The paper of our researchers, Balint Madlovics and Balint Magyar, published in the Journal of Right-Wing Studies, discusses the regimes of Jaroslaw Kaczynski in Poland and Viktor Orban in Hungary from the perspective of a curious paradox: they are very different in functioning but adhere to right-wing ideological frames that are very similar.
First, the authors argue “for a dual-level approach to understanding the formal and informal nature of these regimes,” and identify “Poland as a conservative autocratic attempt and Hungary as an established patronal autocracy.” After a comparative analysis of the two systems, they analyze the regimes’ common ideological frames and explain “how legitimacy panels fit the purposes of an ideology-driven regime (Poland) and an ideology-applying one (Hungary).”
Finally, the analysis is used to explain “the divergent responses of the Polish and the Hungarian regimes to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, which also brought the mutual relations of the two de-democratizing countries in the European Union to a breaking point.”
Read the full article here.
