Slovakia and Hungary: two different cases of party system change and persistence after 2000

Slovak 2014 presidential election with its extraordinarily high score for independent nonpartisan and anti-established-parties candidates has aroused an impression of a profound change of Slovak politics going on. Hungarian 2014 parliamentary election, on the contrary, has brought almost no result discontinuity as far as the previous (2010) is concerned. The image of Hungarian politics as essentially frozen is thus hard to dismiss. Th is article argues that to announce a genuine party system change in Slovakia seems at least a premature conclusion. On the other hand, the striking continuity in Hungary is actually a delayed message of a fundamental change that happened (and has only been confi rmed now) in 2010. As for Slovakia, the seemingly breakthrough 2014 electoral outcome has taken place in the presidential arena where the results have always been incompatible with the main Slovak electoral arena, i.e. parliamentary. Moreover, the presidential election outcome has not broken any of the main features of Slovak party politics: right-left competition with stable alliances, asymmetric format and coexistence of stable-core parties in some segments and rather unstable ones in the liberal “urban” sector. Turning to Hungary, the frozen (or locked) character of its politics, as exemplifi ed not only by the electoral non-change of 2014 but also, on another level, by the 2012 constitution, should not deflect the observer from a crucial fact: it has been a fundamental change what has been frozen into place. A change that has entirely transformed the logics of inter-party competition: from a symmetric bipolar right-left to a highly asymmetric unipolar with centre of gravity heavily shifted to the right and the metric centre of the system embodied by the thoroughly rightist Fidesz party. In both countries an anti-establishment protest-like opposition seems to be on rise. In Hungary it is radical and nationalistic. In Slovakia it is (so far) moderate and follows a general anti-party and anti-traditional-politicians sentiment. It is not beyond imagination in a foreseeable future, though, that the missing component in each of the countries could emerge. After all, in Slovakia this would just mean a return to one its patterns (existence of a radical nationalistic party). In Hungary, any powerful antiparty and nonideological movement would be a novelty. But even a frozen country could soon come to follow other European countries’ example. Th is article has set the recent development in the neighboring countries into the context. In the two case studies, it fi rst showed the main features of both party systems in terms of format and mechanics. In Slovakia, it was the moderately asymmetric format and a somewhat “fragile” (belated in its ascendance and at times vulnerable) right-left pattern of competition based on socio-economic issues. In Hungary, it was a stable bipolarity, reflecting a cultural (value-based) right-left confl ict, transformed recently into a strong asymmetric format, shaped in both stages by strong intervening institutions. In the final comparative chapter, the Slovak-Hungarian diff erences have been explored in more detail and some tentative answers have been suggested: electoral system for the format-related diff erences, divergent logics of post-1990 path dependency for the mechanics-related diff erences and, finally, personalization/personifi cation distinction for the diff erences in dynamics (a late, post-2010 party system reconstruction in Hungary as opposed to an earlier, “millennium” reconstruction in Slovakia).