Leveraging Crises: How the Russian Aggression in Ukraine Benefited the Populist Government in Hungary’s 2022 Election Campaigns
- Pelin Ayan Musil
, - Anita Tusor
Abstract
This article contributes to the literature focusing on the relationship between crises and populism. It argues that the timing, the crisis type, and the contextual factor of whether populists are in power, matter for changes in the discursive strategies of populists and their ability to turn crises into opportunity structures. Guided by the constructivist literature on external shocks and a thematic content analysis of 561 online media news reports on the 2022 Hungarian national elections before and after the outbreak of the Russian aggression in Ukraine (RAiU), the article shows that this crisis helped to refresh the people-centrist elements of Fidesz’s populist discourse while slightly downgrading its anti-elitist aspects. The absence of any material impact of the RAiU on Hungarian society at the time of the elections, combined with the dominance of Fidesz’s ‘pro-peace vs. pro-war’ discourse, transformed the RAiU into an opportunity structure for Fidesz during the elections.
Keywords
Russia-Ukraine war, Hungary, elections, crisis exploitation, populism, competitive authoritarianism
Supplementary File(s)
Appendix I Appendix IIAuthor Biography
Pelin Ayan Musil
Pelin Ayan Musil is a senior researcher at the Centre for the Study of Global Regions within the Institute of International Relations Prague. She also teaches at Anglo- American University Prague and the Institute of Political Studies (IPS) at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University. Her research interests include the politics of authoritarianism, regime change and political parties. She has published in such journals as Democratization, South European Society and Politics, Social Movement Studies, and Government and Opposition, among others.
Anita Tusor
Anita Tusor is pursuing a PhD in International Relations at Charles University in Prague. She has a Double Master’s Degree from King’s College London and Renmin University of China in Asian and European Affairs. She also holds an M.A. in Applied Linguistics and a B.A. in Hungarian and Chinese Studies. Previously, she worked with several different think tanks, including the European Center for Populism Studies, the European Values Center for Security Policy and the Institute of International Relations of Prague. Her research interests include hybrid warfare, the processes of democratization and de-democratization, Chinese cognitive warfare, populist constitutionalism, and foreign malign influence operations.