Protesting in Highly Polarized Political Landscapes: Institutional Trust and Social Cohesion Among Protesters in Hungary

The role of trust in institutions as a motivating factor of protest participation is widely discussed in the literature. While some studies argue that low levels of institutional trust fuel protest by signalling dissatisfaction with political authorities (Braun and Hutter 2016, Dubrow and Li 2025), others suggest that a certain degree of trust is necessary for protest participation to be perceived as effective political action. This ambiguity is particularly salient in polarized political contexts, where competing protest camps mobilize around sharply contrasting interpretations of political reality. Against this backdrop, this paper asks: Do protesters at of pro and anti-government demonstrations differ in their level of trust in political institutions? And how do their perceptions of social cohesion differ? To address these questions, we analyse protests against and in favour of Victor Orban’s far-right government in Hungary on the occasion of the country’s elections in 2025 and 2026. We draw on four protest surveys: two at anti-government demonstrations and two at pro-government rallies. With one set of opposing protests based in the country’s capital and one set located in a smaller city, this research design allows to compare not only two politically opposing groups, but also protest dynamics in larger and smaller cities – as previous research suggests they differ considerably (Daphi et al 2025) Our findings reveal stark differences in trust in supranational and national-level institutions, as well as in trust in the police. Opposition protesters exhibit very low levels of trust in core political institutions, while pro-government protesters express substantially higher trust in these same institutions. At the same time, not all forms of trust divide protesters. We find no significant differences between opposition and pro-government participants in trust toward local government or mainstream media. Moreover, participants at both demonstrations display relatively high levels of generalized interpersonal trust. This suggests that polarization primarily concerns national political authority rather than everyday social relations or local governance. Perceptions of social cohesion, however, differ dramatically. Anti-government protesters overwhelmingly perceive Hungarian society as falling apart, with more than 90 percent reporting a serious deterioration in social cohesion. Among pro-government protesters, this assessment is far less common, reported by only about a third or protesters. These contrasting diagnoses point to fundamentally different interpretations of the present social condition.