Publications of Zsolt Enyedi

Party rules, party resources and the politics of parliamentary democracies: How parties organize in the 21st century

This article introduces the first findings of the Political Party Database Project, a major survey of party organizations in parliamentary and semi-presidential democracies. The project’s first round of data covers 122 parties in 19 countries. In this article, we describe the scope of the database, then investigate what it tells us about contemporary party organization in these countries, focusing on parties’ resources, structures and internal decision-making. We examine organizational patterns by country and party family, and where possible we make temporal comparisons with older data sets. Our analyses suggest a remarkable coexistence of uniformity and diversity. In terms of the major organizational resources on which parties can draw, such as members, staff and finance, the new evidence largely confirms the continuation of trends identified in previous research: that is, declining membership, but enhanced financial resources and more paid staff. We also find remarkable uniformity regarding the core architecture of party organizations. At the same time, however, we find substantial variation between countries and party families in terms of their internal processes, with particular regard to how internally democratic they are, and the forms that this democratization takes.

The Influence of Voting Advice Applications on Preferences, Loyalties and Turnout: An Experimental Study

Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) are increasingly popular, yet little is known about their impact. This article investigates their influence on party choice, party loyalty and electoral participation, relying on a complex experiment conducted before and after the 2010 Hungarian election. Participants were directed to two VAAs, some received advice from one and some from both, while the control group visited none. According to subjective recollections, 7 per cent changed their vote intentions, but according to the panel study the VAAs were unable to direct users to specific parties. Sheer exposure to the advice did not have mobilising or demobilising effects either, but preference-confirming outputs increased party loyalty while preference-disconfirming recommendations decreased it, and double exposure amplified further the impact of the VAAs. Converging advice from two different sources increased the rate of electoral participation, but more by provoking, rather than by persuading, the users.

The discreet charm of political parties

The article reflects on Peter Mair's work in addressing the claims of the decline of party thesis. The cartel party model is discussed, the relationship between parties and the state, the collusion of parties, the quality of representation provided by them, their organizational responses to environmental change, and their patterns of competition. Critical assessment of the theoretical arguments and a review of the relevant empirical evidence indicate that parties possess more autonomy and influence than suggested by the decline of party thesis and its attendant components, such as the dealignment model. Some of the commonly cited symptoms of party decline are corroborated, but the article highlights the adaptive organizational and social strategies of parties. These strategies, together with the success of parties in maintaining an essentially bipolar pattern of competition, contribute to the resilience of party politics.

Authoritarianism without Dominant Ideology: Political Manifestations of Authoritarian Attitudes in Hungary

Since the publication of Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswik, Levinson, and Sanford's (1950) classic study, considerable debate has developed concerning the political and ideological correlates of authoritarianism. This paper examines relationships between authoritarianism, on the one hand, and self-identification with ideological labels, attitudes toward political extremists, and party preferences, on the other hand. The survey data have been collected in Hungary between 1994 and 2002. Findings indicate that it is the center-right ideology and political orientation that attracts most authoritarians, yet authoritarian extreme-left also survives. The findings also show that liberal orientation and center-left identification constitute the political counter-pole of authoritarianism. Extreme-right supporters are found to be attracted only to particular aspects of authoritarianism.

Anti-Jewish Prejudice in Contemporary Hungary: A Socio-Psychological Causal Model

Predictions from three general approaches to prejudice—personality, social learning and group-conflict—have been examined on a sample of Hungarian youth and their parents. The sample consisted of 400 randomly selected college students and their parents from two Hungarian cities (total N=800). The questionnaire included, among others, an antisemitism scale, authoritarianism scale, and socio-demographic variables. Socio-psychological causal model was constructed using univariate recursive regression graph methodology. The results indicated that students' antisemitism is directly related only to personality (authoritarianism) and to parents' antisemitism. Students' authoritarianism is related to parents' authoritarianism and family socio-economic status (as indicated by parents' income and education). Parents' antisemitism is related to their own authoritarian tendencies and income, while parents' authoritarianism is primarily related to their educational background. It is concluded that the results primarily support personality approach to prejudice as represented by Adorno et al.' work (1950), and socialization approach. Group-conflict approach received ambiguous support in the same way as predictions from this approach concerning individual differences in prejudice are ambiguous.