There are important similarities, but also significant differences between the extreme right in Romania and Hungary from the 1990’s until today. In the first case, the dominant extreme right parties of the 1990’s and early 2000’s (PUNR and PRM) have disappeared, being fully replaced in recent years by new extreme right parties, especially AUR. The latter, while being as extreme as its predecessors, is also different from them in some significant respects, regarding both its ideology and constituents. In contrast, in Hungary, we have both continuity and discontinuity. While the extreme right had a continuous and significant presence in this country, the extreme right of the 1990’s (MIÉP) and 2000’s (Jobbik) were leapfrogged by Fidesz, which evolved ideologically from liberalism to extreme nationalism and conservatism.
The goal of this paper is, firstly, to account for the differences in the electoral strategies, ideologies, and constituencies of the extreme right in the two countries. We also want to assess, in the medium and long term, which of the strategies pursued by the dominant parties (the ambivalent ideological positioning of PSD in Romania versus the unambiguous right-wing positioning of Fidesz in Hungary) will prove to be more successful.
