Hungary: Unpicking the Permissive Consensus1

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Hungary: Unpicking thePermissive ConsensusBrigid FowlerPublished online: 25 Jan 2007.

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Hungary: Unpicking the PermissiveConsensus1

BRIGID FOWLER

Hungary’s was the only referendum on EU membership held in Western

or East-Central Europe by the time of the Union’s 2004 enlargement in

which less than half the electorate participated. The ‘yes’ result washigh, reflecting broad pro-accession sentiment but also low participa-

tion, a relationship linked to the status of EU membership in the post-

communist context. This analysis focuses on explaining the low

referendum turnout. It finds that most non-participation was due to

longstanding features of Hungarian electoral behaviour and public

attitudes to the EU which feature in Szczerbiak and Taggart’s model,

namely low levels of participation in elections in general and

referendums in particular, low contestation of EU membership at elite

and mass levels, and a low intensity of EU-related preferences. It also

suggests that the kind of anti-government partisanship which in non-

post-communist settings might be translated into ‘no’ positions, in the

Hungarian case primarily contributed further to abstention.

Hungary’s EU accession referendum on 12 April 2003 took place with the

lowest turnout of any referendum on EU membership held in Western or

East-Central Europe by the time of the Union’s 2004 enlargement: 45.62 per

cent. The Hungarian poll was the only such referendum in which less than

half the electorate participated. The Hungarian ‘yes’ vote in favour of EU

accession was high, at 83.76 per cent. However, because of the low turnout,

this represented only 38.00 per cent of the electorate actively voting in favour

of EU membership (see Table 1). As a share of the electorate, this was lower

than in all other EU membership referendums except for Norway’s in 1972,

which produced a ‘no’ result (with 36.83 per cent of the electorate voting

‘yes’).

This account focuses on explaining the low turnout in the Hungarian

referendum. Low levels of electoral participation in general and in

referendums in particular, and a tendency for participation to depend on

the expected closeness of the result, are found to be part of the story. Low

turnout helps to explain the high ‘yes’ result, since those most likely to

vote were also the firmest supporters of accession. The strong ‘yes’ result

West European Politics, Vol.27, No.4, September 2004, pp.624 – 651ISSN 0140-2382 printDOI: 10.1080/0140238042000249894 # 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd.

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also reflected levels of support for EU membership which had been higher

in Hungary than other post-communist states joining the EU in 2004.

However, it is argued that the nature of Hungarian support for

membership, as measured in opinion polls up to early autumn 2002, also

helps to explain the low turnout. The high Hungarian ‘yes’ captured in

opinion polls was, at least in part, a ‘soft’ one, representing a not-

especially-mobilising default position, rather than considered personal

commitment, and not tested by significant political contestation about EU

membership or accession terms. In this respect, the accession issue stood

out in a political scene otherwise marked by intense competition, between

the two blocs in probably East-Central Europe’s most stable and well-

defined bipolar party system. In autumn 2002, however, only six months

before the referendum, this domestic political contestation was suddenly

extended to the terms, if not the fact, of EU accession. While this reduced

support for membership, it may have had a greater impact by further

depressing turnout. To add to those who did not vote in the referendum

because they never vote, because the outcome was inevitable, or because

their ‘yes’ lacked mobilising power, the non-voting camp was swelled by

those made suddenly less confident about the wisdom of accession (but

not sufficiently to vote ‘no’), and those emboldened to stay away as an

expression of anti-government partisanship.

The Hungarian referendum thus appears as the point at which a rather

depoliticised and uncontested accession process finally collided with a form

of bipolar party politics which is otherwise highly polarised and confronta-

tional. In their introduction to this collection, Szczerbiak and Taggart

highlight the factors which constrained serious contestation of EU member-

ship in East-Central Europe. The Hungarian case suggests how these factors

played out even where left–right, government–opposition political competi-

tion is normally relatively unrestrained and stark. Whereas intense bipolar

left–right competition between two major parties helped to generate a close

‘yes’/‘no’ contest and high turnout in Malta, for example, in the Hungarian

TABLE 1

RESULTS OF HUNGARY’S EU ACCESSION REFERENDUM, 12 APRIL 2003

% of registeredvoters

% of validvotes

Registered voters 8,042,272Turnout 3,669,252 45.62Valid votes 3,648,717 45.37Yes 3,056,027 38.00 83.76No 592,690 7.37 16.24

Source: National Election Office website, www.valasztas.hu.

HUNGARY: UNPICKING THE PERMISSIVE CONSENSUS 625

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context such competition was translated primarily into a non-contest between

forms of ‘yes’, some of which provided new grounds not to vote at all.

This analysis pursues the referendum turnout ‘downwards’, moving from

more general factors that accounted for the bulk of non-participation, to more

specific ones that may have made a smaller difference at lower turnout levels.

It first sketches patterns of electoral participation and support for EU

membership to early autumn 2002, to suggest the potential for low turnout

with a high ‘yes’ in the referendum. It then establishes the political context

for the referendum, involving the sudden politicisation of accession terms in

autumn 2002, and then traces the impact of this politicisation on the handling

of the referendum, the campaign and the outcome. Finally, it considers the

implications of the referendum, and relates the Hungarian case to Szczerbiak

and Taggart’s explanatory models in conclusion.

ELECTORAL PARTICIPATION IN POST-COMMUNIST HUNGARY

Electoral participation in Hungary has been relatively low even by post-

communist standards: as of spring 2004, the highest turnout in any national

poll was 73.51 per cent, in the second round of the 2002 parliamentary

elections. Electoral participation has also been highly variable: the lowest

turnout in any (valid) national poll was 45.54 per cent, in the second round of

the first post-communist parliamentary elections in 1990.2 Post-communist

turnout has thus ranged over almost 30 points, with participation in the

referendum matching the post-communist low. Hungary uses a two-round

electoral system for its parliamentary polls; its first-round turnout levels, of

65.10, 68.92, 56.26 and 70.53 per cent in 1990, 1994, 1998 and 2002

respectively, show less variation, and may give a better indication of the

country’s ‘normal’ turnout range.

Given that the referendum took place too soon after the last parliamentary

elections for any pro-participation macro-social trends to have had significant

impact, past electoral experience suggested the roughly 70 per cent turnout

recorded in those polls, the highest ever, as a maximum possible for the

referendum too. Practical factors which contribute to persistent Hungarian

non-participation – e.g. claimed difficulties in attending the polls – would

have operated in the referendum as any other election (particular problems

with the referendum date are discussed below). Moreover, a sizeable share of

Hungary’s 25–30 per cent minimum non-participation is attributable to a

‘hard core’ of non-voters who have remained disconnected from electoral

politics throughout the post-communist period and who would therefore be

unlikely suddenly to vote in the referendum. ‘Hard core’ non-voters are

concentrated among the most socio-economically disadvantaged groups,

typically display low levels of political interest, information or identification,

626 WEST EUROPEAN POLITICS

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and are effectively unmoved by, if not antipathetic to, democratic politics and

the bundle of phenomena subsumed as ‘transition’.3 Several studies have

suggested attitudes to transition as a key source of attitudes to EU

membership in East-Central Europe, although the focus has been on

determinants of ‘yes’ or ‘no’ opinion rather than participation (Tucker et

al. 2002; Tverdova and Anderson 2004; and, more generally, Fowler 2002).

Inasmuch as EU membership was part of the transition package, the share of

non-participation in the accession referendum attributable to ‘hard core’ non-

voting can be seen as expressing latent unenthusiasm for accession.

Given a historical turnout maximum of around 70 per cent, explaining the

45 per cent turnout in the accession referendum becomes a matter of

explaining further non-participation of around 25 per cent. Turnout in

referendums is likely to be affected by political factors specific to each poll.

Referendum law passed in 1989 and amended in 1997–98 provided for two

types of national referendum in Hungary: polls backed by the collection of

signatures, which if sufficient could make the poll compulsory and binding;

and those initiated purely within the political elite, the holding and the form

of which were effectively determined by the government (see Gulyas 1999;

Szoboszlai 1999; Deszo and Bragyova 2001). No issues had to be put to a

referendum. Most signature-backed campaigns having failed or been blocked,

Hungary had held three national referendums prior to its EU poll: a signature-

backed referendum in November 1989, on transition issues including most

importantly the timing/mode of presidential election; another signature-

backed referendum in July 1990, again on the presidential election mode; and

an elite-called referendum in November 1997 on accession to NATO.

Turnout in these polls was 58.03, 13.91 and 49.24 per cent respectively.

Although all three polls were binding, turnout in referendums has thus been

even more variable than in parliamentary elections. However, on the whole

referendum turnout has also been lower (as noted, sufficiently to invalidate

the 1990 poll).

Like its predecessors, the EU accession referendum was binding. However,

two features of the poll suggested that turnout would fall below even the 58

per cent maximum previously recorded for referendums:

1. Inevitable result. At no point was a ‘yes’ result in the referendum in

doubt. The lowest intended ‘yes’ vote in an opinion poll which received

wide publicity was per cent among all respondents, in January 2003. The

‘no’ vote was per cent (see Table 2). There was probably a similar lack of

doubt about a ‘yes’ result in all the East-Central European accession

referendums. However, the ‘yes’ camp in Hungary was especially large

compared to the ‘no’, being two-and-a-half times bigger even at its

weakest.


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TABLE 2PUBLIC OPINION ON EU ACCESSION AND THE ACCESSION REFERENDUM IN HUNGARY, 1997–2003

% Date ofpolling

1997Sept.

1999May

2000Jan.

2000May

2000Sept.

2001Mar.

2001May

2001Sept.

2001Oct.

2002Mar.

2002May

2002Sept.

2002Oct.

2002Nov.

2002Dec.

2003Jan.

2003Feb.

2003Mar.

Expecting personal Szonda 33 40 56 45 47benefits fromaccession*

Gallup 39 42 48 36 43

Result

Yes Szonda 60 65 67 56 60 60Gallup 71 70 74 77 59 64TARKI 68 68 64 65 65 69 71 63 60 58 59 60

No Szonda 8 8 12 22 15 15Gallup 9 10 6 8 16 16TARKI 14 13 18 15 15 15 7 15 18 18 21 18

Don’t know Szonda 23 18 22 22 25 22Gallup 8 7 13 7 15 11TARKI 10 11 11 10 7 12 18 18 18 15 17

Turnout

Sure tovote*

Szonda 60 62 64 63 63

Gallup 55 58TARKI 66 68 66 64 66 66

Result/turnout

‘Yes’ Szonda 82 79 71 72among those Gallup 78 78sure to vote TARKI 85 76 69 72 71 73‘No’ Szonda 8 9 14 15among those Gallup 15 15sure to vote TARKI 8 15 17 18 20 15

Note: *Different polling organisations use slightly different wordings for these questions, accounting for some of the variation.Sources: Szonda Ipsos data were provided by the organisation or accessed via the relevant page of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs website, at www.kulugyminiszterium.hu/kulugyminiszterium/HU/Tevekenyseg/Europai_integracio/Kozvelemenykutatas; see also Nepszabadsag, 23 Jan. 2003. Gallup data were accessed via www.gallup.hu. For October 2001and March and September 2002, the Gallup figures here are those also presented in the European Commission’s Candidate Countries Eurobarometer (via www.europa.eu.int/comm/public_opinion), for which Gallup conducted the Hungary polling. TARKI data were accessed via www.tarki.hu/integracio; see also CEORG at www.ceorg-europe.org andNepszabadsag, 30 Nov. 2002.

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2. Weak turnout requirement. There was also no doubt as to whether the

referendum would be valid. Since the reform of referendum law in October

1997, Hungarian referendums lack an explicit turnout threshold for validity.

Instead, a valid referendum result is obtained simply if it beats the alternative

and is backed by over per cent of the electorate. In the limiting case of a

referendum issue enjoying total consensus, this builds in an implicit turnout

requirement of per cent plus one, which rises in line with the degree of

contestation.

In the case of the EU referendum, the weak turnout requirement converted

into an effectively non-existent one for most voters. Just as there is a share of

the electorate that apparently never votes, there is a group making up perhaps

20–25 per cent of the total that can effectively be relied on to participate in

every poll. This group is broadly the ‘mirror image’ of the ‘hard core’ non-

voters, being socio-economically advantaged and politically engaged.

Crucially, this group overlaps considerably with the firmest supporters of

EU membership. This is due to the relationship already sketched, between

support for EU accession, and commitment to the post-communist political

and economic system more generally. This group can be characterised as

having relatively intense pro-accession preferences. At a minimum, therefore,

this elite of consistently participating accession enthusiasts could probably

have been relied on almost alone to deliver a ‘yes’ result meeting the weak

validity requirement.

Both these features of the referendum relate to the ‘degree of contestation’

factor in Szczerbiak and Taggart’s model for turnout. Partly, the suggestion is

that turnout is likely to be higher when voters perceive a closer contest,

whether between a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ or a valid or invalid result. Although no

individual-level data are available, circumstantial evidence for the existence

of this relationship in Hungary is supportive. For all post-1989 national

referendums and parliamentary elections, Table 3 presents turnout compared

to the closeness of the result, and (where data allow) the expected closeness

of the result, to cope with the greater unreliability of opinion polls in the

Hungarian context. Although other factors are clearly involved, the data

broadly suggest that Hungarians are more likely to turn out if they expect a

closer contest. As regards referendums, Hungary’s highest referendum

participation, in November 1989, came in the only plebiscite in which the

result was in doubt. Although the turnout requirement did not prevent

participation falling below 50 per cent in the 1990 referendum, the 1990 poll

was an outlier for practical and political reasons. In both referendums since

the 1997 relaxation of the turnout requirement, on NATO and the EU (i.e.

issues surrounded by relatively limited contestation), participation fell below

50 per cent.


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TABLE 3

TURNOUT AND COMPETITIVENESS,

HUNGARIAN PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS AND REFERENDUMS, 1989–2003

1989 ref.* 1990 parl. 1990 ref.* 1994 parl. 1997 ref. 1998 parl. 2002 parl. 2003 ref.

Difference between vote shares for thetwo largest parties or referendum ‘yes’and ‘no’ (points)

0.14 3.34 71.82 13.25 70.66 3.44 0.98 67.52

Difference between shares expectingvictory for each of the two largest partiesor referendum ‘yes’ and ‘no’ (points)

6 29 3 31

Turnout (%) 58.03 65.09 13.91 68.92 49.24 56.26 70.53 45.62

Notes: *50% turnout requirement for validity.Vote shares in the 1989 referendum are for the question regarding the presidential election timing/mode. Vote shares in parliamentary elections are those forparties’ regional lists in the first round.Sources: For election and referendum results/turnout: National Election Office publications and website (www.valasztas.hu); for opinion polls: for 1989,Magyar Kozvelemenykutato Intezet, in Kurtan et al. (1990: 457); for 1998–2003, Szonda Ipsos, as for Table 2.

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The 1997 NATO referendum proved a stronger pointer to the EU poll than

many expected. Hungary was the only 1999 NATO entrant to hold a

referendum on the issue. The outcome was strikingly similar to that of the EU

referendum: on the 49.24 per cent turnout, 85.33 per cent voted in favour of

NATO membership, equivalent to a ‘yes’ vote of 41.50 per cent of the

electorate. Officials and pollsters had not typically believed that the NATO

referendum represented a strong precedent for the EU poll as regards low

turnout. They pointed to the difference between the content of the two

policies, highlighting the fact that NATO membership had faced greater

political resistance and enjoyed lower support, and believing that EU

membership offered more tangible, and thus mobilising, personal benefits.

However, the relatively large share of voters continuing to report an intention

to vote in the EU poll may have misled policy-makers into underestimating

the demobilising effect of an apparently inevitable result – that is, the effect

on turnout of the (un-)competitiveness, rather than the content, of the

referendum. The final major polls before the EU referendum, from March

2003, showed 58–66 per cent of voters promising to vote, and some smaller

immediate pre-referendum surveys over 70 per cent.

One implication of the patterns of electoral participation sketched here was

that if turnout in the referendum did drop, the ‘yes’ vote would be stronger

and its margin of victory larger. This was due to the overlap already noted

between the most committed electoral participants and the firmest supporters

of membership. Although their expectations regarding the absolute turnout

level were badly wrong, policy-makers were well aware of this relationship

and the trade-off it posed, between encouraging participation and encoura-

ging a stronger ‘yes’. In opinion polls excluding those with weak or non-

existent participation intentions, the ‘yes’ vote typically exceeded 70 and

sometimes 80 per cent (see Table 2). If those expecting to vote but without an

opinion were also excluded, the ‘yes’ regularly exceeded 80 and occasionally

90 per cent. In the final large Szonda Ipsos poll before the referendum, from

March 2003, the yes-to-no ratio was 60–15 (4 to 1) among all respondents,

72–15 (4.8 to 1) among those reportedly sure to vote (63 per cent), 79–21 (3.8

to 1) among those with an opinion (75 per cent) and 83–17 (4.9 to 1) among

those with an opinion and sure to vote (55 per cent).

The similarity between the result obtained on 55 per cent of the sample and

the referendum result, obtained on a turnout ten points lower, suggests a

weaker relationship between turnout and result at the lowest turnout levels.

This suggests the existence of a small ‘hard core’ of ‘no’ voters who were not

less likely to turn out than their ‘yes’ counterparts, and who can be

characterised as having relatively intense preferences.4 However, moving

down to turnout of perhaps 55 per cent, the relationship between turnout and

result was clear, and due mainly to the fact that most ‘no’ and undecided


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voters were less likely to turn out. On the basis of the March 2003 Szonda

Ipsos figures for those with an opinion, the referendum result is compatible

with 36 per cent of ‘yes’ voters and 53 per cent of ‘no’ voters not having

participated. Presumably, ‘no’ voters’ lower participation partly reflected the

added disincentive of being on the losing side. However, inasmuch as having

a negative or non-existent attitude to EU membership to some extent

involved a distancing from the entire post-communist political and economic

system, undecided or ‘no’ voters – at least outside the ‘hard core’ – were less

likely to vote in any case. Just as appears to have occurred in the NATO

referendum (Husz 1998: 819), as those with negative, non-existent or only

weakly formed views or participation intentions dropped out, those left in

tended disproportionately to be accession enthusiasts.

In Hungary as in several other East-Central European states, therefore, the

strong ‘yes’ result in the EU accession referendum was partly the result of

low turnout. In terms of Szczerbiak and Taggart’s model for result, this might

be seen as deriving from a particular feature of public support for European

integration in the region, namely the relationship between support for EU

membership and engagement in post-communist electoral politics more

generally. As regards Szczerbiak and Taggart’s model for turnout, this

section has suggested that low levels of participation in elections in general

and referendums in particular made a turnout over 70 per cent unlikely in

Hungary; that the referendum’s uncompetitiveness pointed to turnout below

even the 58 per cent previous referendum maximum; and that a low intensity

of accession-related preferences among much of the electorate, outside a

relatively small ‘hard core’ ‘yes’ and a smaller ‘hard core’ ‘no’, similarly

pointed to low participation.

SUPPORT FOR EU MEMBERSHIP IN POST-COMMUNIST HUNGARY:

PROBING THE NATURE OF THE ‘YES’

Given the size of the ‘yes’ camp, explaining the low turnout in the Hungarian

referendum in absolute, rather than relative, terms is primarily a matter of

explaining the behaviour of voters appearing in opinion polls as accession

supporters. This applies even though the ‘yes’ vote in early 2003 was smaller

than at any time since the mid-1990s, having shrunk during the last quarter of

2002 (see Table 2). Inasmuch as turnout was likely to be reduced by any shift

away from firm pro-accession sentiment, explaining low participation in the

referendum requires some examination of the nature and development of the

Hungarian ‘yes’ camp – specifically, why it shrank in autumn 2002, and what

pre-2002 features allowed this.

Support for EU membership in Hungary had been high through the late

1990s and early 2000s. The ‘no’ camp was consistently small. Table 2


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presents Hungarian polling results from Gallup, which from autumn 2001

were those generated for the European Commission’s Candidate Countries

Eurobarometer; TARKI, the Hungarian partner in the Central European

Opinion Research Group (CEORG); and Szonda Ipsos, the firm which

conducted most polling for the Hungarian Foreign Ministry. Some surveys

recorded lower support for membership, notably the Modus/Sofres Modus/

Taylor Nelson Sofres Hungary series presented in Table 4 (discussed further

below). However, overall, the electorate appeared more enthusiastic about

membership than in any other East-Central European state set to join the EU

in 2004. This led Hungary over summer/autumn 2002 to agree with the Czech

Republic, Poland and Slovakia, its partners in the Visegrad group, that it

should hold its accession referendum first among them, in the hope of a pro-

accession ‘cascade’ effect.

Several relatively stable national features might be adduced to help explain

high support for EU membership in Hungary. However, in the mid-1990s,

support for accession had been much lower (Grabbe and Hughes 1999). The

rise in support for EU membership seemed to be due mainly to improved

national economic conditions and popular assessments of the economic and

political environment. This accords with the picture already suggested, of

attitudes towards EU membership as reflecting broader phenomena, although

for present purposes it is sufficient to take indicators of opinion on ‘transition’

together with indicators on less specifically post-communist conditions (see

Tucker et al. 2002; Tverdova and Anderson 2004). Table 4 presents the

results of polling by Modus (later Taylor Nelson Sofres Hungary), the

Hungarian partner in the European Commission’s Central and Eastern

Eurobarometers of the early/mid-1990s, which continued with the survey

after the Commission discontinued its series in 1997. Broadly, until the

December 2002 survey, the intended referendum ‘yes’ vote moved in tandem

with general political and economic sentiment. The suggestion that economic

sentiment, in particular, underpinned rising and then high Hungarian support

for EU membership is strengthened by the importance of economic issues to

Hungarian public opinion: Hungarians consistently award greatest impor-

tance to socio-economic issues in domestically oriented polling, and named

hoped-for economic improvements as their most important reason for

supporting EU accession, and uncompetitiveness and the costs of member-

ship among their most prominent fears.

General economic and political conditions may have continued to shape

popular sentiment on the EU partly because of a relative lack of elite

contestation surrounding accession and the EU before autumn 2002. As

Szczerbiak and Taggart discuss in their introduction to this collection, the

link with post-communist transformation, including foreign policy reorienta-

tion, constrained contestation about the goal of EU membership across East-


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TABLE 4

TRENDS IN ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL SENTIMENT IN HUNGARY, 1995–2002

Date of polling 1995Nov.

1996Nov.

1997Nov.

1998Nov.

1999Nov.

2000Nov.

2001Dec.

2002Dec.

Government Socialist-led FIDESZ-led Socialist-led% unless otherwise stated

1. GDP growth (annual figure) 1.5 1.3 4.6 4.9 4.2 5.2 3.8 3.52. Change in per capita real income(annual figure)

7 5.4 7 0.6 0.9 3.6 0.8 4.3 3.6 -

3. Thinking things in general incountry going in right direction

10 14 28 31 30 27 31 38

4. Satisfied with development ofdemocracy

20 21 30 34 26 28 29 33

5. Thinking establishment offree market economygood for country

38 37 37 41 40 34 - -

6. Thinking household financialsituation improved inlast year

5 6 10 13 14 13 16 23

7. Expecting household financialsituation to improve in next year

11 15 22 23 21 22 20 26

8. Government performance rating(1–100 scale)

44* 44* 48* 47 42 39** 44 56

9. Supporting largest government party 13 15 19 31 19 19 27 4010. Intending to vote ‘yes’ in accession referendum 46 47 57 61 57 57 56 48

Notes: *Fourth-quarter averages; **April.Sources: Rows 1–2: Hungarian Central Statistical Office; rows 3–7, 10: Modus/Sofres Modus/Taylor Nelson Sofres Hungary, in Kurtan et al. (successiveeditions 1996–2003); row 8: Szonda Ipsos, for 1995–1997 in Kurtan et al. (1998a), for 1998–2002 in Kurtan et al. (successive editions 1999–2003); row 9:Szonda Ipsos, in Kurtan et al. (successive editions 1996–2003).

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Central Europe (see also Henderson 2002). In Hungary, as in most other

states, the only parties explicitly to oppose EU membership at various times

were relatively small, non-governing ones of the extreme left and right: the

Workers’ Party, the extra-parliamentary successor to the unreformed wing of

the former Communist Party, and the Party of Hungarian Justice and Life,

which entered the legislature in 1998.

However, in Hungary the treatment of EU accession as ‘foreign policy’

seems to have been more pronounced, and to have gone on for longer, than in

several other East-Central European states. Mainstream elite treatment of the

EU was particularly heavily focused on whether and when Hungary might get

in, rather than post-accession topics; but even the details of the accession

process were subject to relatively limited debate. This maintained a

distancing of the EU issue from, and a predominance of, domestic politics.

Hungarians consistently ranked EU accession among the least important

issues facing their governments; and analysis of the Hungarian media agenda

by Torok found that accession-related issues did not feature among prominent

news items in 1999, and made up five per cent of items in 2000, two per cent

in 2001 (featuring in three weeks) and four per cent in the first eight months

of 2002 (two weeks) (Torok 2000; 2003; Toth and Torok 2001; 2002).5

Such EU-related mainstream elite competition as occurred tended to be of

two types:

1. Valence. Left- and right-wing politicians attacked each other either for

being too compliant vis-a-vis the EU, or, more prominently, for allegedly

jeopardising Hungary’s prospects of getting in as soon as possible. The sense

that Hungary was still campaigning for its accession also affected elites’

handling of public opinion. Foreign policy-makers frowned on the raising of

potential accession-related problems, because they believed that the existence

of high public support aided the membership effort. However, they also

assumed that accession would take place, and that high but uninformed

support for membership threatened a post-accession backlash. Before any

other East-Central European state, Hungary therefore formulated in 1995 and

implemented from 1996 an EU ‘communications strategy’, housed in the

Foreign Ministry and initially co-financed by the EU’s PHARE programme

(see Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2002; Lakatos 2003).

The strategy was to be the basis for securing a ‘yes’ result in the accession

referendum, which was envisaged already by the mid-1990s, under the

influence especially of the EFTA states’ plebiscites in 1994. The referendum

was more purely a non-partisan elite project even than the other formally

elite-initiated referendum, on NATO, which came about largely due to

pressure from the Workers’ Party. Until the EU referendum, policy-makers

regularly credited the communications strategy for Hungary’s high levels of


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public support for membership. However, the referendum outcome throws

into relief the fact that the strategy was conceived as preparing public opinion

for accession, not for making a decision about accession – or, at least, not a

decision about which the strategy could leave any doubt.

2. Instrumentalisation. Mainstream left and right both used references to

‘Europe’ or the EU to bolster attacks on rivals, or arguments for preferred

positions, which would have been made in any case. Again, this usage was

common across East-Central Europe, but it may have been especially

prominent in Hungary. Most importantly for present purposes, as the 2002

parliamentary elections approached, right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orban,

of FIDESZ-Hungarian Civic Party, began to argue that the continuation of his

domestic policies, at least ahead of membership, was required if Hungary’s

EU accession was to be a ‘good’ rather than ‘bad’ one. For example, Orban

argued that state support was needed if Hungary’s small businesses were to

survive in the Union. This implicitly raised the prospect of EU accession

carrying some risks, at least under a left-wing government. In opposition

before 1998, Orban had already proved his willingness to use Western

integration processes for domestic purposes by heading a campaign for a

simultaneous plebiscite on land ownership which nearly jeopardised the

timely holding of the NATO referendum.

However, Orban’s stance in office also reflected substantive differences

between parties’ approaches to accession and conceptions of the EU

(Navracsics 1997; Batory 2001; 2002; Fowler 2004). The mainstream right,

by 2002 comprising FIDESZ and the small Christian Democrat/conservative

Hungarian Democratic Forum, was more inclined to see accession as a return

to Hungary’s historical and cultural roots, including Christianity. Combined

with greater confidence about Hungary’s post-communist achievements, this

made FIDESZ more likely to present EU membership as an entitlement, and

accession as a matter of winning the best terms. Most visibly, this translated

into public criticism from Orban in opposition before 1998 as to the likely

toughness of the governing Socialists’ negotiating stance, and in office after

1998 as to the EU’s perceived tardiness and meanness regarding enlargement.

However, FIDESZ was also more willing to present life after accession as

involving hard national bargaining. The mainstream left-liberal camp,

comprising the social democratised reform communist successor Socialist

Party and the small liberal Alliance of Free Democrats, was more inclined to

stress the continuing role of the EU as a transition ‘anchor’ and to present a

more benign, less conflictual picture of EU accession and membership. The

Socialists tended to associate the EU with economic modernisation and social

and employment rights, and the Free Democrats to see the Union as the

embodiment of liberal and democratic rights and values. These differences


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led several observers to identify greater enthusiasm for European integration

on the left than the right, and some to tag Orban as a type of ‘Eurosceptic’

(Taggart and Szczerbiak 2001; but see Kopecky and Mudde 2002; Szczerbiak

and Taggart 2003).

However, there is little evidence that such differences penetrated to the

mass public. If voters distinguished between the major parties, it tended to be

on ‘valence’ lines, with supporters of a party ranking it as more ‘pro-

European’ than rival formations. Meanwhile, in line with the dominance of

general political and economic sentiment in shaping EU-related opinion,

government supporters at any time were typically more pro-membership than

opposition voters.

In terms of the referendum, the nature of Hungarian elite treatment of the

EU before autumn 2002 mattered for two reasons. First, it established few

individual stakes in accession. The share of the electorate expecting

personal benefit from accession was low (see Table 2). This applied in

several other East-Central European states, but the gap between this share

and the share intending to vote ‘yes’ was especially large in Hungary –

considerable shares of those who expected no personal benefit continued to

show up in the ‘yes’ camp. However, an expectation of personal gain was

strongly correlated with an intention to vote in the referendum – broadly,

such an expectation, or at least of advantage for the country overall,

characterised ‘hard core’ ‘yes’ voters. In terms of Szczerbiak and Taggart’s

model, this again suggests that a low intensity of preferences among many

reported accession supporters made the headline ‘yes’ vote less mobilising

than it appeared.

Second, the limited nature of political contestation meant that public

opinion had not been tested or given the opportunity to harden, as seems to

have occurred to some extent in Poland by the late 1990s (Szczerbiak 2001).

This made pro-accession opinion ‘vulnerable’. Instead, in contrast to

developments in Poland, a relative lack of elite contestation about accession

in Hungary may have helped to sustain high, but ‘soft’, support for

membership, via three mechanisms: by leaving public awareness of some

potential accession-related problems low or vague; by sustaining something

of a taboo about challenging accession, reinforcing purely conformist pro-

accession norms; and by providing no partisan cues for mainstream voters to

move against accession. The suggestion that low political contestation helped

to sustain high Hungarian support for membership is strengthened not only by

developments from autumn 2002 (to be discussed in the next section) and in

other East-Central European states, but also by the precedent of Hungarian

support for NATO membership, which fell in 1995 and again in summer/

early autumn 1997, when parties politicised the issue (Somogyi 1999;

Csapody and Maloschik 2000).


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Beneath the headline figures, Hungarians’ attitudes on a number of issues

suggested that they might not be as favourable towards EU membership as

the large reported ‘yes’ vote indicated. Such issues included prices and

foreign land ownership, for example. Furthermore, some indicators suggested

that attitudes towards the EU had been toughening slightly in the years before

2002, without this showing up in the main ‘yes’ vote. Hungarians did not

show up in surveys as less informed about EU-related issues than most other

East-Central European populations. Overall, however, the impression is of an

electorate still largely in ‘default’ mode, without an elite lead or enough

fluency in accession-related issues to begin to ‘join up’ some of its views into

a more ‘Eurosceptic’ headline position. There appeared to be considerable

potential for a share of Hungarian public opinion to be converted to more

visibly EU-unenthused behaviour.

THE POLITICAL CONTEXT: ACCESSION POLITICISATION IN

AUTUMN 2002

The accession referendum was framed by Hungary’s most intense post-

communist electoral struggle, in the April 2002 parliamentary polls. Orban’s

FIDESZ-led right-wing coalition narrowly lost office to a new Socialist-Free

Democrat administration. The key feature of the post-election scene was thus

the existence of a right-wing opposition in search of an issue. More

specifically, two features of FIDESZ’s position were relevant. First, left–right

polarisation was such that Orban was normally committed to opposing the

government’s position, whatever the issue. Second, from the latter stages of

the 2002 parliamentary election campaign, Orban had been seeking to appeal

beyond the FIDESZ electorate to radical right voters such as supporters of

Hungarian Justice and Life, who were disproportionately opposed to EU

membership. Given that Orban had already shown willingness to instrumen-

talise accession-related issues for domestic purposes, and that some of the

most sensitive accession negotiations, on agricultural subsidies and the

budget, fell under the new administration, autumn 2002 may have seen

greater contestation of EU-related issues in any case.

A conjunction of two further factors gave Orban particular incentive and

opportunity to politicise the issue. First, there were local elections in October

2002. Second, the legislature had to amend the constitution, to give itself the

authority to transfer or share sovereignty in the way involved in EU

membership, before it could call a referendum on the issue. However,

constitutional amendment requires a two-thirds majority of all MPs. Given

that the new Socialist-liberal administration commanded only 51 per cent of

the seats, this effectively gave FIDESZ a veto over Hungary’s ability to

amend the constitution and call the referendum.


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Launching FIDESZ’s local election campaign in mid-September, Orban

announced that the party was attaching conditions to its support for the

constitutional amendment. Initially, FIDESZ sought government commit-

ments to continue with the economic policies which FIDESZ had pursued in

office and which it argued were needed to protect vulnerable groups from the

potentially negative effects of accession – namely, more support for small

businesses and farmers, and higher wage rises. Weak commitments were

made on these issues in a September declaration in which all the

parliamentary parties re-stated their determination to achieve constitutional

amendment by the end of 2002.

Latterly, FIDESZ exerted its leverage over the content of the

constitutional amendment and, most importantly in terms of the

referendum, the timing of the poll. Socialist Prime Minister Peter

Medgyessy saw the expected referendum ‘yes’ result as authorisation to

sign the accession treaty. He therefore wanted the poll before the signing

ceremony scheduled for Athens on 16 April 2003. This sequencing

followed the precedent set as regards NATO accession, but reversed

previous thinking on the EU case. FIDESZ viewed the referendum partly

as a retrospective poll on the accession terms, and therefore wanted the

treaty signed first.

The two sides eventually agreed to hold the referendum as late as possible

before the treaty signing, after the European Parliament had approved the text

on 9 April, while still leaving enough time for all legal procedures related to

the declaration of the result, and for parliament to give its own authorisation

to sign the treaty, following the binding mandate which it was assumed would

be forthcoming from the electorate. This put the referendum on 12 April. The

date was inserted into the constitutional amendment, along with the

referendum question, as part of the effort to keep all parties bound into the

deal.

However, 12 April was a Saturday, rather than Hungary’s normal

Sunday polling day. Moreover, it was the Saturday at the start of the week

before Easter, after school vacations had started. Given that many

Hungarians work on a Saturday or go away for the weekend even in

normal weeks, and that church attendance may boost participation in

Sunday elections, the polling date was probably unhelpful to turnout.

Voting away from home is possible but must be arranged in advance. The

date appears to have been fixed purely as the result of inter-party

negotiations, without consultations with electoral specialists who might

have cautioned against it.

Finally, as the wrangling over the constitutional amendment approached a

resolution, Orban focused his attention on the EU’s Copenhagen summit and

Hungary’s accession terms. In a stance which probably gained the greatest


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domestic mass prominence, FIDESZ bitterly attacked the Socialist-led

government for what were seen as its poor negotiating results and their likely

domestic effects.

Orban’s moves in autumn 2002 represented an intensification of his

previous positions, namely his willingness to use accession-related issues for

domestic purposes, and his claim that the greatest potential accession-related

problems arose from the nature and policies of the left-liberal camp, rather

than accession itself. At no point did it appear likely that FIDESZ would

block the constitutional amendment so as to jeopardise Hungary’s accession

timetable. Orban continued to stress that he supported EU membership, and

FIDESZ held a special congress in early December to put its pro-accession

stance on record, albeit now as a self-designated ‘Euro-realist’ party,

adopting the label coined by Vaclav Klaus’ Civic Democratic Party in the

Czech Republic.

However, to much Hungarian opinion, Orban’s stance in autumn 2002

seemed a radical shift away from the previous pro-accession elite consensus,

for which he was roundly attacked by the left-liberal camp. Torok (2003)

shows that accession was on the media agenda almost continuously from

mid-September until the accession talks were concluded and the constitu-

tional amendment passed in mid-December, accounting for seven per cent of

prominent issues (but a much larger share of coverage in terms of quantity) in

the last third of 2002.

The effect of Orban’s position was the drop in public support for EU

membership seen between October 2002 and January 2003 (see Table 2). As

already noted, a January 2003 Szonda Ipsos poll which gained wide publicity

showed the ‘yes’ vote down to 56 per cent and the ‘no’ up to 22 per cent. For

the reasons discussed above, this shift away from firm pro-accession

sentiment probably contributed further to low turnout. Orban’s stance might

have weakened all three of the mechanisms via which it was suggested a lack

of political contestation was previously sustaining high support for member-

ship: by increasing fears about the impact of accession; by weakening the

taboo on the conversion of such concerns into more open anti-accession

positions; and by injecting a purely partisan element into attitudes to EU

membership, primarily among higher status and more politically engaged

strata, over the top of the more well-established patterns of support outlined

earlier. The December 2002 survey in Table 4 clearly suggests a ‘decoupling’

of EU-related attitudes from more general economic and political sentiment.

Following wage and welfare handouts, the Socialist-led government had won

the local elections and was enjoying high levels of support, while popular

sentiment on economic conditions was relatively strong. However, support

for accession had returned to lows not seen since the more economically

depressed 1996–97 period.


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Several scholars have been sceptical about a role for partisan cues in

shaping attitudes to EU membership in the post-communist context, owing to

the fluidity of party systems and the lack of voter-party links (Tucker et al.

2002; Tverdova and Anderson 2004). However, Hungary offers one of the

more likely post-communist environments for the operation of such cues,

owing to the relative stability of the party line-up and the development of

stronger partisan identifications by the early 2000s, under the impact of clear

and intense left–right competition between only two major parties. According

to Szonda Ipsos, by March 2003 the Socialists had retained 86 per cent of

their 2002 parliamentary election voters, and FIDESZ 81 per cent.6 In terms

of Szczerbiak and Taggart’s model, partisan cues in Hungary thus appeared

relatively credible, at least among parties’ own electorates. The strongest

evidence that partisan cues drove the autumn 2002 opinion poll shift is

provided by the partisan differences presented in Table 5. In October 2002,

there was almost no difference between the support for EU membership by

Socialist and FIDESZ voters. By January 2003, whereas support for EU

membership among Socialist voters had fallen by only two points, among

FIDESZ voters the ‘yes’ had dropped by 21 points, to 53 per cent.

REFERENDUM AND CAMPAIGN MANAGEMENT

Party politics was affecting referendum arrangements before publication of

the ‘shock’ January 2003 poll figures. As well as polarisation and lack of

trust, the legacy of the 2002 parliamentary polls was a particular awareness in

the left-liberal camp of Orban’s capacity to shape and mobilise public

opinion. As the new Socialist-led administration considered referendum

arrangements in summer/early autumn 2002, a wish to minimise prospects

that Orban would move away from a ‘vote yes’ position (or achieve success if

he did so) became a dominant consideration. This was to be achieved by

distancing the main official ‘yes’ campaign from the government, to reduce

the extent to which the campaign and the ‘yes’ position were seen as partisan.

Management of the main ‘yes’ campaign was therefore established not in

the Foreign Ministry but in a new government-funded quango, the EU

Communications Public Foundation (EUKK). The EUKK was to organise

campaign events and put contracts for pro-accession advertising and public

relations out to commercial tender. The EUKK was directed by a

government-named board, headed by a senior academic economist. He was

joined by a political scientist, a businessman and a historian identified with

the left, and a businessman and two more economists/former ministers

identified with the right. In the professional backgrounds and partisan

identifications of its board members, therefore, the EUKK realised the goal of

being distinct from the government. However, the EUKK’s establishment


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TABLE 5

PARTISANSHIP AND ATTITUDES TOWARDS EU MEMBERSHIP IN HUNGARY

Date of polling January 2000 July 2002 October 2002 January 2003 February 2003 March 2003Government FIDESZ-led Socialist-led

% Socialistvoters

FIDESZvoters

Socialistvoters

FIDESZvoters

Socialistvoters

FIDESZvoters

Socialistvoters

FIDESZvoters

Socialistvoters

FIDESZvoters

Socialistvoters

FIDESZvoters

For Hungary, expectingaccession to beAdvantageous 67 64 68 67 57 42 67 46 71 49Disadvantageous 19 19 14 19 30 47‘Yes’ vote 73 81 73 74 71 53 78 53 76 54

Notes: Voters are those naming the relevant party in answer to the question: ‘If there were parliamentary elections this Sunday, which party would you votefor?’Source: Szonda Ipsos, as for Table 2.

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was also problematic on several grounds, some of which were acknowledged

afterwards by the body itself (EUKK 2003):

. It took time. The first tangible EUKK activities appeared in late January

2003. Given that Hungary had been running an EU communications

programme for eight years, it was ironic that lack of time was agreed

afterwards to have been one of the ‘yes’ campaign’s biggest problems

(Csonka 2003).. The insertion of a new institution into the EU communications scene

caused teething and coordination problems, and perhaps rivalry. The

EUKK board members may also have lacked awareness of the field. As a

result, the accumulated expertise and established networks in EU

communications linked to the Foreign Ministry may have been accessed

less than was possible.. Relatedly, the EUKK did not have a monopoly over the ‘yes’

campaign. Its activities were only one, albeit the most prominent, of

several sources of pro-accession messages. As well as general

government campaigning, the Foreign Ministry stepped up its commu-

nications programme, establishing a telephone hotline – but the EUKK

ran its own hotline, too. Other ministries ran pro-accession events

aimed at particular groups or sectors, as did Budapest and other local

authorities. The four parliamentary parties, the governing Socialists and

Free Democrats, and FIDESZ and the Democratic Forum in opposition,

ran a joint travelling roadshow, visiting around 50 locations from late

2002. Individual parties also ran their own campaigns, with varying

degrees of intensity, stressing their particular versions of the EU, but

mostly associating the EU with general goods such as ‘the return to

Europe’ and economic development. This multiplicity of actors and

activities meant that the ‘yes’ campaign failed to narrow to a few key

messages.. Most importantly, the EUKK still probably fell between all stools as

regards its political status. On one hand, its activities lacked the

familiarity or weight which would have come from the involvement of

major political figures. On the other, under the circumstances of spring

2003, the running of a purely ‘yes’ campaign could not be regarded as a

non-partisan activity. Advocates of a ‘no’ did feature at some EUKK-

sponsored events, but the EUKK felt unable to fund a ‘no’ campaign in

the absence of explicit government authorisation. However, the ‘no’ camp

contended that if the EUKK’s function was to ‘raise society’s level of

knowledge related to the EU, present the opportunities and challenges that

go with accession and the effects of EU membership in everyday life, and

ensure the accessibility of information related to the EU’,7 it should be


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funding a ‘no’ campaign as well as a ‘yes’. They pointed to the public

funding of both ‘yes’ and ‘no’ campaigns in EU-related referendums in

EU states such as Sweden and Ireland. The ‘no’ camp’s critique went to

the heart of the ambiguity that had always surrounded Hungary’s

‘communications’ strategy, which had aimed to increase information

levels, but only so as to strengthen one opinion, and on the assumption

that accession was going to take place.

In the absence of public funding for a ‘no’ campaign, the balance of

material resources was overwhelmingly in favour of the ‘yes’ camp.

Although hard data were not available, the ‘no’ camp was restricted to

campaigning via flyers, rallies and the radical right media. In political terms,

too, the credibility of the ‘no’ camp was limited. The Workers’ Party

abandoned its opposition to EU accession, finding some gains to be had from

membership and arguing that Hungary had ‘burnt its bridges’ regarding its

integration into international capitalist structures in any case. This left the

‘no’ camp confined to the radical right, including Hungarian Justice and Life

(now out of parliament again), the radical diasporic World Federation of

Hungarians, and a mushrooming number of smaller groupings. Nineteen of

these joined together in a ‘Movement for a Free Hungary’. ‘No’ campaigners

were explicit that they did not reject ‘Europe’ but rather the EU’s current

form and/or Hungary’s accession terms and/or timing. They complained that

the referendum question – ‘Do you agree that Hungary should become a

member of the European Union?’ – left no scope for the expression of such

positions. However, they often wrapped their concerns about the economic

impact of accession into campaigning on longstanding radical right themes,

such as anti-(global-)capitalism, anti-communism, anti-immigrationism, anti-

Semitism and anti-Americanism. The latter was boosted by opposition to the

war in Iraq, which overshadowed the referendum run-up in general. Previous

elections had shown that such positions lacked broad appeal.

The contest between ‘yes’ and ‘no’ may have been more one-sided than

originally envisaged, in ways that increased the perceived partisan nature of

the main ‘yes’ campaign, despite the government’s intentions, and tended to

reduce turnout. Shaken by the January 2003 poll figures, the government may

have over-reacted, and appeared to privilege re-inflating the ‘yes’ vote over

engaging in debate or encouraging turnout. In light of the polls, the latter was

not expected to be problematic. Given that doubts about membership were

primarily identified with the political right, this stance was perceived by some

in that part of the political spectrum as a dismissive and partisan failure on

the government’s part to engage with their concerns. For some, the fact that

the administration was led by reform communist successor forces made the

campaign especially reminiscent of communist-era political campaigns, when


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contestation was limited and the result pre-ordained. Some, such as the

radical right-wing journalist Zsolt Bayer (2003) in an article entitled ‘Agit-

prop’, called for a ‘no’ purely on such partisan grounds. A more common

response among some, pro-accession, right-wing voters was probably to stay

away, to avoid appearing to endorse the government and its handling of the

campaign. Asked afterwards in a small Szonda Ipsos telephone poll, 40 per

cent of FIDESZ supporters said that they had not voted, against 20 per cent of

Socialist voters.8 In light of the referendum turnout, several officials and

commentators regretted afterwards that the ‘no’ camp had not been given

greater exposure. A precedent is again suggested by the NATO referendum,

in which the ‘yes’ campaign, again under a Socialist-led administration, was

similarly rather heavy-handed (Csapody and Maloschik 2000).

Right-wing voters also probably found the style and content of the EUKK-

backed advertising least sympathetic. Table 5 suggests the partisan way in

which the ‘yes’ campaign was received: while the ‘yes’ vote among Socialist

supporters went up by 5–7 points between January and March 2003, it moved

by only one point among FIDESZ voters. However, the EUKK-backed

advertising was more broadly problematic in terms of encouraging turnout.

Owing mainly to the lack of time, the EUKK-backed advertisers went for a

glossy but defensive and generalised campaign of press advertisements,

billboards and broadcast media spots, featuring sports and entertainment

personalities, and giving reassuring answers to questions including ‘Will I be

able to open a cake-shop in Vienna?’ ‘Are the girls cute in the EU?’ and ‘Can

we still eat poppy-seed pudding?’ Although the advertisements were

attention-grabbing and addressed some anti-EU myths that were circulating

by this stage, even pro-government voices charged that they were

inappropriate to the nature of accession. The fact that the campaign may

have seemed to be emerging from an institutional vacuum reinforced the

impression that it resembled a normal commercial advertising drive rather

than a political campaign.

Spending on the ‘yes’ campaign was probably less than the total funds

mobilised for the 2002 parliamentary elections. Spending by the government

and EUKK, including the latter’s operating costs but excluding spending by

parties and other bodies, was estimated at 4–5 billion forints (e16–20

million),9 whereas the best estimates suggest that the Socialists and FIDESZ

might have mobilised up to 4 billion forints each in 2002. The main tenders

issued by the EUKK for the advertising, public relations and direct marketing

elements of the campaign were worth over 700 million forints in total (e2.9

million) (Csonka 2003), whereas the value of advertising alone taken out by

all parties combined in January–April 2002 is put at 1.6 billion forints (e6.6

million) (Juhasz 2002). However, the ‘yes’ campaign was still an expensive

one, and, more importantly, perceived as such, in the absence of the


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legitimacy and point which surrounds party advertising in a tight contest.

Some EUKK-backed events and activities were better received than the

advertisements. However, even these primarily associated the EU with a

general ‘feel-good factor’, and like the advertisements failed to establish

individual stakes either in membership or in referendum participation.

Even as the campaign focused on bolstering pro-accession opinion, it

signalled that a ‘yes’ result was already secure. This again tended to reduce

incentives to vote. For example, events to celebrate a ‘yes’ result were

advertised; a public clock was launched which counted down to the date of

accession (not the referendum, as in Poland); and there was a wrangle over

the make-up of Hungary’s delegation to the accession treaty signing. Overall,

the ‘yes’ campaign may thus have reinforced three of the factors which were

suggested as contributing to the low turnout: a sense of the uncompetitiveness

of the poll; a lack of intense and mobilising preferences among ‘yes’ voters;

and the existence of partisan reasons, if not to vote ‘no’, then at least to stay

away.

However, the referendum campaign did see support for membership

recover, to the levels seen before January 2003, although not October 2002

(see Table 2). The ‘no’ camp made no headway. In this respect, the balance

of campaign resources in Szczerbiak and Taggart’s model made a marginal

difference to the result. One factor mediating the effect of the campaign was

Orban’s stance. The opposition leader moderated his criticisms of the EU and

Hungary’s accession terms. However, while continuing to back a ‘yes’, and

stating explicitly that the referendum should not be treated as a vote on the

government, Orban did not condemn those planning to vote ‘no’ and did not

campaign especially vigorously. Rather, he stressed even more strongly that

the key issues were the domestic policies to be adopted after accession.

Orban’s downplaying of the ‘yes or no’ decision was akin to the use of a free

vote by parties split on an EU-related referendum issue but keen to restore

unity afterwards. The radical right forces which had supported Orban in the

2002 parliamentary elections had broken with him again over accession,

feeling betrayed by his failure to call for a ‘no’. The crude ‘yes or no’

accession issue had thus exposed the difficulties of building a single right-

wing force ranging from the conservative Democratic Forum to the radical

right. FIDESZ seemed more able to finesse the socio-economic issues which

appeared likely to dominate the electorally relevant politics of Hungary’s EU

membership for the foreseeable future.

AFTERMATH AND OUTLOOK

The referendum probably goes down as a failure for both political camps –

for the right because it did not allow the formation of an anti-government


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front, and for the governing left-liberal camp because of the low turnout.

Neither the Socialists nor FIDESZ gained electorally from their handling of

the accession and referendum issues, so the campaign took place with the

Socialists leading FIDESZ by around seven points throughout, at around 35

and 28 per cent support respectively among all respondents.

The government put a brave face on the referendum outcome, pointing to

the high ‘yes’ result. This did reflect a broad basic pro-membership

disposition in Hungary and the absence of any credible anti-accession

alternative. Even allowing for the post-election support which the winning

side always gains in Hungary, this result was reflected in the small post-

referendum Szonda Ipsos poll: 81 per cent of respondents (including 75 per

cent of FIDESZ voters) were reportedly pleased about the result.10

However, the low turnout dominated immediate reactions. While the

government blamed FIDESZ’s not completely clear-cut stance, the opposi-

tion blamed the ‘yes’ campaign. For their part, asked in the Szonda Ipsos poll

to give reasons for their non-participation, among the 175 people who

admitted that they had not voted, 57 per cent said that the result was

inevitable; the same share said that they were too busy to vote; 51 per cent

said that accession was not important enough to mobilise them, although they

supported it; 34 per cent mentioned mixed messages from politicians; 27 per

cent said that they did not want to vote ‘no’, even though they opposed

accession; and 11 per cent blamed the weather. In the similar TARKI poll,

asked to suggest reasons for the low turnout, 33 per cent of respondents gave

lack of interest, 25 per cent the inevitability of the result and 20 per cent

campaign shortcomings.11

The post-referendum months seemed to see a return to the status quo ante

as regards treatment of EU-related issues. Given the stresses of autumn 2002

and the ‘ungratefulness’ of the referendum, the chief sense among the

political elite was relief that they could put the issue behind them. Torok

(2004 forthcoming) identified only two brief appearances for EU-related

items on the media agenda in the rest of 2003, with their share of the total

falling back below five per cent.

However, the ‘failure’ of the accession referendum probably adds to

factors making more Hungarian referendums on EU-related issues unlikely.

The NATO precedent especially suggests that the low turnout is unlikely to

generate questioning of the legitimacy of EU membership which might create

pressures for another poll. The fact that political elites did not have to call a

referendum on EU (or NATO) accession at all provides them with a degree of

cover in this respect. A large number of EU states holding referendums on the

planned EU Constitution, particularly in nearby states, might generate

pressures for such a poll in Hungary, either via the governing left-liberal

camp’s particular sensitivity to EU norms, or if FIDESZ saw potential


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political advantage in pushing for a plebiscite. However, the low visibility

and electoral salience of the institutional questions at issue in the EU

Constitution would make it hard for the government to justify a poll or for the

opposition to gain from it. In a period of renewed fiscal cuts (which saw the

demise of the EUKK in spring 2004), the costs of another referendum and

campaign would also count against a poll. The economic issues surrounding

Hungary’s effort to adopt the Euro, the second potential EU-related

referendum issue, are already impacting domestically. However, like the

other East-Central European states, Hungary has no choice as to whether to

adopt the single currency. As of spring 2004, argument centred on when, not

whether, Hungary should replace the forint.

CONCLUSION

This discussion has shown that the bulk of non-participation in Hungary’s

accession referendum was due to longstanding features of Hungarian

electoral behaviour and public attitudes to EU membership which feature

in Szczerbiak and Taggart’s model for turnout. Levels of electoral

participation were low, especially in referendums, making turnout unlikely

to exceed around 70 per cent and perhaps 60 per cent. Competitiveness was

also low. This made a valid ‘yes’ result inevitable and incentives to

participate weak, pushing likely turnout down to perhaps 50–55 per cent. The

intensity of European preferences was also low, understood here as the

(non-)existence of expectations about concrete membership effects, primarily

as regards expectations of benefit among reported ‘yes’ voters. This further

undermined the mobilising potential of much accession support.

The weak mobilising power of EU-related preferences and the sense of

uncompetitiveness were probably reinforced by the nature of the ‘yes’

campaign. However, here the Hungarian experience diverges from Szczer-

biak and Taggart’s model, since the level of campaign resources, which is

hypothesised to be positively related to turnout, was quite high. The

Hungarian case suggests the importance not only of how much is spent, but

when, how and by whom. This applies especially in a post-communist

context in which some elite actors may not be as familiar with their

electorates, or with campaigning in a pluralist context, as their counterparts in

longer established democracies, and in which high-profile top-down

campaigning is especially likely to arouse resistance. The date of the

accession referendum, not mentioned in Szczerbiak and Taggart’s model, was

also probably unhelpful to participation at the margins.

Most importantly, Szczerbiak and Taggart’s models for turnout and result

seem to need to be used in conjunction to tell the Hungarian story fully. This

was in two respects which may be more generally relevant for the post-


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communist cases. First, there is the relationship between turnout and result.

The high Hungarian ‘yes’ result can only be fully explained with reference to

the low turnout. This is due to the connection in the post-communist context

between support for European integration in the model for result, and general

electoral participation in the model for turnout. Second, there is the role of

elite cues in post-communist EU accession referendums, specifically in this

case from the main right-wing opposition party FIDESZ. Despite the

existence of intense government–opposition conflict, strong support for EU

membership at both elite and mass levels – reflecting the peculiar meaning of

EU membership in the post-communist context – made it impossible for most

anti-government partisanship to be expressed as a ‘no’. Instead, by increasing

concerns about the impact of accession, and weakening constraints on the

‘infection’ of EU-related behaviour by party politics, the injection of

partisanship into the EU issue probably further encouraged abstention.

NOTES

1. Parts of this article draw on Ph.D. research for which the support of the ESRC is gratefullyacknowledged. The author would like to thank those involved in EU communications and theaccession referendum who were interviewed or otherwise provided information in Budapestin April and September–October 2003, and Tibor Zavecz of Szonda Ipsos for providing somepolling data.

2. One national referendum, in 1990, was invalid because turnout was only 14 per cent. Forcomparative turnout data, see Siaroff and Merer (2002); Birch (2003: 60–61).

3. Discussion of turnout here draws on Bohm et al. (1995) and Angelusz and Tardos (1999;2002a; 2002b).

4. Supporting this suggestion, the referendum ‘no’ vote at county level varied only between 12and 19 per cent, whereas county-level turnout ranged from 36 to 56 per cent. On the basis ofits January 2003 polling, Szonda Ipsos identified a ‘hard core’ ‘yes’ of 32 per cent and a‘hard core’ ‘no’ of 13 per cent.

5. Torok used different methodologies for 1999, 2000 and 2001 onwards, so the figures are notdirectly comparable, but they provide a general impression.

6. Nepszabadsag, 21 March 2003.7. Government order 216/2002 on the creation of the EUKK, Magyar Kozlony, 2002, No.132,

24 Oct., article 2.8. The absolute shares of non-voters look too low because of Hungarians’ persistent

retrospective misreporting: 71 per cent of respondents said that they had voted in thereferendum; Nepszabadsag, 15 April 2003 and Magyar Hırlap, 16 April 2003. In a similarTARKI poll, the figure was 79 per cent; Nepszabadsag Online, 18 April 2003.

9. Author interview with Tibor Palankai, EUKK Board Chairman, Budapest, 29 Sept. 2003. Allcurrency conversions have been made at January 2003 exchange rates.

10. Nepszabadsag, 15 April 2003.11. Nepszabadsag Online, 18 April 2003.

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