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The Determinants of the Popularity of Nationalistic Ideologies: the Case of Hungary and Poland

Student: Zheltoukhova Anna

Supervisor: Hanspeter Kriesi

Faculty: Saint-Petersburg School of Social Sciences

Educational Programme: Comparative Politics of Eurasia (Master)

Year of Graduation: 2020

This paper explores the possible explanation of the reasons connected with people's decisions about choosing conservative or right-wing parties during the elections in Hungary and Poland. The relevance of this study lies with the elections in Poland in 2019 and past elections in Hungary in 2018, where the voice of opposition to the ruling party and its impact on the electoral behaviour were becoming stronger, suggesting potential changes in voting preferences across the countries in last decade. The main goal of the study is to identify the determinants associated with the voting choices of residents in these European countries. With a close look at the people's electoral preferences, there is an attempt to track people’s reaction on certain events such as immigration flows. The aim of the study is to describe additional types of origins of nationalism and develop a framework for these factors that incorporates the political reality of the Eastern European countries, such as Hungary and Poland. Both of these countries have the conservative ruling party in the government, and at the same time, the popularity of radical right parties there is the highest compared within Eastern Europe. In this study, quantitative methods of analysis are going to be used as well as the analysis of the historical and political development of both countries. In the first part, the main events that might have led to possible changes in voting behaviour in both countries will be discussed. Secondly, the data provided by the European Social Survey from 2004 to 2018 will be analyzed. This choice of the period of time is grounded on the fact that Hungary and Poland joined the European Union in 2004 and faced policy changes in different spheres. The vote for the ruling party in both countries is highly related to the growing anti-immigration sentiments, as well as the mistrust in the European institutes, which could be explained as the reflection on the refugee crisis in Europe, happened in 2015. Keywords: far-right parties, anti-immigration, Eastern Europe, refugee crisis, ethnic nationalism

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