The post-transition Hungarian protest sector grew to an unseen size during the years of the second Orbán government. Actors from all over the political spectrum became active in a wave of contention partly inspired by the international anti-austerity protest cycle. Still, this national peak of mobilization meant rather contained events attended by the politically most active. Democracy frames gained momentum with large-scale left-liberal protests organized in defense of liberal democracy during the years when movements of the crisis in Europe mobilized precisely against its flaws. The subsequent pro-Orbán marches produced the highest turnout rates, occasionally attracting around a hundred thousand participants. They reacted to oppositional and EU critiques of the new system of “illiberal democracy” by advocating a populist conception where the emerging will of the people is in focus instead of institutional settings. Protest event analysis and secondary sources were used during the third expert seminar with Mihály Gyimesi to explain interactions between popular support and dissent.
Politics of Protest. Political Mobilizations in Hungary 2010-2014 - download PDF
Mihály Gyimesi is a doctoral candidate at the Berlin Graduate School of Social Sciences at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. He holds an MA in Political Science from Central European University. His main research interests are social movements and the media; he is working on his dissertation that seeks to explain the rise and fall of contention during the second Orbán government in Hungary.
The event is held as part of the project "Politics of protest. Understanding political protest in Central Europe" organized by the Warsaw office of Heinrich Böll Foundation in partnership with Collegium Civitas university. The Project under the academic supervision of Mateusz Fałkowski PhD. from the Collegium Civitas examines recent protests in six Central European countries. Between March and October 2015 six expert seminar discussions will examine protests taking place recently in following countries: Bosnia, Bulgaria, Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Romania. Invited country experts will discuss the background, causes and forms of current mobilizations. The case studies of marches, riots and demonstrations (mostly of 2014) will help us to develop common analytical framework for understanding political protest in CEE countries. Each seminar will be documented in a short "country paper" which will be serve as a basis of a short book summarizing our findings and proposing analytical framework.
