Religious Support for the Populist Radical Right in Hungary and Italy. Leadership in Western and Central-Eastern Europe

Trabajo Escrito , 2023 , 16 Páginas , Calificación: 1,0

Política - Política internacional y análisis de países

The U.S. presidential election of Donald Trump in 2016 brought to light, what previously was seen as a sideline phenomenon in other parts of the world, with leading European far-right politicians and Hungarian PM Viktor Orbán from Fidesz being among the first state figures to congratulate on Trump's victory. In the same period, Britons held a referendum that manifested the British exit from the European Union (EU), with the leave-campaign being orchestrated first and foremost by figures from (populist radical) right parties such as Nigel Farage and his United Kingdom Independence Party. This sparked the debate on the (im-)possibility of an Alt-Europe. Two party leaders prominently ignited the European discourse on populist radical right parties (PRRPs). With Italian PM Giorgia Meloni resembling and sympathizing with Trump’s time in office, this paper attempts to compare motivations of the populist radical-right party (PRRP) sympathizers of Hungary and Italy. Explicitly, the two Constitutions take a different approach to the role of religion within the state, but the Prime ministers Viktor Orbán and Giorgia Meloni show similarities in their public appearance, frequently upholding their Christian mission. The question this work wants to answer is: What role does religion play for political sympathy for European PRRPs today? Using the ESS10 dataset, a multivariate regression is applied to approach this question.

Inspirational Leadership and Strongman Society in Western and Central Eastern Europe

Religious support for the populist radical right in Hungary and Italy.

Abstract

The U.S. presidential election of Donald Trump in 2016 brought to light, what previously was seen as a side-line phenomenon in other parts of the world, with leading European far-right politicians and Hungarian PM Viktor Orban from Fidesz being among the first state figures to congratulate on Trump’s victory (see Vetter 2017: 8). In the same period, Britons held a referendum that manifested the British exit from the European Union (EU), with the leave-campaign being orchestrated first and foremost by figures from (populist radical) right parties such as Nigel Farage and his United Kingdom Independence Party. This sparked the debate on the (im-)possibility of an Alt-Europe (McMahon 2022). Two party leaders prominently ignited the European discourse on populist radical right parties (PRRPs). With Italian PM Giorgia Meloni resembling and sympathizing with Trump’s time in office (see Lanzavecchia 2021, online), this paper attempts to compare motivations of the populist radical-right party (PRRP) sympathizers of Hungary and Italy. Explicitly, the two Constitutions take a different approach to the role of religion within the state, but the Prime ministers Viktor Orban and Giorgia Meloni show similarities in their public appearance, frequently upholding their Christian mission. The question this work wants to answer is: What role does religion play for political sympathy for European PRRPs today?

Introduction

The interest in the present work was sparked primarily after the Election to the National Assembly in Hungary in April 2022. While in the lead-up to election day it seemed that the opposition alliance United for Hungary had real chances to oust the Fidesz government from its two- thirds parliamentary majority, in the aftermath scholars point out several strands of problems in the prediction process, mainly the statistics applied in forecasts and polls (see Toka 2022), but also the media power of Fidesz should not be underestimated (see Voros 2022: 63). However, a look at Politico’s Poll of Polls (see Politico 2023: online) reveals, that the public support for the alliance in fact was close to that of Fidesz. Soon after the elections, however, it decreased rapidly. A prominent role for the oppositional failure may play the old bickering over personnel and other internal conflicts within and among opposition parties (see Gessler/Kyriazi 2019, Bos 2022).

Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s fourth consecutive landslide victory in parliamentary elections raised the interest in getting to know the European electorate better, focussing on populist radical right-wing parties (PRRPs).

One definition of populism is one of the more famous ones proposed by Mudde (2004), who defines populism as

“[...] an ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic groups, ‘thepurepeople’ versus ‘the corrupt elite’, and which argues thatpolitics should be an expression ofthe volonté générale (general will) ofthepeople. ” (Mudde 2004: 243. Italics in original)

Often, a crucial point of PRRP success is a charismatic leadership; Lendvai (2016) considers Orban Europe’s Strongman (Lendvai 2016: 148) and the later Mudde names him “[...] the main voice of far-right politics in Europe” (Mudde 2017: 257).

While several alterations to this definition have been made by other scholars (see Korosényi et al. 2020: 4), what is apparent is that European PRRPs take up context-specific ideological narrative strands such as immigration, homophobia and/or misogyny (see Minken- berg 2015; Bustikova 2015; Graff/Korolczuk 2022). These differences also affect the mobilization strategies of parties, meaning that differing common topics have different, country-specific potential to bring favourable voters to the ballots. Broadly speaking about Central-Eastern Europe (CEE) and Western Europe, Minkenberg emphasizes the special context constellations, that differentiate CEE parties from Western counterparts: The “[...] ‘triadic’ configuration of nations between nation-building processes, the existence of national minorities within the new states, and the existence of‘external homelands’ [...]” (Minkenberg 2015: 39). This configuration in post-communist states, for instance, leads to immigrants becoming more politicised in Western Europe than they do in CEE nations, as here the excluding othering focusses on ethnic minorities present in the country (cf. ibid.). Even though there are legacy- and context-specific differences within European PRRPs, there are many similarities to be found (see Vetter 2017). One of them, is a common positioning of defending Europe, especially the Christian Europe (see Vetter 2017: 179f.). Doing so, especially the Hungarian case shows the electoral demand that seems to be met by PRRPs, but also in Italy, where Fratelli d’Italia leads the government under Giorgia Meloni.

In a comprehensive book analysing what the authors call the Orban regime, they highlight the novelty of Orbanean politics, in that he is the personification of “inspirational leadership” who “[...] significantly transformed the political processes in Hungary and influenced European politics” (Korosényi et al. 2020: 1). With the personalization of politics, top-down political processes, and the minimal understanding of democracy¹, Orban transformed Hungary into a “Plebiscitary leader democracy” (Korosényi et al. 8).

In order to gain a comparative view, the Hungarian data will be compared to the Italian one. In Italy, religion, especially Catholicism, has a special place in society. Even though the constitutional laicità aims at abolishing religiously hegemonic interference in the state, Ferrari (2010) and Faraguna (2019) show the socio-political ties Catholicism has within the Italian state. Ferrari cites the constitutionaljuridical understanding ofItalian laicità; it“[...] implies a ‘regime of [denominational] and cultural pluralism [...]” (Ferarri 2010: 849), soitisnot a direct ban of religion from state affairs, but a guarantee of religious pluralism; in realiter, however, Catholicism is the hegemonic church of the state.² In contrast, Viktor Orban explicitly made the Catholic faith one of the main pillars of the country with the introduction of the Fundamental Law in 2011 (Hungarian Ministry of Justice 2021: online). The preamble of the Fundamental Law contains notions of “[...] the role of Christianity in preserving nationhood” twice (ibid.: 2), also Foundational Article Q(4) and Article XVI mention the importance of explicitly Christian culture (ibid.: 6; 11). With Giorgia Meloni as Prime minister in Italy, Viktor Orban and her possess a similar political position with a similar set of minds, both frequently referring to being Christian, being the only proper choice to represent the country, and a constant fight against the elites (see Dodman 2022, online; Berkley Center 2020).

To understand electoral similarities and differences in the success ofPRRPs in Europe, I will precede as follows: In the next section, I will provide a review of recent scholarship on the issue of religion and its influence on electoral behaviour, followed by logistic regressions with control variables and a discussion of the findings.³

Religion and PRRP Support

Religion, religiosity, religiousness, or whatever way you want to call it: recent research found a recurring interest in investigating voters’ Godly connections and their effect on party vote. While van der Brug et al. (2009) find that religion still plays a role in elections to the European Parliament (see van der Brug et al. 2009: 1274) even though the effect is declining, they highlight that socio-demographic factors, cohort effects, or national political contexts interfere with the findings for religion and thus, this collinearity may distort the actual effect. However, these findings show “[...] the continued importance of religion on party choice” (ibid.: 1280). In their influential article, Arzheimer/Carter (2009) find that in their Western European cases, religious respondents were neither more nor less positive towards indicators such as ethnic minorities. However, they give evidence for the vaccination effect⁴ dependent on Christian Democratic outlet alternatives, meaning that in their investigated cases, religious voters with conservative views which may be mirrored by PRRPs rather turn to Christian or conservative party alternatives (Arzheimer/Carter 2009: 1005). They conceptualise religiosity by conservative indicators like attitudes towards immigrants or minorities but conclude that “[...] ‘good Christians’ are neither especially tolerant toward ethnic minorities nor attracted by radical-right’s anti-immigrant rhetoric” (ibid.). The notion of the ‘good Christian’ implies the activation of certain cognitive heuristics (see Lau/Redlawsk 2001) when respondents are confronted with ranking religious acts and attributes that I also rely on in my analysis. These heuristics are information shortcuts that people employ to efficiently make up for missing information (ibid.: 952). They rely on a limited amount of available information or knowledge about X and, depending on the individual belief systems, according to attributes that seem to be implied by the given information the person already knows about X. Nelsen/Guth (2016) find evidence that religious identification also affects the way people identify with the EU, although they differentiate between religions and find opposite effects for Catholic and Protestant respondents. In addition, they claim each national religious context plays into acquiring “European Identity” (Nelsen/Guth 2016: 80). In their discourse analysis of several Western European countries, Schworer/Romero-Vidal (2020) analyse religious references by party officials. They find evidence for Roy’s claim “[...] religion matters first and foremost as a marker of identity” (Roy cit. in Schworer/Romero-Vidal 2020: 6) for PRRPs. This goes especially fortheir othering of Islam and Muslim people from Christianity claims (see ibid.: 6). This is supported by Haynes (2020), who finds that radical right-wing parties wrap Christian rhetoric around the vilification of outgroups, thus making parties Christianist rather than Christian⁵. Cremer (2021) manages to confirm the vaccination effect and finds more evidence for the importance of Christian Democratic alternatives to prevent PRRP vote, adding to the mere existence the need of church and party officials “[...] to erect social taboos around them [PRRPs, R.N.]” (Cremer 2021: 177). Turning to the CEE context, the concept of anti-populist vaccination is challenged. Marcinkiewicz/Dassonneville (2022) find, that “[...] the probability of a vote for right-wing populists increases with religiosity” (Marcinkiewicz/Dassonneville: 444). In Hungary, with the diminished role of KDNP, formerly the Christian Democrats and now Fidesz’sjunior coalition partner, the importance of strong Christian democratic alternatives (see ibid.: 454) is evidenced by the polls. They explain the mechanism of CEE populists’ takeover of the religious space of politics:

“[...] the niche that Christian-Democrats occupy elsewhere, i.e. appealing to the most religious sec- tions of the electorate, has been filled by PRR groupings [.] that consciously exploit the fUsion of na- tional and religious identities” (Marcinkiewicz/Dassonneville 2022: 448).

In line with Roy’s concept of religion as an identity marker, Kulska (2023) finds that PRRPs in CEE do not even need an increased visible or perceived presence ofIslam, but rather “[...]the extreme anti-communist impulse of the radical right leads directly to the historical connection between religion and nation-building in the region” (Minkenberg cit. in Kulska 2023: 5). Again, this shows the relevance of cognitive heuristics that become activated in voters when confronted with certain short-cut indicators.

The concept of identity becomes important in the continuing process of post-communist transition⁶ in CEE. Fukuyama (2018) wrote an influential book on what he terms “The struggle for recognition”. In the sphere of the EU, CEE states are continuously searching for their own identity, after centuries of foreign occupation. Fukuyama describes individual identity struggles in the wake of the Industrial Revolution, where former village-dwellers lost expectation security and a pre-planned life by the confrontation with a multitude of options to choose from (see Fukuyama 2018: 63f.) On a national level, CEE states are in a (re-?) configuration process and Christianism plays an important role, especially in the Hungarian context (see Nieland 2018). Shevchenko’s (2018) concept of social creativity describes governments locating issues that are socio-politically relatively unchartered “[...] in which they can achieve a certain superiority towards others, as they did not yet take part nor aspired to or felt a need to take part in this arena” (Nieland 2018: 8). By combining Christianism, nationalism, nativism, and populism, Orban’s Fidesz and Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia pose exciting similarities that I will investigate.

Given these insights on PRRP electoral success and the influence of religiosity, the assumptions I want to test are:

H1a (vaccination effect): The more religious the respondent is, the smaller the chance he/she sympathizes with PRRPs, given there is a Christian Democratic/conservative party alternative. H1b: Religiousness will lose its predictive power when other control variables are added. H2a: The issue of immigration will have an effect on Western European results.

H2b: The issue of immigration will have a different effect on PRRP sympathy in CEE than in WE.

Case Selection Data and Method

To make a comparison of motivators for PRRP sympathy in Europe possible, I selected two cases in what Gerring (2007: 139f.) calls most-different cases: Italy and Hungary. They have in common the strong governmental presence of PRRP - in both cases they are by far the strongest force in government - and the societal embeddedness, understood as the durable approval or support in public opinion. But they differ in many other nation-building and societal factors such as democratic/communist experience, national opposition dynamics, party system stability and the membership durations in a supranational body such as the EU. The dataset used to test my assumptions stem from the latest round of the European Social Survey (ESS10). The ESS collects data from most European countries since 2002 and contains questions about attitudes and values concerning national politics, international affairs, private living situations and societal concerns. While some questions are present in most ESS rounds, like party voted for in the past national election or overall trust in the media, there are questions that are skipped throughout rounds or not asked in specific countries. For instance, there are no observations on religious indicators during round 8 and 9 for Slovakia. However, the ESS makes sure that samples are representative to societies by the number of interviews and their composition regarding age, income, gender, education, or political sympathies.

For my Hungarian case, data was collected by TARKI in the period June - October 2021. The sample consists of 4700 issued sample units, meaning addresses, households, or individuals. Of those were conducted 1851 valid face-to-face interviews (see ESS 2020/2023: 61). For the Italian case, the data stems from DOXA Spa. and was collected October 2021 - April 2022. With 5461 issued sample units, of which there are 2183 face-to-face interviews (see ESS 2021: 82), the Italian sample contains a few more respondents than the Hungarian sample. These data are then used to model logistic regressions with the responses to what party people feel closest to being the dependent variable. The reason I opt for this question rather than using the self-reported vote choice in the previous national election lays in the events prior to the last Hungarian national election in April 2022. Observers explained that the opposition alliance United for Hungary (UfH) did manage to mobilize more potential voters than in previous years individually, but eventually it resulted in yet another landslide victory for PM Viktor Orban and his Fidesz (see Bos 2022, 133). Regarding the sampling period, resorting to vote choice in the 2018 elections, I suspect it would distort the potential re-alignment dynamics, especially the known fluctuation in Jobbik sympathizers and other shifts due the eclectic composition of UfH (see Gessler/Kyriazi 2019: 174).

While much of the literature on the current Hungarian government refers to the opposition’s general lack of mobilization and cooperation skills to explain the recent defeat, as mentioned above the aspect of religion for long played a secondary roll, if at all. The regression will have two rounds. In the first round, I will have a look at how religiosity affects the likelihood ofPRRP sympathy as a stand-alone independent variable. Even though there is no clear agreement on the proper operationalization of religiousness (see Flere/Lavri 2007), for simplicity reasons I only investigate the self-placement on a religiousness-scale. Although there are good reasons to include more indicators to capture religiosity (see Arzheimer/Carter 2009: 987), the regression is mainly based on personal attitudes and assumes that individuals will activate heuristic cues (cognitive heuristics) to their respective answers, especially when it comes to selfplacement. In a work with a bigger scope, however, it would be advisable to include more indicators into latent variables as to account for collinearity effects. In a second round, I will add control variables to the calculation, the grouping being influenced by Arzheimer/Carter (2009): Socio-demographics include the respondents[4] age, gender and estimated time of daily internet usage. Traditional PRR attitudes also rely conceptually on Arzheimer/Carter (2009: 987f.), who included similar indicators in their ‘Radical Right Attitudes’ latent variable. The set of traditional PRR attitudes contains the self-placement on the political Left-Right-Scale

(LRS), attitudes as to whether immigrants make the country worse or better and the respondents’ emotional attachment to their country and to Europe. The new set of variables, what here will be termed Strongman Society Attitudes, consist of indicators for the individual acceptability of a strong state leader above the law, the perceived importance of loyalty towards the leader.

The main advantage of the 10th round of the ESS, besides its novelty, is the addition of an unprecedented set of questions asking for respondent’s view on what I want to call Strongman SocietyAttitudes. This brings us to the final assumption:

H3: “Strongman Society Attitudes” have effects on the likelihood of sympathizing with a PRRP in CEE and WE.

Results

Illustrations are not included in the reading sample

Table 1 Regressionparty-ID x religiousness, Fidesz & FI *p<.05 **p<.01 ***p<.001

In the first round of the regression, I investigate the impact of the self-reported degree of religiosity. Religiousness has similar effects on party sympathy in Hungary and Italy, even though only in Hungary this effect is statistically significant. While an increased degree of religiosity also increases the likelihood of Fidesz-identifi- cation by the rounded factor 1.11, in Italy odds increase slightly weaker at a ratio of 1.05 at least in the ESS sample. With eyes on Hl, these results strengthen the actuality of the vaccination effect, as Italy, unlike Hungary, has another Christian alternative in the party system (see Âdâm/Bozôki in Marcinkiewicz/Dassonneville 2022: 448). The statistical significance in Hungary, where there is no such alternative, lends additional support to H1. However, and this goes along with H1b, the impact of religiosity on PRRP sympathy vaccination effect, reported religiousness has a weak positive effect on Fidesz sympathy, however beyond the conventional boundaries of statistical significance. Socio-demographic indicators fail the statistical significance entirely, although age and income have positive effects while being female, spending more time online and a higher education come with negative effects on the likelihood of sympathizing with Fidesz in the sample. In the sample though, increases in age and income yield positive effects, while being female, time spent online, and levels of education yield negative ones - according to traditional PRRP research. The traditional PRR attitudes are where it gets interesting. While it comes as no surprise, that the placement on the LRS scale positively affects the odds of sympathizing with Fidesz with a high significance, people who view immigration as beneficial to the country also tend to have an increased chance of PRRP sympathy within the levels of statistical significance. The emotional attachment to the country, also expectable, yields a positive effect, while attachment to Europe decreases the chances at a lower level of significance. Among the selected “Strongman Society Attitudes”, only the perceived importance of loyalty towards leaders has statistical significance, increasing chances ofPRRP sympathy by factor 2.65.

Illustrations are not included in the reading sample

Note: logit regression, DV: party self-identification Hungary (1 - Fidesz 0 = Other). *p<.05 **p<.01 ***p<.001

Table 2 Regressionfor Hungarian case .

In table 3 there are the regression results for the Italian sample. Reported religiousness has a slight positive effect in the sample, but also misses the margins of statistical significance.

Illustrations are not included in the reading sample

Note: logit regression, DV: party self-identification Italy, 1 = Fl 0 = Other). *p<.05 **p<.01 •♦•p<001

Table 3 Regression for Italian case

As well as in Hungary, regarding the significance, H1b is con-firmed with higher insignificance. In socio-demographics, age, being female, internet time and education have slight positive effects, at best, while a higher income decreases the odds of FI sympathy; none of these results are statistically significant, however. As expected, also here the placement on the LRS yield a highly significant positive effect. The effect of the assessments of immigrants in the country, like in Hungary, yields a positive effect within the margins of statistical significance, while both indicators for emotional attachment have negative effects, although failing the significance. This negates H2a and H2b; adding indicators about national ethnic minorities may help understanding the bigger picture.

Strongman Society Attitudes have a positive effect on PRRP sympathy in Italy, however neither of the two indicators succeed the statistical significance.

While this categorization of indicators is only a simplified suggestion, the results give evidence to the claim that Strongman Society Attitudes came to be more important in terms of party sympathy and potentially vote choice in recent years. Strongman Society here is defined as a part of the electoral demand side who prefers a charismatic strongman leadership figure (in Lendvai’s understanding of Orban as Europe’s Strongman, as mentioned above), that also crosses legal boundaries, if need be. Because many of the Strongman Society questions where not asked in Italy, only the importance of loyalty towards leadership has significant effects. However, there are responses of Hungarians to all other Strongman Society questions available, which makes it possible to compare with other ESS cases. While this lack of Strongman Society questions in the ESS datasets does not allow any direct assumption about the development of this category, it is evident that for Hungarians, traditional PRR attitudes are not the only predictors for PRRP support, but that future research should keep the Strongman Society in mind. Potentially, this can be generalized to the broader CEE region and posits a new identity marker. This could be interpreted as another building block of a post-communist national identity, in what Fukuyama termed the struggle for recognition (Fukuyama 2018).

For the Italian sample, on the other hand, the selected variables do not seem to play a significant role at all, with only immigration-related indicators. While the LRS placement and positions on immigration keep their predictive power, Strongman Society Attitudes do not (yet) seem to play a grand role within the electorate. Without having gone into details about the opposition composition, in terms of religion the common immunization assumption of Western European cases (Arzheimer/Carter 2009) still seems to hold, given that there is plenty of outlet for religious voters.

Discussion

In the ESS10 there are multiple more indicators that can be added to the Strongman Society Attitudes. The Hungarian society shows a great degree of positive effects also for questions about the importance to teach obedience at schools, COVID-19 management approval, trust in supranational institutions, etc.. However, these questions were only asked in a limited amount of countries, which hampers the feasibility of a direct wide-range comparison.

Even though the limited amount of examined cases gives little room for broader assumptions, the differences in sympathy motivators indicate differences in European political societies in CEE and Western Europe. Part of the explanation to this may be found in the vast literature criticizing the self-image and self-understanding of what today is the EU.

As early as in 1922, Nikolai Trubetzkoy - the founder of the Russian émigré philosophical movement of Eurasianism, highlights the problem of European egocentrism, which he views as

“[.. .]an anti-social principle that destroys any form of cultural community among people” (Trubetzkoy 1922: 25, own translation).

Europe, in his time referring to Western Europe, wrote world history and put itself on top of the evolutional latter of societies - the further away a culture was from their ego-ideal, the more “barbaric” or “wild” it was considered (cf. ibid: 36). This happened regardless of whether or not the wild cultures in themselves had anything in common, i.e., by putting nominally unconnected peoples into the same category. Thus, cultures that did not have the properties of Europe, such as material wealth, Christian culture, nation states, etc. where not seen as equals and it was expected, if they wanted to be treated as peers, for them to progress toward Europe.

Krastev (2018) writes about how the refugee management crisis 2015 and the Brexit referendum brought to light similar Eurocentric tendencies. In this light, Trubetzkoy’s Europe is the contemporary Brussels. He introduces the concept of “The Central-European Paradox” and describes how European integration is viewed as the manifestation of the irreversibility of democratic transition (Krastev 2018: 85) and the creation of ‘fair-weather-democracies’ (ibid.) in the region. He locates the alluring potential of populism in the promise of a clear victory, a victory, for which it does not necessarily need a clearly defined opponent, thus he considers populist and radical parties as Verfassungsbewegungen (constitution movements) (ibid.: 88f.).

Ther (2019) also takes the annus horribilis 2016 as the starting point of his investigation of why populism is on the rise in Europe. He calls for the rediscovery of Polanyi’s Great Transformation and argues that the framework of EU membership places strong emphasis on the free market part of Polanyi but neglects the other part: the societal need for protection (Ther 2019: 17). A grand focus on the economy and a neglect of societal protection then leads to the Po- lanyian double movement, in which public opinion either turns to democratic socialism or authoritarian tendencies (see ibid.: 18). In line with Krastev and Trubetzkoy, he criticizes the EU’s self-understanding of itself being in the center of negotiation, on a quest to export its own values and norms into the world, of which the EU is the tip of evolution (ibid.: 157). As the German politician Gregor Gysi remarked in his podcast referring to the German reunification after the Fall of the Berlin Wall:

“[...] the federal government [ofWest Germany, R.N] did not care for the GDR. [...] They did not look at the societal conditions and hence did not take over [the positive aspects, such as female rights, CARE-provision; R.N.] [.] which were more advanced than in the Federal Republic” (Gysi/Gutten- berg2023: 5:37-6:22).

This neglective view on the post-communist member states of the EU may play a role in the current and lasting success of PRRPs, for which the tale of Brussels elites not paying attention to the new member states is a common narrative for mobilization.

Conclusion

This work attempted to compare the motivations of Fidesz and Fratelli d’Italia sympathizers using the latest available data by the European Social Survey. There is evidence that common presumptions and paradigms still hold today. A bivariate analysis shows support for the vaccination effect that the existence of strong Christian Democratic or conservative alternatives provide: religious self-categorization in Hungary showed a positive effect on the identification with Fidesz. In Italy, religiousness does not have a statistically significant effect, and a marginal positive one in the sample. That could be due to the existence of Forza Italia, Noi con I’Italia and the Centre parties providing alternative outlet for potential religious reasoning in voting behavior. Also, in line with previous research, the direct role of religious reasoning drastically diminishes once several control variables are added. Only two traditional PRR attitudes in Italy has a significant effect, while all other examined indicators fail the test for statistical significance. In Hungary, all traditional PRR Attitudes score varying statistical significance and Strongman Society Attitudes are statistically significant, which indicates differences between Western European and CEE political societies in sympathizing with PRRPs, at least when in government. However, if other variables were included, the image might become more finely grained in order to make inferences.

The different experience in Hungary, meaning communist legacies, different party system and what Krastev/Holmes call the “[...] self-contradictory request to be both an original and a copy [...]” (Krastev/Holmes 2019: 9), may be part of the explanation why Strongman Society Attitudes, here understood as indicators of acceptance for Strongman leadership publicly opposing legal rules in quest for national sovereignty, seem to be crucial for Hungarian PRRP sympathy. This “Imitation Imperative” (Krastev/Holmes 2019, 8) led to a struggle for the novel member states:

“A feeling ofbeing treated disrespectfully was also fomented by what can be reasonably identified as the central irony of post-communist democracy-promotion in the context of European integration: the Central and East European countries ostensibly being democratized were compelled, to enact policies formulated by unelected bureaucrats from Brussels and international lending organizations” (Krastev/Holmes 2019: 9).⁷

This also highlights the difficulties of nation and identity building in the region and poses a major difference to legacies of ‘old’ Western European democracies. Especially in the Hungarian case, but potentially in the broader CEE region, Greilinger (2023) points to the government’s one-sided revision and commemoration of historical events and national society. Voros holds that these and other governmental interreferences into society have created a new form of state religion:

“’Orbanism’ has effectively become the state religion. But this religion has no dogmas, except that the leader is always right.” (Verbs 2022: 63).

While the latest round of the ESS allows for a new category of indicators, such as my Strongman Society proposal, the calculations can be improved by using latent variables as other scholars did and potentially take on more demographic indicators. Furthermore, the importance of Strongman Society Attitudes could only faultily be investigated with the current dataset, as the respective questions have only been asked in a few participating countries. Future research designs could therefor formulate more targeted questions about Strongman Society Attitudes, containing perception about a leader’s strength, geo-politics, bargaining positions, or conflictladen issues. Another interesting aspect would be discovering why exactly these Strongman Society Attitudes seem to be much at play in the region, whether it is part of national identity, a struggle for the own place within the EU or a completely different motivation. Religiousness could be perceived, besides the main indicators of church attendance, self-placement, and belief in God, in a more private manner. This could account for people disenfranchised with institutional religion who, nevertheless, see themselves as leading a religious life, which could also shape their behavior in ways traditional religiousness indicators do.

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¹ Minimal here refers to the minimalist concept of democracy influenced among others by Schumpeter (see i.e., Schumpeter 1942).

² Art. 8 of the Italian Constitution states that all religious confessions are equal before the law. (Senato della Repubblica 2022, 10)

³ General ESS10 questionnaire: https://stessrelpubprodwe.blob.core.windows.net/data/round10/field- work/source/ESS10 source questionnaires.pdf ;the questionnaire used in Hungary can be found here: https://stessrelpubprodwe.blob.core.windows.net/data/round10/fieldwork/hungary/ESS10 questionnaires HU.pdf, Italy here: https://stessrelpubprodwe.blob.core.windows.net/data/round10/fieldwork/it- aly/ESS10 questionnaires IT.pdf

⁴ The vaccination effect of religiosity and populist radical right-wing votes was conceptualized in: Scarbrough, Elinor (1984): Political Ideology and Voting: An Exploratory Study. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

⁵ Sullivan in Haynes 2020: Christianists “[.. .]as anathema to true Christians as the Islamists are true to Islam.”

⁶ Transition here is understood as a natural evolution into something else post-USSR. Unlike transitology, it does not imply that the final goal of evolution in these countries is the Imitation of a Brussels Ideal democracy.

⁷ Also, PM Viktor Orban famously differentiates between Brussels and the EU, see i.e., Vbrbs 2022: 62.

• Universidad: University of Vienna
• Calificación: 1,0
• Autor: René Nieland (Autor)
• Año de publicación: 2023
• Páginas: 16
• No. de catálogo: V1477258
• ISBN (PDF): 9783389027790
• ISBN (Libro): 9783389027806
• Idioma: Inglés
• Etiqueta: populism, far right, radical right, Orbán, Meloni, politics, political science, ESS10, regression analysis