Bartek Pytlas/Oliver Kossack

Transcription

1 Berlin/Frankfurt (Oder), Bartek Pytlas/Oliver Kossack Measuring the Impact of Radical Right Parties on Spatial and Ideological Shifts within Central and East European Party Systems European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder) Faculty of Social and Cultural Studies Chair of Political Science I: Comparative analysis of political systems, movements and cultures To be presented at: 7 th ECPR General Conference, 4-7 September 2013, Sciences Po Bordeaux The following text is a draft! Please do not circulate, cite or quote without the authors permission!

2 Bartek Pytlas/Oliver Kossack Measuring the Impact of Radical Right Parties on Spatial and Ideological Shifts within Central and East European Party Systems Introduction Democracies in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) continuously struggle against the upsurge of radical right political parties (RRPs). Research on these parties in post-communist Europe, however, has mostly focused on the description of party development or agenda (Szayna 1997; Ramet 1999; Hainsworth 2000; Bayer 2002; Mudde 2005b; Segert 2006; Mesežnikov 2008; Frusetta/Glont 2009), as well as providing explanatory mechanisms or variables for RRP success (Beichelt/Minkenberg 2002; Minkenberg 2002a; Mudde 2007; Bustikova/Kitschelt 2009; de Lange/Guerra 2009; Biró Nagy/Róna 2013). Existing research mostly omitted the question of effects of radical right parties. While the primary interest in electoral results seems natural given their straightforward visibility, the continuing lack of analytical focus on the impact of radical right parties is puzzling. This is particularly true for the still understudied CEE countries where RRPs electoral fortune has been much more in flux compared to Western Europe whereas radical right impact on mainstream public and party discourses as well as on parliamentary policy making has been much more profound (Mudde 2005a: 281; Segert 2006: 70; Pytlas 2009; Pytlas 2013). What follows is that besides these empirical observations, no attempt has been made to develop an analytical framework including operationalised indicators that would measure the impact of radical right parties on CEE party systems. Even regarding Western Europe, the impact of radical right parties has only rarely and rather recently attracted scientific attention, though often with a narrow focus on a specific dimension of impact and/or on a specific country (Heinisch 2003; de Lange 2012; Akkerman 2012; Akkerman/de Lange 2012; for more comprehensive studies see; Minkenberg 2002b; Schain 2006; Williams 2006). Regarding the impact on party systems, the majority of research points at a general shift to the right as a consequence of emerging radical right parties (Mudde 2007). Looking at Germany and France in the 1980s and 1990s, Minkenberg further finds increased polarisation between a left and a right camp, particularly in the French case (Minkenberg 2002b). Nevertheless, the aforementioned studies are still some of only 1

3 very few comparative, analytical investigations of the impact of radical right parties on the party system. This paper aims to tackle some of these shortcomings and provide impulses for future studies on political impact of the radical right, particularly in CEE. Departing from empirical observations of party competition between RRPs and their mainstream competitors, this contribution asks about the effects of RRPs on positional shifts within party systems in Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia. In order to analyse this aspect of radical right impact, a two-step model shall be applied. First, quantitative evaluation of expert surveys will be carried out to identify spatial shifts within the party system. To meet the requirements of the dynamic nature of party competition and to account for spatial shifts, the paper will look at party positions at three different points of time, using data from the 2002, 2006 and 2010 waves of the Chapel Hill Expert Survey (CHES) (Hooghe et al. 2010; Bakker et al. 2012). Given the varying salience of different issues of identity politics in the countries under examination, the first step of the analysis thus draws on a broad indicator covering the parties general stance on identity-related politics on the socio-cultural GAL/TAN cleavage axis (cf. Hooghe et al. 2002). Second, qualitative observations of political competition will be used to shed further light on the mechanisms behind them. For this purpose, original data on the proliferation of radical right narratives in the discourse of nearby competitors as well as RRPs shall be extracted from media reports on identity-based politics in Poland, Hungary and Slovakia. The data shall be coded and evaluated by the application of Computer-Assisted Qualitative Data Analysis (CAQDA) in order to depict ideological shifts among nearby mainstream competitors of RRPs in regard to radical right narratives. Based on this data, it shall be argued that active political participation of RRPs in the sphere of issue competition causes spatial as well as ideological shifts to the right (i.e. moving to the traditionalist end of the GAL/TAN division) among their mainstream competitors and the CEE party systems in general. Second, it shall be argued that RRPs influence the salience of conflicts along the GAL/TAN axis, as visible by the variation of party convergence of the party system in this dimension. 2

4 Defining the radical right in Central and Eastern Europe The phenomenon of right-wing radicalism in Central and Eastern Europe needs to be approached carefully. On the one hand, similarly to its counterpart in the West, it must be perceived as a modern and modernization-related phenomenon and not a mere revival of inter-war fascist currents (Mudde 2000: 44; Minkenberg 2002c: 335). On the other hand, the emergence of radical right parties needs to be considered a phenomenon embedded in a specific socio-historical context and thus of a different character compared to similar occurrences in the West (Minkenberg 2002: 356). This understanding therefore perceives radical right parties in Central Eastern Europe as a specific subtype of the new radical right party family. They are not detached from their West European pendants with regards to their modernisation-related emergence and ideological focus. Yet, considering their articulated issues and frames, they still operate in a specific cultural, historical and sociological contextual framework of political and discursive opportunity structures (cf. Mudde 2007: 5). In established Western democracies, the emergence of the new radical right in the 1970s has been explained in relation to post-industrial transformation (Ignazi 1992, Ignazi 2003; Betz 1994; Kitschelt/McGann 1995; Minkenberg 1998, 2000; Rydgren 2004; Mudde 2007; Bornschier 2010), visible mostly in the dimensions of economy, culture and politics (Minkenberg 1998: 69). Next to the reshaping of occupational market structures and postmaterial value shift, processes of dealignment/realignment as well as the articulation of new issues transformed the political sphere. The emergent electoral niches were soon occupied by parties aiming to counteract the changes, a stance referred to as silent counter-revolution (Ignazi 2003; cf. Minkenberg 1998). In CEE, processes of modernization resulting from the democratization wave that had swept across the region in the course of the Autumn of Nations were more far-reaching, deeper and complex than the current modernization process in the West (Beichelt/Minkenberg 2002: 5f). Nonetheless, transformation took place along the same dimensions as in Western Europe and caused similar effects of atomization, disenchantment with politics and most importantly pluralization and liberalization of cultural value systems. The latter point of cultural transformation needs to be underlined here, especially if one recalls that the radical right operates mostly along the conservative-liberal cleavage (Minkenberg 2003). The last twenty years of post-communist state- and nation-building processes have been marked by constant phenomena of discursive competition over symbolic 3

5 concepts of state and national identity (cf. Blokker 2005: 382; Zubrzycki 2001: 631f.). Attila Ágh referred to this conflict between traditionalizers and modernizers as value wars (Ágh 2001: 41). Intensive axiological debates on the form and development of national identity polarised the political scene around questions related to notions of geopolitical strategies, national self-understanding, collective belongingness, social norms and value priorities (Pytlas 2013: 164). The reinterpretation of symbolic identity markers in CEE has had a profound effect as a provider of discursive opportunities raising the salience of these issues as a part of the conservative-particularist vs. liberal-pluralist cleavage. To further elaborate on this argument, it is important to note that unlike their Western counterparts (cf. Rydgren 2004), radical right parties in CEE have not emerged out of a gradual upsurge of new niches and issues after the party systems had remained frozen for several legislative periods. Instead, the division lines have been visible in CEE societies from the beginning of the post-communist modernization process and have constituted an established sphere of political conflict. The collective identity patterns, such as the beliefs regarding the interweavement between the nation, the state and the individual, collective myths, historical narratives as well as religious and secular value constructs, have been put on political display for the purpose of politicization by political actors and formed a set of discursive opportunities (Koopmans et al. 2005, Giugni et al. 2005). These have determined public resonance and legitimacy of questions concerning the nature and direction of postcommunist state and nation building. The phenomenon of the radical right, therefore, cannot be solely understood as a protest of socio-economic losers of modernization or a sheer inexperience with democracy but to a much bigger extent as a programmatic, ideological construction of reality adhered to by those who perceive the post-communist state and nation building path as a threat to the integrity, character, principles, values and/or interests of the nation. Considering these contextual factors, right-wing radicalism, following Minkenberg (1998: 33ff., 2008: 12f.), needs to be conceptualised as an ideology based on a core of a populist myth of romanticised ultranationalism that, in an attempt to cope with the processes of societal modernization, questions the principles of a liberal and pluralistic democracy and formulates radicalised criteria of societal exclusion. The radical right cannot be described as strictly anti-modern but rather as a dialectic countermovement aimed against the direction and character of the current modernization process (Minkenberg 2003) willing to reframe it according to its exclusionary, ultranationalist ideology. 4

6 The salience of the socio-cultural cleavage and the visibility of discursive opportunities related to nation-building could explain why, on the one hand, radical right parties managed to introduce their own resonant narratives fields relevant to identity issues, such as morality or minority politics (cf. Pytlas 2013). This, on the other hand, might further illustrate why mainstream parties tend to demonstrate less hesitation to engage in competition over identity issues and their radical right interpretations (cf. Segert 2006: 70). In effect, this perspective highlights the role of radical right impact on the areas of public discourse and party competition in regard to identity-related policies of Central-Eastern European party systems. Radical right effects in Central and Eastern Europe: Impact on party systems and issue competition In spite of the crucial importance of radical right parties as agents of identity-based party competition in post-communist Europe, only few authors attempted to model their impact in a more comprehensive fashion (Schain 2006; Minkenberg 2002b; Williams 2006). The impact of radical right parties has to be understood as a dynamic process including several levels of society: street visibility including radical right as well as counter-mobilisation, public opinion, policy-making and spatial shifts of the party system (Minkenberg 2002b). Despite the promising character of this approach, Minkenberg tends to build his analysis rather on singular events and misses to develop more universal indicators for the impact on each dimension. Despite some other suggestions for measuring the impact of radical right parties in a fashion more suitable for comparative studies (Williams 2006), there is a continuing need for consistent and systematic theoretical and methodological work on the measurement of party impact. Regarding the impact on the party system the dimension of particular interest for this study several (comparative) case studies conclude that radical right parties were able to influence issue positions of their competitors and, therefore, the party system in general (Minkenberg 2002b; Heinisch 2003; Schain 2006; Williams 2006). However, despite a widely held belief that populist radical right parties have had a significant impact on the policy positions of other parties (Mudde 2007: 284), the only statistical analysis of the impact of West European radical right parties on the positioning of other parties regarding immigration concludes that the impact is both weak and complex (Williams 2006: 69). Nonetheless, confronting this result with the findings of the majority of case studies the impact might actually be not weak 5

7 but only complex and thus hard to tackle in a comparative statistical analysis. Therefore, the task is to develop a more accurate and suitable model for measuring the indeed, mostly indirect (Mudde 2007) effects of radical right parties on the systemic level. The influence or impact of radical right parties on the change of issue positions of their mainstream competitors already points to the crucial importance of party competition. Consequently, a model of radical right impact on shifting positions of mainstream parties needs to follow the underlying logic and mechanisms of party competition. Party competition is intrinsic to party systems (Dahl 1966; Sartori 1976; Mair 1996). It is hard to imagine any phenomenon of electoral dynamics of parliamentary political agency without the concept of party competition (Benoit/Laver 2009: 1). At the same time, several authors pointed out that the dynamic and extent of spatial competition among mainstream and radical right political actors is one of the crucial factors influencing radical right electoral fortune (Kitschelt/McGann 1995; Bale 2003; Ivarsflaten 2003; Eatwell et al. 2004; Carter 2005; Meguid 2005, 2008; Schain 2006; Art 2007; Kitschelt 2007). At least since the seminal book of Anthony Downs (1957), talking about party competition in terms of spatial ideas has become a universal phenomenon of modern politics (Stokes 1963: 368). As Benoit and Laver state at the very beginning of their elaboration: Most people who talk about politics are likely to talk sooner or later about the positions of political actors. It is difficult if not impossible to have a serious discussion about the substance of real politics without referring to where key actors stand on substantive matters at issue (Benoit/Laver 2009: 11). Benoit and Laver further present basic concepts of the spatial or dimensional understanding of political competition. Since position or space implies distance this notion allows us for an imagination of the grade of difference between particular parties (Benoit/Laver 2009: 11). Distance further implies movement and direction (moving towards or apart of each other), only possible to be measured based on a particular benchmark such as a uni-dimensional left-right axis or multi-dimensional policy spaces (Benoit/Laver 2009: 11ff.). Therefore, the spatial metaphor provides not only the possibility to pinpoint political interests. The observation of spatial shifts within the party system also helps to draw a map of relationship and interactions within the party system under question. Political actors thus consistently need to confront each other in regard to the positions they aim to occupy on the electoral scene (Koopmans et al. 2005: 21). The goal of this contention is issue ownership. The concept of issue ownership (Petrocik 1996) emerged in the framework of issue-based vote choice theory (Budge/Farlie 1983; Petrocik 1996; Damore 6

8 2004; Bélanger/Meguid 2008; Meguid 2005; Meguid 2008) and describes a public conviction that a given party is most competent and credible in handling a particular issue (Petrocik 1996: 826). Mainstream parties can further choose from three particular competition modes while approaching (new) issues presented by the radical right: the dismissive, the adversarial and the accommodative strategy (Meguid 2008: 24f.). The dismissive strategy aims at rhetorically ignoring the competitor and its issues. The adversarial strategy aims at actively opposing radical right positions and engaging in the issue via opposition. The third strategy of mainstream parties is the accommodative strategy, characterised by moving towards the position of the radical right competitor and co-opting its issues as part of the own agenda. Admittedly, scholarship on the dynamics and mechanics of party competition and competitive strategies is still in its starting blocks (Mudde 2007), but as the analysis will show, party strategies towards the radical right as an aspect of spatial competition (Ivarsflaten 2003; Bale 2003; Arzheimer/Carter 2006; Art 2007) can be perceived as one of the most visible dimensions of radical right impact on the shape and dynamics of CEE party systems. Taking into account these considerations, a model of radical right parties impact on party systems shall focus on issue competition of mainstream competitors in regard to identity politics along the GAL/TAN axis, a dimension central to radical right parties. By so doing, the following mixed-methods analysis attempts to find general patterns of spatial as well as ideological shifts linked to the agency of radical right parties. In spite of different issues shaping value-related politics in Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Romania, this paper holds that the participation of radical right parties in party competition within the fields of identity politics causes mainstream parties to shift rightwards, i.e. towards the TAN end of the conflict dimension. A further assumption is that radical right parties influence the salience of conflicts along the GAL/TAN axis visible by the extent of spatial convergence on identity issues. Given the assumption of strong rightward shifts, e.g. in absence of a strong cordon sanitaire among the mainstream parties, RRPs seem to be political actors with a potential to arm and disarm this area of conflict. Quantitative analysis: measuring spatial shifts A prerequisite for the quantitative analysis of spatial shifts in the party system is the identification of parties positional stances. The most frequently used methods to measure party positions are expert surveys and the comparative analysis of party manifestos. While 7

9 several researchers and research groups have carried out expert surveys that include various issue positions of political parties, the approach of manifesto analysis has been applied most extensively by the Comparative Manifesto Project (CMP) which has coded party manifestos from most relevant parties in more than 50 countries (Volkens et al. 2012). The general validity and reliability of the data has been attested to both methods. Nonetheless, they come each with specific advantages and disadvantages (Benoit/Laver 2009, Marks et al. 2007, Budge 2013). The strength of manifesto-based estimates is the huge body of data that allows for comparisons across countries and over a considerable period of time. Expert surveys do not cover such a broad range of parties and countries and are available for a limited period of time, albeit the number of surveys has increased in recent years. A problem of the CMP dataset, however, is the incomplete nature of many manifestos (Kitschelt 2007). This is of particular importance in regard to radical right parties which tend to avoid or tone down unpopular positions not appealing to a large share of voters in order to disguise a hidden, more radical agenda (Mudde 2007). In contrast, expert surveys overcome these problems by providing an assessment of party positions by not only relying on publications but further taking into account the parties activities. In other words, expert surveys [combine] what parties say and what parties do (Netjes/Binnema 2007, quoted in Bakker et al. 2012: 7). Thus, they can balance the incongruity between publicly expressed stances and secretly pursued goals of parties. A major objection to expert surveys criticised the bias included in the subjective assessment of party positions. Recent tests indicate, however, that an assumed bias does not affect the validity of the data (Hooghe et al. 2010). Altogether, the disadvantages of expert surveys hardly apply for this study while the use of CMP data might cause problems, particularly regarding radical right parties. Consequently, the quantitative analysis will rely on expert surveys, more precisely on the 2002, 2006 and 2010 waves of the Chapel Hill Expert Surveys (Hooghe et al. 2010, Bakker et al. 2012). These surveys not only include all countries under examination, they further provide the possibility to identify positional shifts as they include data at three different points of time. Moreover, all three waves of the survey include an indicator for a general position regarding identity politics. This GAL/TAN variable measures party positions between a left greenalternative-libertarian and a right traditionalist-authoritarian-nationalist pole (Hooghe et al. 2002: 966). Hence, this indicator allows for cross-national comparison as it takes into account not only specific identity-based issues such as religion, integration of minorities or 8

10 homophobia which might be highly relevant in one country but not on the agenda in others. Thus, the following quantitative analysis aims at illustrating the influence of radical right parties on spatial shifts along the GAL/TAN dimension. Bulgaria Figure 1: Spatial shifts along the GAL/TAN dimension in the Bulgarian party system between 2002 and 2010 Source: Chapel Hill Expert Survey (Hooghe et al. 2010, Bakker et al. 2012). Beginning with the 2001 elections, the Bulgarian party system witnessed a significant change. Regular bipartisan alternation in government between the communist successor Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) and the oppositional Union of Democratic Forces (SDS) gave way to multi-party competition that saw the emergence of new, strong parties (Smilov 2008; Karasimeonov 2010). One of them, the National Movement Simeon II (NDSV) was founded by and named after Simeon II, the returned pre-ww II tsar of Bulgaria. The rise of the party after its formation shortly before the 2001 national elections has to be seen in the light of a high degree of populism which is perceived as characteristic for the political arena of Bulgaria (de Waele/Cholova 2011). It provides an excellent ground for parties like NDSV, offering no comprehensive political agenda but a distinct anti-establisment appeal personified by a charismatic leader. In that manner, the party gained a landslide success with more than 40% of the vote by campaigning on the popularity of its leader and the promise to install a technocratic expert government which would solve the most pressing economic problems and 9

11 effectively fight corruption. Since this promise was not kept, the party rapidly lost popular support and finally dropped out of parliament in 2009 (Cholova/De Waele 2011). In the meantime, the former member of NDSV and popular mayor of Sofia, Boyko Borisov, founded the party Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria (GERB), an equally populist party which also gained the majority of votes when running for the first time in the national elections of Apparently, there are certain structural similarities between NDSV and GERB regarding their position in the party system. Both took over government in their first legislature with an incoherent political programme mostly based on anti-establishment populism (Smilov 2010; de Waele/Cholova 2011). Nevertheless, Fig. 1 illustrates a substantial difference regarding identity politics between NDSV and GERB. While Simeon II emphasised the more liberal and European nature of himself and his party, Borisov portrayed himself as the advocate of the Bulgarian people simultaneously marking Simeon II as a foreigner not belonging to it (de Waele/Cholova 2011). In that regard, the emergence of GERB indicates a substantial shift to the right within the Bulgarian party system. In spite of the favourable breeding ground for right-wing radicalism in Bulgaria (Beichelt/Minkenberg 2002) no significant radical right party emerged until Until then, the electoral coalition around the BSP occupied the position farthest to the right which can be seen as a remainder of the patrimonial communist regime in Bulgaria (Kitschelt et al. 1999). The data of 2002 indicates that, in the absence of a radical right party, competition on identity politics took place in the left and right centre. Until 2006, the parties have been moving even further to the centre even though the radical right party ATAKA appeared in the political arena in the course of the 2005 national and the 2006 presidential election campaigns and gained parliamentary representation immediately. Founded as an electoral coalition of several radical right parties and organisations, ATAKA merged into a single party after the 2005 elections. The internal struggles of the ATAKA in the first period in parliament (Meznik 2011) combined with a dismissive strategy not unusual for mainstream parties facing the exposure to emerging radical right parties for the first time (Meguid 2005) might account for further convergence indicated by the data for However, following the stabilisation of ATAKA the data for 2010 points at a clear shift to the right within the Bulgarian party system on the GAL/TAN axis. First, ATAKA has remained a serious competitor on the formerly empty right fringe of the political spectrum in the second half of the 2000s and, second, the emergence of GERB as a new and strong force which also positions on the right end of the centre regarding socio-cultural issues further signifies the 10

12 overall rightward shift. In contrast, the more liberal camp has almost vanished with NDSV losing parliamentary representation in 2009 and the SDS suffering from a split-off in Hungary Figure 2: Spatial shifts along the GAL/TAN dimension in the Hungarian party system between 2002 and 2010 Source: Chapel Hill Expert Survey (Hooghe et al. 2010, Bakker et al. 2012). In the Hungarian case, data from the expert survey sample shows a relatively constant pattern of ideological polarisation along the GAL/TAN dimension (Fig. 2). The liberal camp consists of the social democratic Hungarian Socialist Party (MSzP), the successor of the Hungarian communist party, and the liberal Alliance of Free Democrats (SzDSz) which has its roots in the oppositional forces of Fidesz, stemming from the oppositional forces as well, has gradually transformed from a liberal into a national conservative party and, thus, become the hegemonic force in the conservative camp. Moreover, Hungary also witnessed the rise of two radical right parties into parliament. The first of them is the Hungarian Justice and Life Party (MIÉP) which could cross the five per cent threshold once in When the party was about to repeat this success four years later it closely missed parliamentary representation gaining only 4.4% of the vote. In the same year the conservative camp lost its majority and had to hand over the power to a coalition government of the culturally liberal parties MSzP and SzDSz. During its period of government between 1998 and 2002, however, Fidesz already introduced measures weakening liberal democratic institutions (which was also supported by MIÉP) and deepened its national conservative ideological platform (Bayer 2005). The strict opposition of MSzP and SzDSz towards those policies and ideological positions is mirrored in the 2002 data showing a highly polarised party system in Hungary at that time. 11

13 Between 2002 and 2006 MIÉP vanishes not only from parliament but also largely from the political arena. Additionally, the other parties, particularly Fidesz, move towards the centre. The 2006 data in Fig. 2 clearly depicts this convergence of party positions on identity-based issues in Hungary in that period. The fact that Fidesz has lost a competitor on the right might at least partly account for the party s centripetal movement since there is no serious danger of losing the votes of the right fringe to another party. Consequently, the degree of identity-based polarisation in the Hungarian party system in 2006 seems to be at the lowest in the whole period under examination. Moreover, the middle of the 2000s marks the most liberal average positions of the mainstream parties in Hungary. After the 2006 elections and the following mass public protests against the re-elected MSzP prime minister Ferenc Gyurcsány 1, the radical right party Jobbik gained momentum. The rise of Jobbik resulted in the party s entry into the European and national Parliament in 2009 and 2010 respectively with turnout of more than 10% each. Moreover, the public visibility of Jobbik and its affiliated associations, especially the paramilitary Hungarian Guard increased significantly (Biró Nagy/Róna 2013). Although the 2010 elections equipped Fidesz with a two-thirds majority of seats in parliament, the party implemented several policy proposals stemming originally from Jobbik (Verseck ) in order to co-opt the agenda of the radical right and appeal to its voters. 2 Taking into account this legislation and further authoritarian and nationalist policies introduced by the Fidesz government after its inauguration in 2010, the impact of Jobbik on Fidesz appears to be much higher than the GAL/TAN value for this year indicates. Here, qualitative data presented in the following part of the paper will shed further light on the ideological impact of Jobbik. Moreover, the liberal camp faces a difficult situation after the incidents of SzDSz could not even re-enter parliament in 2010 and MSzP lost dramatically both votes and trust (Biró Nagy/Róna 2012). Consequently, new political forces emerged on the liberal end of the spectrum including the Green party LMP 3, Gyurcsány s Demokratikus Koalíció, certain social 1 After the 2006 elections, a Hungarian radio station broadcasted an internal speech of Ferenc Gyurscány, known as the Őszöd-speech, in which he admitted lying to the population in order to win the elections (Cf. Lendvai 2010: ). The leaked speech caused long-lasting and partly violent protests against the MSzP government. 2 Public opinion surveys in late 2011 and early 2012 reveal that the radical right threat towards Fidesz increased further after the 2010 elections since public support for Jobbik rose to more than 20% (Szonda Ipsos ). 3 In 2013, several members of the LMP, including Timea Szabó and Gergely Karácsony, left the party over the dispute regarding the participation in Együtt The newly founded Párbeszéd Magyarországért Párt (Dialogue for Hungary), joined the platform of Bajnai. 12

14 movements like Milla, Szolidaritás or 4K! as well as the recently created united opposition platform of Gordon Bajnai s Együtt 2014 Movement, representing a clear-cut opposition to the national conservative and authoritarian government of Fidesz. Since these organisations are still in a phase of consolidation the liberal camp has remained rather weak so far. Thus, the emergence of Jobbik goes along with two phenomena: increasing polarisation between the liberal and the national conservative camp as well as a general shift to the right as not only Jobbik occupies the right fringe but Fidesz also becomes stronger and moves further towards this end of the spectrum (which should be even more evident in its positions after 2010). Poland Figure 3: Spatial shifts along the GAL/TAN dimension in the Polish party system between 2002 and 2010 Source: Chapel Hill Expert Survey (Hooghe et al. 2010, Bakker et al. 2012). The Polish case shows some similarities to the Hungarian one as there is also quite significant polarisation of the party system in regard to identity politics (Fig. 3). In the 2001 national elections the newly founded radical right League of Polish Families (LPR) experienced a head-start and entered the Sejm with almost 8% of the vote. Even though internal differences characterised the first legislature, the party could stabilise organisationally and ideologically and establish as an important force of the Polish right during the first half of the 2000s. The ultra-catholic radio station Radio Maryja certainly contributed to the rise of LPR in the early years by overt support for the party in its programme (Pankowski/Kornak 2005; de Lange/Guerra 2009; Pankowski 2010). 13

15 In reaction, the conservative party Law and Justice (PiS) intensified its Catholic-nationalist and authoritarian appeal in order to take over issue space from LPR. Data for 2006 indicates that both parties shared almost identical positions on identity politics during their government period of 2005 and Further evidence is provided by the common support of the manifesto for the Fourth Republic published by PiS during the 2005 election campaign (Millard 2010). When LPR became a junior partner of the PiS-led government, the whole coalition of LPR, PiS and Self Defence (SO) suffered from several scandals and internal conflicts which particularly affected LPR and finally resulted in the collapse of the right-wing government (Millard 2010). LPR subsequently lost not only its credibility but a large share of its electorate to PiS (Pacewicz 2007 quoted in Pytlas 2009) which co-opted the agenda of the LPR and successfully took back issue space and voters on the right fringe. The data for 2010 illustrates that PiS moderated its position only gradually after LPR had largely vanished from the political arena. Applying a strategy of co-optation of large parts of LPR s agenda, PiS has not only consolidated its hegemonic position on the right but shifted the centre of the GAL/TAN spectrum further to the ultra-conservative end. While the major parties of the right approximate each other in 2006 regarding their positions on identity politics, the liberal parties, Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) and Civic Platform (PO), distance themselves even further from the conservative camp with a peak of polarisation during the time of the governing coalition of PiS, LPR and SO. Thus, it rather seems to be the perception of PO as the arch-enemy of PiS in the mostly bipartisan competition in Poland at that time that accounts for the dramatic shift to the GAL end of the spectrum. The fact that PiS largely remained on the far right end of the spectrum opened up issue space in the centre. PO seized this opportunity and occupied a much wider ideological spectrum, including more centrist and conservative positions on identity politics in 2010 than in The electoral and organisational decline of the SLD further contributed to that shift of PO since there was no serious competitor left in the liberal camp before Ruch Palikota entered the scene with 10% of the popular vote in the 2011 elections. Political competition on identity politics in Poland was fairly polarised in the beginning of the 2000s. The polarisation intensified even further in the course of the rise of LPR. After the party lost power again, a tendency towards convergence is visible as the distance between PiS and PO in 2010 returns to the level of 2002, although both parties are situated further to the right. In the light of a weakened left, the data not only indicates increasing polarisation as an 14

16 immediate effect of the emergence of LPR but also a general shift to the right, particularly after the demise of LPR. Romania Figure 3: Spatial shifts along the GAL/TAN dimension in the Romanian party system between 2002 and 2010 Source: Chapel Hill Expert Survey (Hooghe et al. 2010, Bakker et al. 2012). In Romania, the positions of mainstream parties on the GAL/TAN dimension show a clear trend of convergence between 2002 and Like in Bulgaria, the post-communist Social Democratic Party (PSD) also occupies a centre right position on identity politics while the more liberal wing of the former National Salvation Front, which then formed the Democratic Party (PD), holds almost identical positions as the National Liberal Party (PNL), an old party that was re-established after the fall of Ceauşescu in After the radical right Romanian National Unity Party (PUNR) vanished in the end of the 1990s, the Greater Romania Party (PRM) became the hegemonic force in the Romanian radical right spectrum. Having been electorally outnumbered by the PUNR in the 1990s, the PRM achieved a landslide success in the 2000 parliamentary elections with almost 20% of the votes the best result of all radical right parties in CEE. In the following elections in 2004 the party still received a considerable turnout at the polls with more than 10%. Nevertheless, its decline had already started after the year 2000 as it faced a cordon sanitaire for the first time, because the EU made clear that distancing from an openly anti-semitic, anti-european and racist party like PRM by the political elite is a necessary condition for Romania s quick EU accession. As a result of the isolation, the leading figure of the PRM, Corneliu Vadim Tudor, decided to tune down his and the party s message, which caused internal struggles and a loss of credibility among the party s supporters. In result, the PRM dropped out from parliament with only 3.2% of the vote in 2008 (Turcanu 2010). 15

17 Fig. 4 indicates that the demise of the PRM is paralleled by a clear trend of convergence of the mainstream parties on identity politics. When the PRM was still present in parliament and, thus, had better access to the main channels of party competition in spite of the cordon sanitaire, the positioning of PSD, PD and PNL show moderate polarisation in the left and right centre. In 2010, however, the three major parties converged within a range of one point around the centre indicating that their positions on identity-related issues hardly differed at all. By losing its parliamentary faction, the PRM might have also lost its power to politicise identity politics and place its issues on the agenda, while the other parties rather focused on the pressing socio-economic issues and the implementation of the acquis communautaire required for Romania s accession to the EU. Slovakia Figure 3: Spatial shifts along the GAL/TAN dimension in the Slovak party system between 2002 and 2010 Source: Chapel Hill Expert Survey (Hooghe et al. 2010, Bakker et al. 2012) After 2000, party competition in Slovakia has to be seen in the light of the autocratic regime under prime minister Vladimir Mečiar between 1992 and The governing coalition was led by Mečiar s autocratic and populist catch all Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (HZDS) and further consisted of one of the most constant radical right parties in CEE, the Slovak National Party (SNS). Not before 1998 a broad coalition of the social democratic Party of the Democratic Left (SDL ), the conservative parties Slovak Democratic and Christian Union (SDKÚ) and Christian Democratic Movement (KDH) as well as the Party of the Hungarian Coalition (SMK) could bring about a change of government resulting in a redemocratisation and a rapid orientation towards the EU (Haughton/Rybar 2009). At this moment, a new party, Direction (SMER), slowly emerged as an established competitor on the 16

18 political scene of Slovakia. Founded in 1999 by Robert Fico, a highly popular former politician of SDL, SMER at first focused mostly on a vague platform of non-ideological political pragmatism (Marušiak 2006), law and order policies as well as establishment and redistributive populism (cf. Pytlas 2013: 169). Data for 2002 in Fig. 5 depicts a moderate polarisation on the cultural dimension between SMER and SDKÚ occupying the left centre and KDH, HZDS and SNS in the conservative and ultraconservative end, though it is not possible to speak of a right-wing camp given the opposition of KDH and the other two parties stemming from the 1990s. Taking this historical division further into account, the 2002 data might be interpreted as a result of convergence after the harsh divide in the 1990s. Moreover, the decline of SDL in the early 2000s has already caused a shift of the party system towards the conservative pole as force closest to the left-libertarian pole regarding identity politics lost power. In 2002, the SNS failed to enter the national parliament for the first time due to a party split resulting from internal differences between the party s most famous figure and long-term party leader Ján Slota and the then-leader Anna Belousovová. Though both wings reunited in 2003 and the split did not considerably harm the internal structure of the party, the SNS could not make use of the privileges of parliamentary representation for four years. During this period, SMER, SDKÚ and HZDS show a trend of convergence in the centre while KDH moves further to the right. The constant centre-left position of SMER regarding identity politics suggested by the data from 2002 and 2006 seems to represent the obscure positioning until then. After 2006, however, the data signals a shift of SMER to the right which is also in line with the party s choice of coalition partners after the national elections in that year. Desite a possible coalition with KDH and SMK, SMER preferred to form a government with HZDS and SNS. Even though the SNS was backed by the best turnout in its history (11.6%), the party was not able to negotiate the aspired ministerial posts and thus influence its most important policy fields directly (Haughton/Rybář 2009). Nevertheless, the comeback of the party corresponds with a rightward shift of all parties (except KDH which had already occupied a position quite far to the right and largely kept it). In fact, the data reveals that in 2010 none of the established parties occupied a position on the liberal side of the spectrum any more. After its time in government, SMER is thus perceived to have abandoned its undefined socio-cultural profile and peaks even higher than the moderate conservative SDKÚ, a result surprising for a self-ascribed nominal social democratic party. The qualitative analysis 17

19 will further illustrate the impact of the adoption of radical right narratives on the spatial shift of Robert Fico s party. Summary The spatial shifts of party positions in the five countries under examination reveal interesting patterns regarding the impact of radical right parties on the respective party systems. When radical right parties have the means (i.e. at best through actual or viable parliamentary representation) to take part in party competition, potentially threatened mainstream parties always shifted to the right indicating a strategy of co-optation. This is the case in Hungary, Poland and Slovakia, where PiS, Fidesz and SMER as major mainstream government parties take more traditionalist stances on identity-based issues. In Bulgaria, the emergence of GERB mirrors this phenomenon since the party replaced the former centre-populist but socioculturally rather liberal NDSV with a programme loaded with law and order policies sometimes combined with nationalist ideas after taking over government in 2009 (Genov 2010). Instead, the absence of radical right parties tends to favour convergence of mainstream parties on identity politics. This is clearly visible in Romania where all parties converge almost exactly in the centre once the PRM has lost influence. Also in Bulgaria, before ATAKA enters the political arena, the main parties show a relatively small difference in their positions on the socio-cultural dimension, too. Even in Hungary and Poland, the distances between the mainstream parties decrease when radical right parties lose influence as was the case with MIÉP in the beginning of the 2000s in Hungary and LPR after its participation in government in 2005 and It seems therefore, that the forces that light the fuse of dormant conflicts on socio-cultural issues are indeed the radical right parties. Qualitative analysis: measuring ideological shifts The qualitative part of the analysis shall focus on the dynamic of framing efforts (Snow et al. 1986; Snow/Benford 1988; Gamson 1988; Gamson/Meyer 1996; Zald 1996; Benford/Snow 18

20 2000) between radical right parties and their mainstream competitors. 4 Competition over frames is a constitutive mechanism of any party competition process. Contentious politics in a specific framework of political opportunity structures can be seen as struggle or contest over meaning (Gamson/Meyer 1996: 289; Gamson 2004: 245; cf. Benford/Snow 2000: 613). Frame competition is relevant not only on the level of public discourse but also in the area of policy making, as noted most notably by Frank Fischer (Fischer 1980; Fischer 2003). In both cases, frames understood as narratives articulated by political actors, guide collective action as well as help to organize, explain, justify and legitimate political agency. In other words: The frame suggests what the issue is about (Gamson 1988: 222). Therefore, the analysis of frame competition is seen to provide qualitative indices of radical right impact on ideological shifts within party systems. Having said that, it is crucial to note that the framing approach has hitherto largely lacked an established methodological framework that would allow a comprehensible identification of frames and a reproducible verification of framing mechanisms (Johnston 1995: 217; Johnston 2002; Matthes 2007: 44). As one of the few methodological contributions suitable for answering the research question in this study, Thomas König points to advantages of the application of computer assisted qualitative data analysis software (CAQDAS) for frame measurement within the discourse analytical method (König 2004a; König 2004b). The CAQDA is a qualitative method that allows for a standardized, verifiable measurement of discursive patterns within texts. The analysis is performed by means of text segment coding and the evaluation of absolute and relative frequencies of the identified codes as well as their mutual relationship, among other their co-occurrence or textual nearness (Kuckartz 2004; Kuckartz 2007; König 2004a; König 2004b; Bazeley 2003). For the qualitative analysis, cases shall be looked upon, where empirical observations supported by quantitative data pointed to particularly strong accommodative strategies of major government parties in regard to radical right narratives: Hungary, Poland and Slovakia. Having previously noted the strong activity of radical right parties along cultural cleavage lines (cf. Minkenberg 2003; Bornschier 2010), the researched discourse was narrowed down to party policies related to questions of national identity and values, expected to be most likely cases for the observation of radical right impact on narrative shifts of mainstream 4 The methodological design, the collected qualitative dataset on radical right frames and its CAQDA analysis are an extract from the research conducted by Bartek Pytlas for the purpose of his forthcoming dissertation project. 19

21 competitors. In Poland, the analysis focused on the debates regarding the question of reproductive rights (abortion) and issues in regard to rights of sexual minorities. In Slovakia and Hungary, the analysis focused on policies regarding the issues of these states relationships with the Hungarian minority. 5 In each country, online news reports shall be gathered, 6 with the name of the particular party and the description of the issue as keywords. In all cases therefore due to the vast size of the sample the material shall thus only include statements of radical right parties and their nearest mainstream competitor (LPR and PiS in Poland; SNS and SMER in Slovakia; Fidesz and Jobbik in Hungary). The gathered textual data material was coded, mapped and evaluated non-automatically 7 using CAQDAS (MaxQDA Version ). The text was mapped with marker codings (descriptors of year and actor ) as well as content codings (first, metaphorical fields describing particular frames, summarized into clusters such as catholic traditional values, martyrology/trauma, or organic nationalism ; as well as, second, diagnostic meta-frames warning against a perceived threat or calling for protection ). The codings were then crossanalysed in regard to their co-occurrence within the text using the MaxQDA analytical tool Code-Relations-Browser. In the analysis, the paragraph distance between marker and content frames were set to zero (the co-occurrence of actor and statement needed to take place only within a single paragraph). The data has then been disseminated by year and recalculated from absolute to relative numbers using the overall number of statements identified for a particular year. 5 In Hungary, the analysis shall revolve around the debates on the citizenship status of Hungarian minorities living in adjactent countries, most notably the debate on the Status Law in 2001, the failed double citizenship referendum in 2004 and the successful Dual Citizenship Law in In Slovakia, it will concentrate on debates in regard to the minority politics of the Slovak state towards the country s Hungarian minority, such as the State Language Law debate of For a detailed description and analysis of these debates see Pytlas In Poland, due to search limitations even within the paid archive of the Gazeta Wyborcza, news reports from the websites of PiS and LPR shall be added to the analysis. In Slovakia, to achieve a comparable size of the sample, articles from both biggest dailies SME and Pravda shall be included. In Hungary, due to a large ideological polarization of the media, the analysis of the biggest FIDESZ-associated daily Magyar Nemzet shall be supplemented by news reports from the Jobbik party organ, Barikad. 7 i.e.: the codes were not applied blindly by sheer automatic string search of keywords within texts, but instead manually by reading the text material and applying the coding dependently on the context fit of a particular word, phrase or metaphor. 20

22 Poland In the case of Poland, the highly conflicted (Dillon 1996: 26) issue of reproductive rights appeared on the Sejm s agenda already shortly after the onset of the post-communist transition and remained a pat situation in a conflict between left-liberal and conservativenationalist political forces. The law adopted in 1993 (cf. Hennig 2012) constituted a largely conservative abortion compromise (kompromis aborcyjny) that, despite several future attempts (Hennig 2012), has remained basically untouched. 8 Also in regard to bills on equality for same-sex civil partnerships, fierce debates started in 2001, polarized during the years and failed to end in successful adoption of a binding law (Hennig 2010). The most prominent radical right narrative in this regard touched upon the question of a threat to the fabric of Polish identity, Catholic faith, traditional Polish values and the role of traditional family as the basic cell of Polish society, seen as a vehicle for transmission of identity, patriotism and faith (cf. Giertych 2006, quoted in Minkenberg/Pytlas 2012: 218). Opposition to liberalization attempts in regard to moral politics issues were depicted by the LPR as counter-modernization rhetoric. Therein, the West most notably the European Union, one of the main, if not the crucial issue owned by this religious-fundamentalist party (cf. de Lange/Guerra 2009) were depicted as decadent, debaucherous, immoral and godless, and therefore incompatible with Poland s cultural and historical tradition, threatening its national identity and sovereignty. Results presented in Fig. 6 confirm the findings of the quantitative analysis of spatial shifts. Over time, PiS turned its attention to the issue of moral politics and shifted towards the application of radical right frames. As the name suggests, in the early years, the party s main issue was law and order (legalist issues such as tightening the penal code, anti-corruption, death penalty) which rose to importance via corresponding anti-crime measures of a highly popular President of Warsaw, Lech Kaczyński, future President of Poland. Any references to national identity were rather clad in the robes of patriotism derived from historical independence struggles and traditions (PiS 2001 in Słodkowska 2002: 92) and articulated as real-political raison d etat. The data confirms this finding, as in the period of radical right frames relating to Catholic, traditional Polish values, and traditional family are 8 The last amendment that made it through to the third reading was a conservative constitutional amendment proposed by the PiS/LPR/Samoobrona government in A liberal amendment submitted in 2012 by Ruch Palikota did not even make it through the first reading. 21

23 not prominently represented. If at all, they were articulated in singular debates on the issue especially by the rightmost wing of the party personified by Marek Jurek and Artur Zawisza. 9 Fig. 6. Distribution of summarized narratives of Threat to Catholic Values, Traditional Polish Values and Traditional Family among LPR and PiS, in percent of total party statements in the Polish moral politics debates. Source: Authors calculations. Nonetheless, as again visible in Fig. 6, at least since the 2004 referendum on Poland s EU accession and the 2005 elections, PiS readily started to feature narratives of threat to Catholic, Polish traditional values and traditional family. In 2005, PiS published a separate document called The Catholic Brochure (authored mostly by the aforementioned rightmost fringe of the party) that described religion, as a fundamental fact of our national life (PiS 2005: 7) and the necessity to defend it coming from allegedly raising threat of modern moral relativism and revolution aimed at the pillars of our civilization (PiS 2005: 9). In that period, the salience of the EU-issue helped the hard eurosceptic LPR to repeatedly enter the parliament. Still, after 2005, the issue lost its salience, giving way to socio-economic issues and the PiSinduced polarization between social and liberal Poland (de Lange/ Guerra 2009: 537; Minkenberg/Pytlas 2012: 218). In this context, PiS successfully completed its ideological shift and obtained ownership over the LPR narratives of threat to Catholic values, applying 9 Both politicians left the party in 2007 over the dispute surrounding the failed attempt to introduce a ban on abortion into the constitution. The politicians later formed the splinter party Prawica Rzeczpospolitej. In 2012, Artur Zawisza became one of the leaders of the extreme right Ruch Narodowy (National Movement). 22

24 them to their liberal internal counterparts, the Civic Platform, and their voters (Pytlas 2009; Minkenberg/Pytlas 2012: 219). With the LPR vanishing from the Parliament and the Polish political life, PiS kept its religious-fundamentalist profile, now not on the fringes, but in the middle of the party ideology. Whereas the extent of its use was reduced in the years by the diminished salience of this issue, the parliamentary elections of 2011 again reinforced the latent liberaltraditionalist conflict. The issue salience of religiously derived narratives was further enhanced by the growing popularity of the left-liberal Ruch Palikota with its anti-clerical and liberal moral politics stances. As visible in Fig. 6, since 2010 PiS not only upheld, but also enhanced its positional shift to the religious-fundamentalist right. This finding, assumed also in the quantitative part of the analysis, clearly confirms the enduring impact of parliamentary presence of radical right parties on the Polish party system. As of 2013, the liberaltraditionalist conflict remains one of the most crucial axes of cleavage division in Polish politics. Slovakia In Slovakia, the issue of minority politics has been widely associated with the Hungarian community living mostly in the southern areas of the country. Due to historical legacies of Hungarian domination over Slovak lands during the time of the Hungarian Kingdom and Habsburg Empire, the issue of the relationships between the ethnic majority and minority in the country has been a crucial issue for the radical right SNS. On a regular basis, Ján Slota and his party used radical right narratives to depict the Hungarian minority as a fifth collumn within Slovak borders. In a radicalized and non-differentiating fashion, he accussed the Hungarian minority and the Hungarian state of enduring imperialism prolonged from the Habsburg times and warned about the threat to Slovak sovereignty coming from alleged hidden irredentist and revanchist goals of the Hungarian minority and the Hungarian state (Mesežnikov 2008; Pytlas 2013: 173). After 2006, the social-populist SMER still ascribing itself to the social-democratic tradition intensified its ideological shift towards radical right value positions (Mesežnikov 2008: 31). In 2003, expert surveys placed SMER nine percentage points below the party mean for support of nationalism whereas surveys conducted after 2006 saw this indicator rise to 13 23

25 percentage points above the mean (Rybář/Deegan-Krause 2008: 511). This fact is also confirmed by the CAQDA analysis depicted in Fig. 7. Fig. 7. Distribution of summarised narratives of Irredentism, Historical Dominance as well as Threat to Sovereignty among SNS and SMER, in percent of total party statements in the Slovak debates on the Hungarian minority Source: Authors calculations. Since 2006, the ratio of SMER s articulation of notions related to Hungarian historical dominance, irredentism and threat to Slovak sovereignty in debates on the Hungarian minority has followed the trend of the SNS. In the year 2008 in the wake of the adoption of the notorious Slovak Language Law of 2009 (cf. Pytlas 2013: ) SMER even topped the ratio of similar SNS statements with over 50% of all articulated party frames in this field. Before the Hungarian and Slovak elections 2010 and 2011 and amidst the adoption of the Hungarian Dual Citizenship Law in 2010, the ratio of SMER s radical right rhetoric peaked again. As it turns out, SMER used the frames of the SNS much more punctually and strategically than PiS in the case of Poland. This is surely partly due to the fact that Fico and SMER wanted to keep their social-democratic label, also on the European level of party politics. Nonetheless, the figure provides proof of the impact of SNS on the rhetoric of SMER in regard to the Hungarian minority issue, traditional for the radical right parties in Slovakia. Hungary In Hungary, the question of the Hungarian diaspora living in adjactent countries as a result of the Trianon peace treaty after World War I constitutes a long-term and crucial part of the 24

26 country s foreign policy, or rather its specific, unique facet of nemzetpolitika ( nation policy ) (cf. Pytlas 2013: ). In contrast to the cases of Poland and Slovakia, Fidesz has pursued a strong traditionalist stance on this issue at least since their volte-face from a liberal to a national-conservative party in the mid-1990s (Kiss 2002). In 2001, the first Fidesz government adopted a legislation known as Status Law, granting the Hungarian diaspora the status of Hungarian ethnic affiliation, along with numerous social benefits. In a follow up in 2004 now in the opposition Fidesz engaged in a referendum to grant dual citizenship to Hungarians living abroad. The referendum failed as a result of low turn-out, but especially due to the campaign of the MSzP against the adoption of dual citizenship legislation remained a legitimizing tool for party competition in the field of national politics between the left-liberal and national-conservative camps (Pytlas 2013: 178). Jobbik, founded in 2003 as a movement party, has already taken active part in the proreferendum debate. After the failed plebiscite, Jobbik accentuated more or less directly depending on the context its radical rhetoric on the revision of Trianon and the reunification of Hungary s diaspora within the borders of historical Greater Hungary. Thus, as Fig. 8 shows, historical overlaying narratives referring to the need to abolish the Trianon treaty gained in importance for the Jobbik especially in the election year of Another unique feature visible in Fig. 8 was the extensive use of martyrology narratives (notions such as historical suffering, humiliation, a wound torn into the body of the organically imagined nation) related to the Trianon trauma experienced by the Hungarian diaspora living outside the Motherland s borders, again peaking in In this regard, the 2004 referendum has been portrayed as a second or spiritual Trianon and a further wound torn into the Nation, this time by the Socialists (cf. Jobbik ; Barikad ). With the growing street visibility of Jobbik and the Magyar Gárda, together with its success in the 2009 elections to the European Parliament, these notions became much more resonant in the public sphere especially among the profound public anti-socialist mood against the government of Ferenc Gyurcsány. Fig. 9 shows the impact of the aforementioned narratives on the ideological shift of Fidesz.. Assumed by the quantitative analysis but still not visible in the survey data, the CAQDA analysis clearly confirms a considerably strong impact of Jobbik on the TAN-shift of Fidesz in the electoral year of

27 Fig. 8. Distribution of summarized historical/mythic, martyrology/trauma and organic/spiritual national identity narratives of Jobbik, in percent of total Jobbik statements in the Hungarian debate on dual citizenship Source: Authors calculations. The distribution of Fidesz narratives in regard to organic or spiritual imagination of the Hungarian nation remain stable. This points to the fact, that Fidesz has already in the past argued strongly along the lines of ultranationalist, organic or cultural ethnic identity of the Hungarian diaspora in the region. Nonetheless, the rightward shift of Fidesz is noticeable by their growing co-optation of Jobbik-articulated ultranationalist narratives relating to Trianon as well as martyrological visions of the suffering of the Hungarian diaspora. Here, Fidesz together with his satellite party KDNP has among other adopted the Jobbik interpretation of the failed referendum as the second Trianon trauma brought upon the nation by the Socialists (Magyar Nemzet ; Orbán ; Orbán ; cf. Pytlas 2013). Therefore, already prior to its entry into the national parliament only by means of street visibility and electoral success on the European level, Jobbik had a profound impact on the ideological shift of Fidesz toward even more rightist positions. Furthermore, the already virulent polarization of the political scene between national-conservative and left-libertarian parties has been enhanced not only been fuelled in the socio-economic field, but also encroached upon the ultranationalist dimension related to national politics. In this matter, the primary, direct impact of Jobbik has been the introduction of these polarizing narratives into the public discourse, as well as their adoption and legitimizaton by Fidesz. 26