the old opposition. Overall, conceptualizes Tisza as a civic counter-populist project that uses anti-elite rhetoric instrumentally while fundamentally rejecting Fidesz’s exclusionary notion of “the people”. Empirically, the study relies on a mixed qualitative design that combines comparative discourse analysis with descriptive organizational mapping. First, it assembles a corpus of Fidesz and Tisza texts, campaigns speeches and major interviews with Magyar to systematically code references to “the people”, “elites”, enemies, grievance and institutions, as well as the linkages between grievances and proposed remedies. This enables a fine-grained comparison of how each actor constructs political community, identifies threats and justifies institutional reforms. Second, the paper maps Tisza’s organizational development – local branches, “islands”, rallies and communication channels – over time to contrast it with the rather incompetent and often passive ‘strategies’ of old opposition parties. By integrating discursive and organizational perspectives, the paper shows how a new opposition actor, by redefining “the people” and altering opposition strategy, can begin to erode an entrenched populist regime’s dominance. It thereby uses the emerging Fidesz-Tisza confrontation to illuminate the conditions under which long-standing populist success in East-Central Europe may finally be challenged.