Fidesz and electoral reform: how to safeguard Hungarian democracy

The Hungarian government, led by Viktor Orbán, has been criticised by some international observers for undermining the country’s democracy, but how accurate is this view? Andrea Fumarola presents a comprehensive look at the effect of electoral reforms recently undertaken in Hungary. He writes that the current voting system seriously limits not only the fair representation of opposition parties and ethnic minorities, but also inhibits citizens’ participation

The European Union has an obligation to protect civil society in Hungary

New rules affecting the Central European University in Budapest have been criticised by several prominent figures in the EU and United States. Andrea Fumarola writes that the actions of the Hungarian government have been motivated in part by a desire to solidify their support base ahead of elections in 2018, and that the EU has an obligation to make its voice heard to protect the country’s civil society organisations

The Missing Link: the key to improved wound assessment

Clinicians discuss using Debrisoft to improve wound assessement, quality of life and cost effectiveness

Making the government accountable: rethinking immigration as an issue in the European Union

In the last decades, European countries have experienced two relevant waves of immigration. These ‘immigration shocks’ have contributed to increase dramatically public attention on immigration issues but also to structure political competition on both the supply and the demand side of democratic representation. While immigration issue has been traditionally conceived as a positional issue, the consensus among voters and the policy convergence of mainstream parties seem to resemble Stokes’ model and competition is on a valence issue instead of position issue. Therefore, the present paper analyses whether and to what extent voters punish incumbents for high levels of immigration. Using data from the European Election Study, the analysis confirms that while voters perceiving high levels of immigration punish incumbents, performance voting depends on individual-level attributes such as partisanship and salience, but also country-level factors like the government clarity of responsibility. Finally, immigration performance voting is not moderated by issue ownership. However, the perceived competence of parties to manage immigration reveals a direct and independent effect on incumbent vote intention.publishedVersio

Why the media helps make Hungarian elections so predictable

Hungary will hold parliamentary elections on 8 April, with polls suggesting Fidesz, led by incumbent Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, is in a strong position to hold on to power. Andrea Fumarola argues that a sharp decline in press freedom over the last decade has helped Orbán to consolidate his political position, but that the dominance of Fidesz has come at some cost to the quality of Hungarian democracy

The ‘sanction‑policy’ linkage from the perspective of citizens and the role of the party system

Research on dynamic representation stresses the effect of electoral incentives on politicians’ motivation to pursue policies in line with the preferences of the majority of the citizens. However, comparative research on the so-called sanction-policy link is still limited. The present article assesses the anticipatory effect of electoral accountability on government responsiveness from the perspective of citizens across 25 European countries. Results confirm the strong positive relationship between perceptions of electoral accountability and assessments of government responsiveness. Finally, the article examines the potential moderating effect of specific party system characteristics on people’s attitudes. Using multilevel models to analyse survey data from the sixth round of the European Social Survey, the study shows that the link between perceived accountability and responsiveness is conditional upon specific characteristics of the party system, namely fragmentation and volatility.publishedVersio