By Francisco Daniel Alvarez Langenbach

Summary: Previous literature argues that certain political periods can have a lasting attitudinal effect on the new generations. Examining the case of Viktor Orbán’s governments, this Master´s thesis argues that: (1) there is a period effect  in terms of left-right positioning; (2) Although ‘Orbán’s children’ are not more ‘Orbánist’ than their elders, they are not less so either.; (3) and attitudinal differences are more a reflect of a partisan rather than an intergenerational conflict.

For the last couple of years, we have been witnessing the emergence of illiberal leaders, movements, political parties, and/or governments that pose diverse challenges to the liberal order and scriptum of the past decades. European societies have been no exception and Hungary is probably the most notorious case since Viktor Orbán and Fidesz came to power in 2010.

Although this global phenomenon has certainly awaked the interest of scholars (e.g., Buzogány & Varga 2018; Hawkins, Riding & Mudde 2012; Mudde 2014), the extent to which people´s political attitudes and values change under illiberal rule remains largely unexplored —even in the case of Hungary, where Orbán has held power continuously ever since. The most of the literature has researched only in a unidirectional way, i.e., how people´s attitudes explain the emergence of the new right-wing challengers (e.g., Hawkins, Carli, Littvay & Rovira 2019; Lewandowsky & Jankowski 2023; Rovira & Van Hauwaert 2020), but not the other way around. Consequently, there is still an important gap in understanding the inverse relation: whether the illiberal challengers, once in power, can also shape and socializes citizen into illiberal attitudes, particularly younger generations who are being politically formed during this period.

Mannheim (1928) stressed the importance of what he called the “problem of generations”: the influence that socio-historical events have on a generation of people who “comes to age” at that specific time, giving rise to social cohorts which, in turn, can help to understand the developments or changes in a given society. Similarly, the “Impressionable-years hypothesis” underlines the effect that historical events have on the attitudes of individuals of a given generation (Dinas 2013). According to this approach, political attitudes are durably formed during late adolescence and early adulthood, roughly between the ages of fourteen and twenty-four.

Hence, in my master thesis I examine what are the effects of the illiberal period of Viktor Orbán on people´s attitudes in Hungary, and specially in those generations coming to age under illiberal rule (“Orbán´s children”). My main research question is: to what extent are the new generations “Orbánist”?

Following different bodies of literature (e.g, Antal 2017; Buzogány & Varga 2018; Hawkins et al. 2019; Kefford, Moffit & Werner 2022; Mudde 2007; Norris & Inglehart 2019; Rooduijn 2015), I define Orbánism (i.e., the specific form of illiberalism in Hungary) as a set of attitudes observed at the individual level, these being: Nativism, Anti-immigration and Pro-strong leader.

To define the cohorts I use the year of birth, spanning from 1929 to 1999. Subsequently, to assign individuals to one of three political generations, I employ the method introduced by Grasso (2014) and Grasso et al. (2017) based on the historical period during which individuals underwent the majority of their formative years. Table 1 provides descriptions of the political generations defined for this study.

Relying on data from the EuroBarometer (2004-2021) and the European Values Study (2nd to 5th wave), I consider both a cohort-based and a period-based explanation and proceed with two major steps: firstly, I carry out a descriptive analysis to understand the general left-right trend and support for political parties by each generation, in addition I conduct a Synthetic Control Method (SCM) analysis of the mean of left-right self-placement from 2004 to 2021; secondly, I focus in the three Orbánist attitudes: nativism, anti-immigrant attitude, and support for a strong leader. I describe the general trends by generations regarding the three attitudes, and then I run multivariate models to examine whether differences in Hungarian´s attitudes over time are due to period effect, cohort membership, political party alignment, or socio structural characteristics, and also to examine for the moderator and mediator effects of partisanship.

In the following, I summarize the main findings with graphs to illustrate them:

Examining the left-right distribution during the electoral years 2006, 2010, and 2018, can be observed an emptying of the left in favour of the right of the political axis (see Figure 1 below). That is, over time—and coinciding with Fidesz’s rise to power—there is a clear trend of fewer individuals identifying with the left and a growing tendency to position themselves toward the center and right.

The Figure 2 (below) presents the results of the Synthetic Control Method which compare the left-right average in Hungary with its counterfactual case (i.e., how Hungary would have been had Orbán not come to power). The trend differences between both means that Hungary is actually more rightward leaning than it would have been without Orbán. This speaks in favour of a period effect in the sense of a right-wing shift in Hungarians given the rise to power of Fidesz/Orbán.

Figures 3 and 4 present the results of the multivariate analysis for “Nativism”, one of the three Orbánist attitudes examined. The first four models correspond to multilevel linear probability model, while the fifth model corresponds to a structural equation modeling.

Figure 3 (above) shows that Orbán period has no significant effect on Nativism. Similarly, cohort membership, whether Orbán´s children or the liberal generation, does not explain a higher or lower levels of Nativism compared to older individuals (the communist generation). In contrast, supporters of Fidesz and far-right are more nativist compared to those supporting the opposition.

Furthermore, regarding moderation effects of partisanship, no significant effect is found with respect to the nativist attitudes of member of either the liberal generation or the Orbán’s children. This means, individuals from these cohorts who support Fidesz or the far-right are not less or more nativists than their generational peers  who do not align with these parties.

The findings in Figure 4 further reinforce the idea that attitudinal differences are not primarily structured by an inter-generational conflict. While partisanship -specifically for Fidesz and far-right parties- continue to have a significant effects on levels of Nativism, cohort membership shows no direct effect on whether individuals are less or more nativists.

Regarding mediation effects by partisanship, a total mediation is observed for the liberal generation. Once party alignment is included, this generation no longer exhibits a direct or total effect on Nativism. However, compared to the communist generation, individuals from the liberal generation are more likely to support far-right parties, contributing with an indirect effect to higher levels of Nativism.

Lastly, it is noteworthy that, while Orbán´s children display lower support for Fidesz (coefficient = -0.24), they also show higher support for the far-right (coefficient of 0.17). This suggests that among the youngest cohort, weaker alignment with Orbán´s party does not automatically lead to greater support for the opposition—if anything, it may even point in the opposite direction.

Considering all the Orbánist attitudes, I argue that Orbán’s children are neither more nor less Orbánist than their predecessors. This suggests that the socializing effect of consecutive Orbán governments is not as pronounced as Mannheim’s rationale would predict. Moreover, it also challenges the assumptions of Inglehart (1997) and Norris & Inglehart (2019): despite being the youngest generation, Orbán’s children do not exhibit more liberal attitudes than their elders, which undermines the authors’ argument of an intergenerational conflict between conservative older generations and a liberal youth. This leads to the conclusion that Orbán’s specific cohort effect lies in his ability to align the younger generations with the tendencies already present in older generations: he does not make them more Orbánist, but neither does he “allow” them to become more liberal.

Finally, since no significant period or cohort effects were found—consistent across all three Orbánist attitudes—while party alignment emerged as a strong predictor, it is concluded that attitudinal differences are structured more on the basis of partisan preferences than as the results of a generational divide.

References

Antal, Atilla (2017): The Political Theories, Preconditions and Dangers of the Governing Populism in Hungary. In PC 24 (1), pp. 5–20. DOI: 10.5817/PC2017-1-5.

Buzogány, Aron; Varga, Mihai (2018): The ideational foundations of the illiberal backlash in Central and Eastern Europe: the case of Hungary. In Review of International Political Economy 25 (6), pp. 811–828. DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2018.1543718

Dinas, E. (2013). Opening “Openness to Change”: Political Events and the Increased Sensitivity of Young Adults. Political Research Quarterly, 66(4), 868–882. https://doi.org/10.1177/1065912913475874

Hawkins, K, Riding, S., Mudde, C. (2012): Measuring Populist Attitudes. (University of Georgia, Working Paper Series N° 55)

Hawkins, K., Carlin, R., Liitvay, L., Rovira, C. (Eds.). (2019): The Ideational Approach to Populism. Concept, Theory and Analysis (1st ed.). Routledge.

Kefford, G., Moffitt, B., & Werner, A. (2022). Populist Attitudes: Bringing Together Ideational and Communicative Approaches. Political Studies, 70(4), 1006–1027. https://doi.org/10.1177/0032321721997741

Lewandowsky, M., & Jankowski, M. (2023). Sympathy for the devil? Voter support for illiberal politicians. European Political Science Review, 15(1), 39-56. doi:10.1017/S175577392200042X

Mannheim, Karl (1928): The Problem of Generations

Mudde, C. (2004). The Populist Zeitgeist. Government and Opposition, 39(4), 541–563

Mudde, Cas. (2007). Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe. 10.1017/CBO9780511492037.

Norris, P., & Inglehart, R. (2019). Cultural Backlash: Trump, Brexit, and Authoritarian Populism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/9781108595841

Rooduijn, Matthijs (2015): The Rise of the Populist Radical Right in Western Europe. In European View 14 (1), pp. 3–11. DOI: 10.1007/s12290-015-0347-5.

Rovira, C. & Van Hauwaert, S. (2020): The populist citizen: Empirical evidence from Europe and Latin America. European Political Science Review (2020), 12, 1–18

Image credits: © Viktor Orbán | CC BY 2.0