Asymmetric Mass Mobilization and the Vincibility of Democracy in Hungary

• In Event: Learning from Global Democratic Challenges and Innovations Mini-Conference I: Countering Illiberalism in Liberal Democracies II: Political and Civil Society

Abstract

Using an original dataset of partisan protest events (n=4,868) in Hungary (1989-2011), we argue that left liberal parties’ neglect in cultivating civil society during the post-communist period had deleterious downstream effects on Hungarian liberal democracy. First, it enabled the growth of an illiberal, right-wing civil society that facilitated Fidesz-KDNP’s 2010 landslide electoral victory. Second, it deprived the left liberals of mobilization resources that might have been used for contentious collective action to counter Fidesz-KDNP’s early maneuvers at democratic backsliding, in particular their constitutional overhaul. Hungary is an object lesson in the dangers of minimizing anti-system threats during the prevention and containment periods

Authors

• Laura Jakli, Harvard University

• Jason Wittenberg, University of California, Berkeley

• Bela Greskovits, Central European University-Budapest