Political Polarisation and Populism in Contemporary Hungary

Parliamentary Affairs Vol. 62 No. 2, 2009, 318– 334 Advance Access Publication 20 January 2009

Political Polarisation and Populism in Contemporary Hungary1 BY EMILIA PALONEN

ABSTRACT This article investigates the polarisation that dominates Hungarian politics and divides the political spectrum into two hegemonic camps. It explores frontier-building in Hungarian politics since 1989 in order to further an understanding of recent political developments. The aim of this paper is not to discuss the demands of regular political riots, but to put the problem into its proper context and longerterm perspective. It grasps the logic of polarisation as a bipolar hegemony and a political tool in postcommunist Hungary, demonstrating how schematic political identifications and polarisation itself have been constructed. Finally, it considers some of the problems polarisation poses for democracy.

HUNGARIAN politics seems to be in constant turmoil. The 2006 elections led to a ‘lying Prime Minister’, street riots and an economic crisis. Yet, the institutionalisation of the parliament has progressed, and postcommunism seemed to develop politicians’ dissidents to professional politicians.2 However, dissident and anti-parliamentary tactics prevail. Parliamentary discussions seem far removed from the electorate, which is motivated to go to the polls and referenda by a political culture that fosters a black-and-white vision of politics and a revolutionary panache. A global comparison at the turn of the millennium demonstrated that disillusionment in democracy is most prevalent among East Europeans.3 In Hungary this feeling of disillusionment has been concretely experienced and fought against: in autumn 2006, a series of riots broke out after the Hungarian Prime Minister Ferencs Gyurcsańy admitted to having lied to the public. The riots continue on days of public commemoration. This oppositional attitude is a consequence of the kinds of politics and strategies of construction of political identities employed by the dominant parties to keep themselves in power—or at least a step away from power: competing populisms or bipolar hegemony. This knowledge is to supplement the existing studies on political parties and cleavages in Hungary—even in its regional context.4 Andra´s Ko¨ro¨seńyi distinguished three cleavages in Hungarian politics: the religious–secular cleavage, the political class or nomenklatura Parliamentary Affairs Vol. 62 No. 2 # The Author [2009]. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Hansard Society for Parliamentary Government; all rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: [email protected] doi: 10.1093/pa/gsn048

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cleavage and the urban–rural cleavage.5 However, the cleavages do not seem to match the frontier between the parties on the so called ‘left’ and ‘right’. As Gil Eyal, studying Czechoslovak break-up in 1990– 1992, demonstrates following Pierre Bourdieu that there are no pre-given meanings to left or right, nor pre-given political communities, but these are constructed in the political process itself—and, indeed, as George Scho¨pflin has argued that these do not carry similar meanings in postcommunist Eastern Europe as in the West.6 The existing research on political polarisation in Hungary has pondered whether there are ‘two Hungarys’, what these two Hungarys might be and even whether they can be reconciled.7 This article tries to find out how and why these two Hungarys are constructed. The aim of this paper is to understand ‘what is going on’ in Hungary, and to disseminate this knowledge for a better understanding of what could be going on elsewhere. It is an investigation by an outsider, non-Hungarian frequent visitor and researcher, in the totalising situation and culture, where political scientists are seen as experts on party policy, compromised to take sides. As was discussed in the closing session of the Hungarian Political Science Association (PSA) annual conference in June 2007, the line between political scientists, publicists and political actors is blurred. Some political scientists have held ministerial and MP posts. This is reflected even in the English-language literature.8 Furthermore, there is a recent trend among political scientists in Hungary to establish their own firms, to supplement the existing range of think-tanks that do research on current politics and whose funding structure and reflections bear a relation to specific parties. Instead of merely describing the bipolar situation, this article reveals its logic in the everyday sense of the word. It also tries its best to stay outside of the muddles of polarisation itself. The focus is on ideological context and the processes through which cleavages produce frontiers, rather than the parties or cleavages themselves. It will serve as the background for an understanding of anti-parliamentary developments in Hungary. This article puts forward a concept of polarisation as a ‘bipolar hegemony’, which differs from Sartori’s view of polarisation as fragmentation or divergence to relevant fields, in order to create a number of ‘poles’.9 Rather, it draws on the theories of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. For them hegemony is constructed through the creation of unity, where it would not be found before, through the articulation commonality and a political frontier.10 The proposed concept of bipolar hegemony—gathering differences along a single frontier that functions as the source of common identification—should be useful for thinking about the phenomenon of competing populisms in contexts beyond Hungary. For reasons discussed below, answering the question of why polarisation occurs in Hungary, this project is not satisfied with the common

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Parliamentary Affairs

claim of it neither being an eternal Hungarian divide nor one born and simply inherited in the peasant riots of sixteenth century. Nor does it suffice to claim that it is a mere postcommunist legacy. Rather, the article discovers polarisation as a political tool for the postcommunist elites, while carrying elements and producing illusions of both.

Polarisation as a logic and a tool The term polarisation has entered the vocabulary of Hungarian politics during the recent years. From the late 1990s, there has been a steady division of the political spectrum into two camps that continuously produce themselves as a political unit through the construction of the other camp as their counterpart. These are named ‘left’ and ‘right’, denoting the Socialists and Liberals against the right-wing ‘civic’ camp and (neo)conservatives, respectively. Since both camps are constructed around tendentially empty and merely relational concepts of nationhood and the people, the situation could be termed as one of competing populisms, to follow Laclau—and Daniele Albertazzi and Duncan McDonnell et al. developing on his thought.11 This situation of polarisation cannot be grounded on the mere legacy of communism with its bipolar world view. Neither can it be attributed to the already existing and substantive cleavages, which Kitschelt et al. argue in their study drawing on data from the mid-1990s differ between the elites and population in Hungary. Referring to fragmentation or unconcentratedness of policy issues by ‘polarisation’, in contrast to the usage here, Kitchelt et al. worry about the lack of polarisation, in their terms: ‘Because Polish and Hungarian politicians cannot polarise electoral competition around economic issues in the face of reformist postcommunist parties that embrace essentials of market capitalism, they have sufficient incentives to construct a single powerful socio-cultural divide on which to display meaningful programmatic differences and employ those to attract voters.’ The argument shows, however, polarisation in our terms is produced at the elite level: the politicians constantly reproduce the situation of polarisation and without pluralising or fragmenting electoral competition.12 Zsolt Enyedi has argued that cleavages are often products of political agency, and can be culturally formed: ‘The isolation between the groups comes into existence because the socio-structural categories (denominations, classes, etc.), collective identities, political attitudes and leadership, strengthening each other, draw a wall between the groups.’13 Hungarian political parties are not following cleavage lines, rather they create their own.14 This article deals with the polarisation in Hungary as a self-imposed cleavage which has specific contents assigned to it at times, but these contents vary. What remains is the form of polarisation, which in itself offers the tool for political differentiation.


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In fact, polarisation is a political tool—articulated to demarcate frontiers between ‘us’ and ‘them’ and to stake out communities perceived as moral orders. Polarisation is a situation in which two groups create each other through demarcation of the frontier between them. The dominant political frontier creates a point of identification and confrontation in the political system, where consensus is found only within the political camps themselves. Polarisation is reproduced in all political and social contexts with an intensity that distinguishes it from mere two-party politics. It is a totalising system, as it aims to dominate the existing systems of differences and identities. Similar logic can be found in other polarised contexts, such as those in the USA or Italy. The situation constitutes a problem for democracy insofar as democracy is seen as the articulation, combination and promotion of political values, demands and preferences that direct policies and seek to find a ground beyond the political elites, not mere regular elections.15

The Hungarian party system and the beginnings of polarisation In Hungarian politics, fragmentation or extreme differentiation after the ‘revolution’ of 1989/1990 contributed to the need to create again a positive, motivating and engaging feeling of unity in politics. The heightened sense of ‘us’ and ‘them’, the denial of the legitimacy of the ‘other’ and the necessity of strong ties between the members of the us to form a single community (as opposed to a pluralist network of different interlinked communities) is part of the legacy of the previous totalitarian era’s black-and-white positioning. This was combined with a complex electoral system designed in the round-table talks with the democratic opposition and the power-holders, and—when used towards this aim—enables large parties to claim prominence through a list of elements, high regional threshold and regional constituencies: majoritarian elements dominate proportional ones. The elections take two rounds, first in single-member constituencies, where if no one gains 50 per cent of the vote there will be a second round, and second in multi-member regional ones on a vote list. A system of top-up seats ensures that the votes cast in single-member constituencies would not be wasted: votes that were not cast to the winner of the constituency get recycled. There is a threshold of 5 per cent, but the real threshold is often higher.16 The electoral system gives an asset to large units and coalitions. Polarisations left and right have strongly announced significations: ‘Left’ refers to the Socialist Party (MSZP), which fosters liberal economic policies (as social democrats in most European countries), and to the value (e.g. human rights) and economically liberal Free Democrats (SZDSZ). ‘Right’ refers to the moderate and radical nationalist and ‘conservative’ parties— in terms of traditional values of religion,

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morality and ethno-nationalism (the Hungarian Democratic Forum, MDF; Fidesz and the radical nationalist MIE´P and Jobbik). In the 2006 electoral campaign, the main centre-right party, Fidesz, had most etatist-economic policies, whereas MDF and the liberals supported neoliberalism. Instead of conventional notions, the left and right are ‘based primarily on attitudes towards the Hungarian nation’ in a rather precommunist fashion.17 The Hungarian ‘right’ argued to be defending the nation and national values, the extreme right being anti-Western and isolationist, and the ‘left’ is seen as socialist, internationalist, cosmopolitan and anti-nation, at best civic in its outlook regarding the nation. The discursive divide provided at least an illusion of ideological substance and a claim to differentiation, as each accused the other side of being too national or too cosmopolitan. Often the two sides in Hungary are signified as the urbanist and the national–populist sides (urbańusok and ne´piek), following a distinction made within the dissident groups in the 1980s, but with roots in the interwar period, particularly Hungarian literary tradition and canons, and even in the Hungarian peasant revolts of the sixteenth century and anti-Habsburg riots of the seventeenth century.18 This however, is an essentialist claim that wants to restore an illusion of grounds for this difference. Broadly speaking, all major parties in Hungary make reference to the nation, maintain a sense of community and foster liberal economic policies. Curiously, the electorate of each of the Hungarian parties seems to have similar understandings of the national past, and postcommunist parliamentary debates are still quite heavily focused on the past.19 Thus, differentiation is found somewhere other than the actual future-oriented policy debates: it is made through politics of memory.20 External forces (the Soviets versus the ‘West’) that once functioned as the ‘constitutive outside’ (a tool for identity-building) no longer exist for mainstream political parties.21 In internal politics the powerholders versus opposition should have paved the way to multi-party contestation.22 In Hungary, the two populist coalitions continuously construct themselves against each other. Avoiding policy preferences, the parties or camps exist through their common opposition to one another, with a consequent normative-ideological logic: as you are the bad ones, we are the good ones. The momentum is maintained through continuous politicising of notions such as nation, identity, the past and the ‘people’.

‘Those who are not with us, are against us’ The late 1960s and 1970s saw a transformation in Hungary to goulash communism and a relative degree of economic prosperity. The political leader Jańos Ka´da´r transformed the Stalinist slogan ‘those who are not with us are against us’ into ‘those who are not against us are with us’.23 The 1980s was a period in which strong dissident movements


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were established that were then transformed into political parties. To limit our study to the parties in the current Hungarian parliament, the democratic opposition formed SZDSZ, the reform socialists continued as the Socialist party and the more nationally minded dissidents formed MDF. Fidesz became the anti-system, anti-establishment youth party, whose membership was first restricted to those under 35 years. Nevertheless, the Hungarian transition, or as the Hungarians prefer to call it—the ‘change of system’ (rendszerva´lta´s), was a moment of national unity in the wake of the confrontation between power-holders and dissidents under state socialism. All sides sat at the round-table and negotiated a common future, a moment of recognising that ‘we are the people’ or ‘the nation’, in an inclusive rather than exclusive manner. Mass movements emerged around reburial of Imre Nagy, the leader of the failed 1956 revolution, now acknowledged as a national fight for independence, in contrast to the ‘counterrevolutionary’ status it had had under the Soviet loyalist reform communist Jańos Ka´da´r.24 The unity was soon lost. The first Hungarian government ultimately considered Nagy and the revolution reformist–communist and consequently not of national value.25 The search for new uniting forces led to a situation of polarisation in which two political units emerged. The Stalinist mode of confrontation resurfaced. When the Hungarian party identifications were being formed in 1990s, the rhetorical strategy of Hungary’s first postcommunist Prime Minister Jo´zsef Antall of MDF was to construct political identities and coalitions with clear-cut borders, a practice that harmonises with the strategies of the communist era.26 Differences between the regime and the dissidents were articulated and identified, at least at the rhetorical level, though in reality they were often blurred. Hungarian politics was not polarised from the start. In fact, many issues and events broke with the existing distinctions or created new political frontiers, for instance the Taxi Blockade as a protest against raising petrol prices in the early 1990s.27 Nevertheless, the search for fixed political frontiers or cleavages contributed to a full-scale polarisation of Hungarian politics by the late 1990s or early 2000s. Polarisation offered both camps or parties an illusion of the stability of political identities. The political elites articulated the political frontier between the ‘left’ and ‘right’ in their rhetoric, often claiming merely to represent a traditional Hungarian political divide, by way of political strategy. An emphasis on nationhood was taken up by the conservative government (between 1990 and 1994) and the extreme right. The dividing line in Hungary is often located in the 1994 elections, when the ‘liberal pole’ disappeared: the ‘right-wing’ liberal Fidesz joined the conservative national camp and the left-liberal SZDSZ became a coalition partner of the victorious Socialist party. Both ‘left’ parties arguably had common roots. The leading intellectuals from both parties signed the Hungarian Democratic Charter in September 1991 as a ‘counter-offensive against

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the authoritarian and racist tendencies of the right-wing government’, an oppositional action in which Fidesz, notably, did not participate.28 The two parties also projected a common vision based on liberal economic policy. Members of the SZDSZ had been steering the Ka´da´rist regime of the 1980s towards a Thatcherite and in the MSZP governments a Blairite economic policy, rather than a policy based on a social democratic model. From 1994 to 1998 and 2002 to 2008, economic cooperation between the Socialists and the Free Democrats was enhanced in the national government.

Intensifying polarisation 2002 –present Although common features can be found on both sides, it is notable that the polarisation itself exists not as much through the articulation of these features but through the rejection of the other camp. This is palpable in the negative campaigning at the time of the general elections as well as between elections. Seen in retrospect, polarisation in Hungary took the most visible and concrete form at the time of the elections of 2002.29 The election spring was marked by the drastic character of the opposition between the two-party blocs (through negative campaigning), as well as the emergence of polarised politics in everyday praxis. Ordinary citizens had to take sides in various realms of everyday life, from hobbies and pastimes to the workplace and family discussions.30 A prime example of this in 2002 was the koka´rda, a cockade worn widely around 15 March to commemorate the revolution of 1848. The national symbol was fully monopolised by the right-wing: anyone not wearing it was seen as a supporter of the left. In polarisation there is no middle ground. One has to choose sides. The political opponent is turned into an enemy, with an illegitimate and threatening position.31 The political slogans followed the pattern of competing populisms: ‘Forward Hungary’ and ‘The future has started’ were the key slogans for Fidesz, which also brought forward a civic/citizen/bourgeois polga´ri ideology. This key term managed to gather connotations including a sense of excellence and achievement, critique of the transition and national elements with a more progressive western-oriented twist of conservatism.32 It was anti-communist and against a lack of excellence. It played with a notion of civicness that differed from that of MSZP, who focused on ‘Hungary’. They sought to reclaim the nation as those living within the borders of Hungary, some 10 million Hungarians citizens, as opposed to the cultural nation consisting of some 15 million ethnic Hungarians living both in Hungary and in the region outside its borders. The situation changed a little in 2006, as Fidesz, now part of the opposition, made reference to normal people emberek instead of relying on polga´ri or ethnic Hungarian notions. The habitus of the Fidesz leader Orbań changed. Once in the opposition he changed his managerial look to that of a man from the countryside. The Elite was


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now represented by those in power, and they had to be opposed in a manner quite similar to the strategy the Socialists had employed in their rhetoric four years earlier. For the Socialists ‘New Hungary’ became the work they had started and also wanted to continue. The Hungarian Socialist party’s image was a combination of a party for the ‘normal people’ and party of ‘public managers’, drawing on the status during the socialism of an elite of professional politicians. In the meantime in both elections negative campaigning centred around arguments that one side was nationalist and the other opposed to the nation. Similarly, both sides argued that the other focused only on accumulating wealth in the hands of a certain elite, while they fought the corrupt establishment as the other side using anti-elite rhetoric.33 To some extent the general elections in 2006 demonstrated a temporary break in polarisation in Hungarian politics. The Socialists (winning 42/43 per cent in the first round and 47 per cent in the second) and their junior coalition partner, the SZDSZ (which won 7 and 3 per cent in the first and second rounds, respectively), emerged the victors in the elections, defeating Fidesz (44 and 47 per cent in the first and second rounds, respectively) and the MDF, which received 5 per cent of the vote on the first round turning it into a surprise success in the elections. The turnout was 62 per cent in the first round and 64 per cent in the second. Despite the negative campaigning by all parties and strong ‘coalition’ and ‘opposition’ identifications, questions of policy became slightly more prominent than they had been before.34 Similarly, journalists, publicists and political scientists have been supporting polarisation because of its simplified and exciting match-like character, and were reluctant to engage with actual policy issues or multiple and varied identifications. Nevertheless, a breaking moment for polarisation in the 2006 election was the four-party TV-debate on the state channel two days before the elections. It followed the debate of the previous night with the leaders of the two main parties, in which Socialist PM Ferenc Gyurcsańyi defeated Viktor Orbań by challenging his position on the basis of his previous arguments.35 Fidesz had gone far in its ideological rearticulation, turning from a radical liberal party into a national conservative one and then to a centrist populist one. Orbań, Gyurcsańy, the liberal Ga´bor Kuncze and the MDF leader Ibolya Da´vid participated in the four-leader debate. Da´vid was clear and concise. The aim of the debate was to tease out policy differences, and finally one by one the parties had to reveal what they supported—not simply what or whom they opposed. Da´vid became one of the icons of the elections, successfully confronting Orbań’s and Fidesz’s increasingly populist policies. She argued that the MDF is a neo-conservative party, and following the elections promoted the establishment of a ‘new’ right-wing.36 Fidesz had been openly against the MDF’s success and for a wide centre-right party, but it needed MDF’s support in the second round of the elections.

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Defying pre-election polls, the elections brought in a multi-party parliament. Even traditional supporters of the large parties voted for one of the two small parties. Also many MDF supporters had been voting for the Socialists in those constituencies in which the MDF candidate had stepped down. Traditionally, this constituted something of an unholy alliance. Part of the MDF’s success was due to a campaign run by the Political Capital think-tank, arguably promoting Thatcherite politics in Hungary that could have provided a link between the Blairite Gyurcsańyi’s Socialists and Da´vid’s ‘neo-conservative’ MDF.37 Yet the link could also be found in the reformist but rather conservative attitude of both parties.38 Polarisation requires consensus on both sides of the main frontier, there is little space for diversity. This was now broken on the side of the Hungarian right. Later, half-way through the parliamentary season, the coalition government of the Socialists and the Liberals was to break.

Recent products and problems of polarisation After the elections, Hungarian politics fell into turmoil. First the news broke out in June that the economic situation in Hungary was worse than what the PM and the Finance Minister had claimed before the elections, and a new financial program consisting of tough measures was proposed by the parliament.39 On 26 May the PM spoke to the party crowd using strong language and admitting in a self-critique of the party that ‘we lied morning, noon and night’.40 A close reading of the speech would indicate that his intention was to legitimate new policies and reforms. Election promises could not be kept. The party crowd was the obvious first point of contact for the millionaire party leader to project a new era in the rhetorical style that combined of popular speech and swearwords. The PM admitted to having lied to keep the party in power, which was sensible for the audience considering the all-or-nothing conditions of political polarisation. The PM admitted to having lied in order to maintain the status quo until the elections, but now he wanted reforms. Judging by the economic situation and the election promises, it is clear that the reforms would have been too hard to legitimate without revealing how bad the economic situation was. Gyurcsańy was making a virtue out of his lie and a distinction between his government and that of the previous Socialist government of Pe´ter Medgyessy (PM 2002–05), from whom he had taken over shortly before the elections. The speech was leaked on 18 September, first by the Hungarian state radio and then throughout the Hungarian media. As it was impossible to access the audio file on many internet sites because of high demand, transcripts were offered. Demonstrations were called in front of the parliament calling for the resignation of the lying PM. Nights of riots followed. The premier argued to the media that, in fact, it was not he but the whole political elite that had been lying, promising prosperity


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and avoiding reforms, and he was the first one who had been brave enough to admit his mistakes and would therefore not resign.41 As sentiments of dissatisfaction remained, the political opposition planned extra-parliamentary constitutional reforms. On 1 October, the Hungarian president asked the Socialist PM to proceed for a vote of confidence in the Parliament. In the vote on 6 October Gyurcsańy finally apologised publicly, and with the backing of his own party and the junior coalition partner SZDSZ won the vote of confidence (207 MPs voting for and 165 against). The PM would stay in power with a reform agenda. In the meantime some 50,000 demonstrators called by the opposition leader Orbań were waving Hungarian flags outside the parliament. The storm was nevertheless not over. The official commemoration of the revolution of 1956 was hijacked by rioting Hungarians on 23 October 2006. It offered an occasion for the continuous display of the bipolar situation—political differentiation that had been articulated in the early 1990s through the interpretation of the 1956 revolution as a ‘democratic’ or a ‘mere reform communist’ event. The same event was repeated a year later. The usage of the ‘Hungarian card’ and the mass-mobilisation by the right is nothing new. This was already a familiar pattern in a situation in which the opposition has for years kept large sections of population mobilised by turning the power-holding political elite into an enemy. In addition to creating a strong picture of the enemy, both camps of the political elite have been overly confident about the Hungarian economy and the possibilities that the country would offer to anyone who would be ready to vote for them, covering over the points of hypocracy from the black-market to ‘voluntary service charges’ or ‘gifts’ at hospitals and schools. The PM had shaken the country, not only by revealing the actual state of the economy but also by going against the traditional tactic of addressing the opposite side as liers. The emperor was revealed to be without cloths and fantasies were shattered. The political leader, as the uniting father-figure of the left, lost much of his esteem. By calling everyone in the political elite a liar, he also broke the frontier of polarisation that had been structuring political identifications in Hungary. Nevertheless, the system of polarisation did not collapse. Viktor Orbań and the Hungarian right were quick to respond to the situation and reconstruct the frontier. Furthermore, the situation of polarisation was maintained on the left, where, because of the tight confrontation by the right, there was no space for internal critique and real contestation of Gyurcsańy’s position.42 It was difficult for the Socialists and the Liberals to agree on a common candidate. This was demonstrated in the presidential elections in summer 2005, when the two parties did disagree on that point and the opposition candidate La´szlo´ So´lyom won the post of President of the Republic. Had the PM lost the vote of confidence, the Fidesz-backed president would have had the power to

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nominate another candidate to form a government and enjoy the backing of the parliament. If unsuccessful, the parliament could have been dissolved and new elections called. This scenario was precisely what the Hungarian right wanted. After all in local elections on 1 October, Fidesz, which had been leading in the polls from June, gained 50 per cent or more in all the 11 regions apart from Budapest.43 In a tight situation they could have secured a victory in national elections. The case of Gyurcsańy demonstrates how the situation of polarisation eliminates space for internal critique, and again shows how political leaders—in this case both the PM and Viktor Orbań—can use it to their advantage. The questions of the nature of the reforms and the tactics through which the aching economy in Hungary should be healed were left unanswered. After the incident, the Socialist party launched a discussion of its own character. Focus on values, policies and common grounds would offer a useful means of contesting the situation of polarisation, in which the discourses of the parties are primarily constructed in a negative fashion—through the opposition of the political other, the counterpart. Finally, in 2008, the drift on the left about economic policy led to a break-up of the government. The liberal party that left the coalition faced a crisis: the leadership fight polarised the party between economic and social liberalism. The previous party leader Jańos Ko´ka, who had been advocating neo-liberal policies, remained for the time being the head of the parliamentary faction, partly as an attempt not to break the unity of the party. The new leader, Ga´bor Fodor, one time room mate of Viktor Orbań and member of the inner core of the Fidesz, left the party in late 1993, when he lost the power contest to Viktor Orbań and his turn towards a more populist nationalist line.44 His appearance and quote on the SZDSZ party website captured the ethos of polarisation: ‘We need to forget that parties are for themselves. We represent the citizens ( polga´r) of a nation, with national interests, and according to European traditions.’ Fodor was rejecting the usual accusation levelled at the SZDSZ of being anti-national, elitist, intellectual and cosmopolitan. Yet, by negating the frontier, he reaffirmed that such an imagined divide existed.45

Anti-parliamentary tactics Do personalist style of elections lead towards an authoritarian governance? asked the Andra´s Ko¨ro¨seńyi recently in the Hungarian PSA’s journal.46 Political polarisation produces strong leaders due to the lack of contestation from within the party or coalition. They in turn secure their position by strengthening the polarisation. This has been the main rhetorical strategy of Viktor Orbań, a key politician in postcommunist Hungary, the leader of the Fidesz party and in 1998–2002 the Hungarian PM.47 The black-and-white positioning was Orbań’s strength from the beginning of his sky-rocketing political career as the


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key figure of Fidesz in 1989. Orbań as an innovative ideologist—to follow Quentin Skinner’s terminology48—has been transforming his party from the position of the anti-elitist anti-communist youth party in the early 1990s to the leading national centre-right party since 1993 to the European progressive nationally minded civic party in 1998– 2002, to the etatist-conservative force from 2006. He has been always able to reposition the party and rearticulate the core values, generally keeping and even increasing the number of supporters. As PM, Orbań ruled as his Italian counterpart Silvio Berlusconi, with esteem and in confrontation only with the enemy; once in opposition in 2002, he hardly visited the Parliament.49 Brought up in dissident Hungary and having made his first success by rapidly gaining a mass support for a student alternative initiative, turning it into a mass party, he chose to work outside the parliament. The civic initiatives that were proposed were against the elite and the power-holders—where the elite he opposed could also be understood as the inheritors of state socialism. Orbań himself was young enough to disassociate himself from the democratic opposition, the alter-elite of the socialist system, that had been teaching and supporting him in the late 1980s, the SZDSZ-bound intellectuals. In the parliament, the investigation committees that had been used for monitoring and rapports have not been used much since the Fidesz term in office 1998–2002, as there is a disagreement between the opposition on the membership of these committees. From the parliamentary the consultation has moved to the field. Especially after 2002 a number of civic initiatives were created. Many of them claimed to be independent from the parties, but contained a propagandist antigovernment rhetoric similar to that of Fidesz and were openly supported by Orbań and Fidesz. The rallying and gathering of names for the referendum on the right of citizenship to the ethnic Hungarians in the near areas of Hungary (and by extension by the Workers Party, the privatisation of hospitals) took place in December 2004. The National Consultation of 2005 sought to reveal how badly things are in Hungary. The Village parliaments programme was to strengthen the Fidesz power in villages and create an anti-government sentiment, rallying on the point of the Hungarian left being cosmopolitan, Budapest-bound. The referendum on the payment of visits to the doctor, university fees and hospital fees in 2008 brought success to the parliamentary opposition. The referendum in 2004 failed to get a large enough turn out and to secure a win for either of the issues. It demonstrated a lack of interest in the ‘national question’, but a more weight on the question of privatisation. Fidesz wanted to expand the rights to citizenship, in a move to increase the number of its own potential voters and to spend public funds outside the country’s borders, if one were to believe the Hungarian left. The Hungarian right in contrast accused the left for

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being populist and selfish, not wanting to share the wealth of the nation with those they saw as culturally belonging to it. The referendum in March 2008 was successful: half of the eligible voters voted, with 41–42 per cent of the eligible voters agreeing with the cases related to the maintenance of the free health and education system. After the referendum opposing government policy, the ruling Socialists made bold promises on the health system and pensions, which in turn led to the liberal coalition partner to withdraw from the government. And yet in turn the right had a reason to criticise the left of populist overspending. ‘When an adversary promises to crack down on crime or lower taxes and yet increase spending on public services, it is ‘populist’. When one’s own side does so, it is dealing with country’s problems.’50 In a similar way, as the right was creating a demonising image of the left, the Hungarian left has been accusing the right of being elitist, feudalist, nationalists, expansionists, anti-semitists and xenophobes as well as populist. They are suspicious of the right not efficient enough of economic policy and of spending state money on national symbols and ethnic minority abroad. Increasingly in the period from 2002, when Fidesz has been in opposition, their rhetoric has become increasingly anti-elitist, choosing to represent the general ethnic Hungarianness, whereas while in power they emphasised polga´ri qualities, which contained a certain proudly Hungarian western-oriented sense of excellence. Particularly in 2002, the contestation was between two coalitions that both claimed expertise, two alternative elites that saw it from an anti-elitist point of view. Two sides claim the other for being a populist and an elitist in turn.

Competing populisms A recent understanding of populism disassociates it from ‘specific social bases, economic programmes, issues and electorates’. Daniele Albertazzi and Duncan McDonnell defined populism as ‘an ideology which pits a virtuous and homogeneous people against a set of elites and dangerous ‘others’ who are together depicted as depriving (or attempting to deprive) the sovereign people of their rights, values, prosperity, identity and voice.’51 They define ‘ideology’ in William’s terms as ‘a set of beliefs’, similarly as Laclau, whose work they also draw on. In this sense, already, the above account shows how there is clearly a contestation populism. Usually, but not exclusively, populism is attributed to small radical parties, which often rally on nationhood and antielitism, and are very successful in using media in order to put their message through. Alternatively, one of the main parties is seen as a populist. In Hungary there are two. ‘The populist leader promises solutions, but, above all, clearly identifies the enemies (the scapegoats), attributes responsibilities and offers assurance.’52 Both the sides profess this rhetoric. People and elite can


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be argued to mean almost anything. Populism is a hegemonic formation where a party or a coalition of parties has a discursive content based on concepts so overburdened with signification that their specific meaning is lost on the one hand, yet the integrity of the party is maintained by the production of a strong maximum representation of difference to the other through a political frontier.53 This frontier maintains the identity of both groups. Therefore it is also important for each of them. They profess black-and-white rhetoric on the people and the elite, the tendential empty stances on values and policies and a stark confrontation with the political adversary. Meńy and Surel argue that three political conditions are decisive for contemporary populism: the crisis of the structures of political intermediation, the personalisation of political power and the increasing role of the media in political life.54 These elements are strongly present, in Hungary where there is at least an illusion of a permanent crisis in the political structures, politics is personalised around key political leaders, and the media plays a crucial role in the reproduction of political polarisation. But how does political polarisation in Hungary differ from other societies where equal facts can be true? Pasquino insists on investigating the extent of these developments and their connections. The other conclusion to draw is that mainstream populism and even compering populisms are a (future) development in more established democracies. When Chantal Mouffe studied Austrian politics, she did not simply ¨ as the populist force. focus on the emergence of Joërg Haider’s FPO Rather, she was interested in the dynamics between the two established parties in Austria.55 Mouffe discovered how the two parties had such an agreement for power-sharing, that underneath the superficial conflict there was a de facto consensus about what was going on.56 Austrians identified politically with the cultural concept of the party beyond any substantive or policy-content, yet was based on the idea of a friendly—perhaps misinformed—enemy. Haider contested what could be said in public and the range of existing references. Postcommunist politics in Hungary are politics of a bipolar hegemony and competing populism. A ‘hegemonic formation’ fixes a maximum amount of meanings together or blocks them out of it.57 In the political rhetoric identities, symbols and history carry meanings for the two poles. The two camps of the bipolar hegemony sustain themselves through their opposition to one another rather than through their content. Polarisation can be seen as a system of dual consensus, reproducing the typical problems of consensus. Political polarisation was contested in Hungary in 2006, when four parties were voted into the parliament, contradicting the trend in the last decade towards a two-party parliament. Later events in autumn 2006, however, showed that polarisation exists despite some moments of contestation through its continuous rearticulation as a means of constructing political identities and differences.

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Polarisation solves the initial problem of fragmentation, lack of unity, by instituting a frontier that sustains two communities as a bipolar hegemony. It requires constant rearticulation and, therefore, constant antagonism on that frontier, since new cleavages or demands would otherwise emerge that would distort the situation of polarisation. Consequently, to maintain polarisation, any new cleavages or demands must be articulated into the existing system. By stagnating the political articulation of demands, by prioritising one frontier over the others, polarisation creates consensus on the two sides of the frontier. As Mouffe argues consensus produces problems to democracy, understood as open-ended contestation in a political forum not mere electoral choice. It merely fixes the contestation between two poles without letting any room for questioning the positions themselves or debating policy-content. Similar to the one-party system or consensus, polarisation and bipolar hegemony bracket out less important demands and maintain an illusion of unity, rejecting anything that might shake internal cohesion. In Hungary, institutional factors and historical legacies contributed to the problematic. Attempts to question the divide or establish a third force against both of these camps merely reaffirmed the situation of polarisation. Polarisation allows the political elite to create their identifications without focus on or popular control of the contents of their discourses, values and policies, or the conflicting demands of the population. This is why it persists in Hungary. University of Jyva¨skyla¨ Finland [email protected] 1

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I would like to thank Ernesto Laclau, Sarah Birch, Aron Buzogańy, Ivan Krastev and Marci Shore, as well as the four anonymous referees at Parliamentary Affairs for their comments on earlier versions of this paper. My warm thanks also go to Jason Glynos, Aletta Norval, Heino Nyysso¨nen, Jańos M. Kovaćs, Ma´rton Szabo´ and A´rpa´d Szakolczai for their comments on my work, as well as to George Scho¨pflin for inspiration from the start. Support from the Ko¨rber Foundation, Hamburg, a Junior Fellowship ‘History and Memory in Europe’ at the IWM, Vienna and Junior Fellowship from the Collegium Budapest, as well as the Academy of Finland project ‘Nations and their others: Finns and Hungarians since 1900’ have enabled me to pursue this project in 2005 –2006 and 2008. U. Korkut, ‘The 2006 Hungarian Election: Economic Competitiveness versus Social Solidarity’, Parliamentary Affairs, 60, 2007, 675 –90; C. Chiva, ‘The Institutionalisation of Post-Communist Parliaments: Hungary and Romania in Comparative Perspective’, Parliamentary Affairs, 60, 2007, 187 –211; B.I. Tamas, From Dissident to Party Politics: The Struggle for Democracy in Post-Communist Hungary, 1989 –1994, Columbia University Press, 2007. Gallup Millennium Survey 1999, http://www.gallup-international.com/ContentFiles/millennium5.asp The left parties have been studied usefully by Grzymała-Busse; and the centre-right parties by Hanley et al. S. Hanley et al., ‘Sticking Together Explaining Comparative Centre-Right Party Success in Post-Communist Central and Eastern Europe’, Party Politics, 14, 2008, 407 –34; A. Grzymała-Busse, Redeeming the Communist Past: the Regeneration of Communist Parties in East-Central Europe, Cambridge University Press, 2002. A. Ko¨ro¨seńyi, Government and Politics in Hungary, CEU Press, 1999. G. Eyal, ‘The Making and Breaking of the Czechoslovak Political Field’ in L. Wacquant (ed.), Pierre Bourdieu and Democratic Politics:the Mystery of Ministry, Polity Press, 2005, pp. 151 –77; G. Scho¨pflin, Politics in Eastern Europe, 1945 –1992, Blackwell, 1993.

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Z. Enyedi et al., Ke´t Magyarorsza´g? Osiris, 2005. For instance, the ideology and practices of the Hungarian Socialists have been covered mainly by Andra´s Bozo´ki—a minister of Cultural Heritage under the first Gyurcsańy government of the Socialists. The main English-language works on Fidesz are by the UK-based scholars George Scho¨pflin and Brigid Fowler, a Fidesz MEP and his parliamentary advisor. This is opposed to Sartori’s usage of ‘polarisation’ but of ‘centre-fleeing’: in Hungary the two poles do push each other away, but while doing so they remain by the frontier, leaving little ‘ideological distance’ between them and competing over the same signifiers. It resembles a bi-partite political system, but—crucially—there are more than two parties involved; G.. Sartori, Parties and Party Systems, vol. 1, Cambridge University Press, 1976, esp. 98 –130 and 273 – 93. E. Laclau and C. Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, Verso, 1985; E. Laclau, On Populist Reason, Verso, 2005. Laclau, op. cit., n. 10; D. Albertazzi and D. McDonnel, Twenty-First Century Populism; the Spectre of Western European Democracy, Palgrave, 2008. H. Kitschelt et al., Post-Communist Party Systems: Competition, Representation, and Inter-Party Cooperation, Cambridge University Press, 1999, p. 267. Z. Enyedi, ‘A voluntarizmus tere. A pa´rtok szerepe a to¨re´svonalak kialakula´sa´ban’, Sza´zadve´g, 9, 2004, 3– 27, 6. Tamas, op. cit., n. 2. Chantal Mouffe has been influential in demonstrating some of the problems in narrow understandings of democracy; C. Mouffe, Democratic Paradox, Verso, 2000. Hanley et al., op. cit., n. 4; B. Fowler, ‘ESRC “One Europe or Several?” Programme Briefing Note 2/02’, 2002. http://www.one-europe.ac.uk/pdf/bn2-02fowler.pdf; F. Millard, ‘Hungary: Politics of Negotiated Design’ in Sarah Birch et al. (eds), Embodying Democracy: Electoral System Design in Post-Communist Europe, Palgrave-Macmillan, 2002, pp. 48 –66. Hanley et al., op. cit., n. 4. T. Fricz, A ne´pi urbańus vita tegnap e´s ma, Napvila´g, 1997; J.M. Kovaćs, ‘Uncertain Ghosts: Populists and Urbans in Postcommunist Hungary’ in Berger and L. Peter (eds), The Limits of Social Cohesion; Conflict and Mediation in Pluralist Societies: A Report of the Bertelsmann Foundation to the Club of Rome, Westview Press, 1998, pp. 113 –45; M. Szegedy-Masza´k, Irodalmi Kańonok, Csokonai Press, 1998; Tamas, op. cit., n. 2. This is shown by Ma´ria Va´sa´rhelyi’s survey study. Anna Grzymala-Busse writes about the ‘usable pasts’, which are brought into post-1989 politics; these are used for political differentiation. This idea is echoed in the literature on Hungarian politics. M. Va´sa´rhely, Csalo´ka emle´kezet, A 20. sza´zad to¨rteńelme a magyar ko¨zgoldolkoda´sban, Kalligram, 2008. Grzymala-Busse, op .cit., n. 19; H. Nyysso¨nen, Presence of the Past in Politics; ‘1956’ in Hungary after 1956, SoPhi, 1999; E. Palonen, ‘Constructing Communities: Politics of the Postcommunist City-Text of Budapest’, Tr@nsit Online, 34, 2006, http://www.iwm.at/index.php?option= com_content&task=view&id=416&Itemid=516; E. Palonen, ‘The City-Text in Post-Communist Budapest: Street Names, Memorials and the Politics of Commemoration’, GeoJournal, 2008, 73, 219 –30. P.L. Berger (ed.), The Limits of Social Cohesion; Conflict and Mediation in Pluralist Societies. A Report of the Bertelsmann Foundation to the Club of Rome, Westview Press, 1998. Already in the mid-1990s, Raimo Vaÿrynen discussed the emergence both of multi-polarity and of political volatility and populism in domestic politics after the ‘erosion of bipolarity in international relations’; R. Vaÿrynen, ‘Review Essay: Bi-polarity, Multipolarity, and Domestic Political Systems’, Journal of Peace Research, 32, 1995, 361 –71. L. Andor, Hungary on the Road to the European Union: Transition in Blue, Praeger, 2000, p. 7. K. Benziger, ‘The Funeral of Imre Nagy: Contested History and the Power of Memory Culture’, History & Memory, 12, 2000, 142 – 64; Nyysso¨nen, op. cit., n. 20. Benziger, op. cit., n. 24; Palonen, op. cit., n. 20. It followed the Schmittian dichotomy of ‘naturally associated parties’ and ‘unnatural connections’ in his government. L. Lengyel, Pa´rtha´zbo´l palota´ba, Helikon, 1998, 13. M. Szabo´, Tarsadalmi mozgalmak e´s politikai tiltakoza´s, Rejtjel, 2001. Andor, op. cit., n. 23, p. 51. Since it has been carefully studied by a number of Hungarian scholars in the fields of both politics and sociology, for example, M. Su¨ko¨s and M. Va´sa´rhelyi (eds), Hol a hata´r? Kampa´gnystrate´gia´k e´s a kampańyetika, 2002. E´let e´s Irodalom, 2002; S. Kurtań et al. (eds), Magyarorsza´g politikai e´vko¨nyve 2003, Demokraćia kutata´sok magyar ko¨zpontja, 2003. Fowler, op. cit., n. 16.

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C. To´th and G. To¨ro¨k, Politika e´s kommunikaćio´, A magyar politikai napirend te´mai a 2002-es va´laszta´sok elo˜tt, Sza´zadve´g, 2002. Hanley et al., op. cit., n. 4, p. 428. Hanley et al. make this claim about the centre-right in Hungary and Czech Republic, but it was equally true of the left in Hungary. In other words, it has been a strategy of the centrist parties on both sides; Hanley et al., op. cit., n. 4, p. 429. See for example Korkut, op. cit., n. 2. Magyar television 6 and 7 April 2006. The press reported, though, that the ‘experts’ thought that the ‘event’ was boring, not to repeat (e.g. Ne´pszava 8 April 2006). Da´vid Ibo´lya, ‘Da´vid Ibolya orsza´ggyu´´le´si va´laszta´sokat e´rte´kelo´´ besze´de 2006. ma´jus 13-ań, az MDF Orsza´gos Va´lasztmańyi u¨le´seń’, 13 May 2006, http://www.davidibolya.hu/fooldal/cikk/cikk. phtml?cikkid=4508&rovatid=15 Magyar Narancs, 25 May 2006. Tama´s finds this link already looking at the 1980s. Tamas, op. cit., n. 2. 15 June 2006 MTI archive. Gyurcsańy, Balatonoszod, 26 May 2006, MTI archive. For example Mark Mardell, BBC Europe, 21 September 2006. Although in 2006 before the local elections on 1 October and even the general elections in April, one of the MSZP veterans, Jo´zsef Sipos, was contesting the ‘new, liberal reforms’ that Gyurcsańyi government was putting forward. He was ousted from the party. HVG 14 October 2006, p. 8; 21 October 2006, p. 114. For example Szonda Ipsos, http://www.szondaipsos.hu/en/polvelkut/partok Tamas, op. cit., n. 2, pp. 86, 161. Similar to a previous party leader Demszky; E. Palonen, ‘Articulating the Frontier in Hungarian Politics: Budapest Mayor Demszky on 15 March’, Central European Political Science Review, 2006, 20, 140 –65. Article published in the Hungarian Political Science Association’s journal; A. Ko¨ro¨seńy, A demokratikus elitizmus konszenzusań tu´l, Polikatudomańyi Szemle, 4, 2007, 7 –28. E. Palonen, ‘Fidesz diskurzus e´s Budapest: Hata´rteremte´s e´s te´rfoglala´s’, trans. Z.G. Szu´ćs and G. Pa´l, in M. Szabo´ (ed.), Fideszvalo´sa´g. l’Harmattan, 2006, 13 –39; B. Fowler, ‘Concentrated Orange: Fidesz and the Remaking of the Hungarian Centre-Right, 1994 –2002’, Journal of Communist Studies & Transition Politics, 3, 2004, 80– 114. Q. Skinner, Visions of Politics, Vol. 1, Regarding method, Cambridge University Press, 2002. According to the Hungarian parliament’s web pages, Viktor Orbań, as the leader of Fidesz, but an oppositional politician, made eight interventions during 2002 –2006, while he had in two years alone after 2006 made 12 of them. As a PM during 1998 – 2002, Orbań boasted 166 interventions, demonstrating the focus outside the parliament ever since in opposition; Dr Orbań Viktor, http://www.parlament.hu/internet/plsql/ogy_kpv.kepv_adat?p_azon=o320&p_ckl=38 D. Albertazzi and D. McDonnel, ‘Introduction: The Spectre and the Spectre’ in Albertazzi and McDonnel (eds), op. cit., n. 11, p. 2. Ibid., p. 3. Ibid., p. 25. Laclau, op. cit., n. 10. Y. Meńy and Y. Sure, Par le peuple, pour le peuple, Librairie Arthe`me, 2000; also quoted in Guianfronco Pasquino ‘Populism and Democracy’ in Albertazzi and McDonnel, op. cit., n. 11, p. 26. C.f. R. Wodak and A. Pelinka, The Haider Phenomenon in Austria, Transaction Publishers, 2002. Mouffe, op. cit., n. 15. Laclau and Mouffe, op. cit., n. 10.