Why do voters support candidates who violate democratic norms? When confronted with a choice between democracy and partisan loyalty, policy priorities, or ideological dogmas, who in Hungary prioritizes democracy? This is the pressing puzzle the new study 'Identity, Partisanship, Polarization: How democratically elected politicians get away with autocratizing Hungary' aims to unravel. The study is based on a survey of 1000 respondents in Hungary and explains what voters traded democratic norms for. Through experiments on candidate selection, the respondents were presented with scenarios that closely resemble real election situations. This has made it possible to examine under what circumstances and in exchange for which political benefits certain voters tend to overlook violations of democratic principles. The results show that the democratic competence of Hungarians is low by international standards, partisanship outweighs anti-democratic behavior even more in Hungary than in other countries, and by international comparison, Hungarian voters are less likely to punish politicians for breaking democratic norms. 

Date: 9 December 2024, 16:00-17:30 

Venue: CEU Democracy Institute - 1051 Budapest, Nádor u. 15, Room 103 (Tiered)

Speakers:

Elena Avramovska is a Senior Researcher at the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung’s (FES) Office “Democracy of the Future”. Her research has been funded by the European Commission, the Swiss National Research Foundation and the Open Society Foundation. Avramovska has contributed to publications with Oxford University Press and Routledge. Her research interests are youth, democracy, gender, and polarisation. She holds an Erasmus Mundus Ph.D. in Political Sciences from the Université libre de Bruxelles and the University of Geneva, as well as an Erasmus Mundus Masters in Global Studies from the University of Leipzig and the University of Vienna.

András Bíró-Nagy is the Director of Policy Solutions, and Senior Research Fellow, Head of Department of Government and Public Policy at the HUN-REN Centre for Social Sciences. His main areas of expertise include European integration, radical right parties, contemporary social democracy, and the values of Hungarian society. His book, “The Social Democratic Parties in the Visegrád Countries” (co-edited with Ania Skrzypek), was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2023. András Bíró-Nagy holds a PhD in Political Science from the Corvinus University of Budapest, and an Msc in Public Policy and Administration from the London School of Economics.

Discussant:

Alexander Bor is a Post-doctoral Researcher at the CEU Democracy Institute’s De- and Re-Democratization Workgroup, and a Visiting Professor at CEU Vienna. He received an MA in Political Science at the CEU in 2012, and a PhD in Political Science at Aarhus University in 2018, where he also worked as a postdoc until 2022. His research focuses on how the human mind navigates social and political challenges like political polarization, online political hostility, the COVID-19 pandemic, or selecting and evaluating political leaders.

Chair:

Andreas Schedler is a Senior Research Fellow at the CEU Democracy Institute, Lead Researcher of the De- and Re-Democratization Workgroup, and a Visiting Professor at CEU Vienna. He earned his PhD from the University of Vienna. Before joining the CEU, he was a professor of political science at the Center for Economic Teaching and Research (cide) in Mexico City. A leading comparative scholar of democracy, democratization, and authoritarianism, he has conducted research on democratic consolidation and transition, authoritarian elections, anti-political-establishment parties, political accountability, and organized violence.

The official language of the conference is English.

We are looking forward to welcoming you at the event!