publications

Articles in peer reviewed journals

2023

1. WEP

   Cleavage politics, polarisation and participation in Western Europe

   Borbáth, Endre, Hutter, Swen, and Leininger, Arndt

   West European Politics 2023

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   Polarisation over cultural issues and the emergence of radical, often populist, challenger parties indicate a fundamental restructuring of political conflict in Western Europe. The emerging divide crosscuts and, in part, reshapes older cleavages. This special issue introduction highlights how the transformation of cleavage structures relates to the dynamics of polarisation and political participation. The contributions to the special issue innovate in two ways. First, they adapt concepts and measures of ideological and affective polarisation to the context of Europe’s multi-party and multi-dimensional party competition. Second, they emphasise electoral and protest politics, examining how ideological and affective polarisation shape electoral and non-electoral participation. Apart from introducing the contributions, the introduction combines different datasets – the Chapel Hill Expert Survey, Comparative Study of Electoral Systems and the European Social Survey – to sketch an empirical picture of differentiated polarisation with types of polarisation only weakly associated cross-arena, cross-nationally and over time.

2. PolBeh

   Differentiation in Protest Politics - Participation by Political Insiders and Outsiders

   Borbáth, Endre

   Political Behavior 2023

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   The political participation literature has documented a long-term trend of the normalization of noninstitutional participation that is often equated with the conventionalization of engagement in protest politics. Less is known on the extent to which noninstitutional forms are differentiated by their mobilization context. Population surveys find it difficult to contextualize individual engagement, and on-site surveys point to effects that are hard to generalize. This study fills this gap by emphasizing differentiation and distinguishing participation according to the issue of engagement. It introduces a conceptual distinction between political insiders and outsiders, defined based on the extent to which they are embedded in the organizational landscape of the dominant cleavage dimension. Using an original survey conducted in Germany during the Covid-19 crisis, the analysis demonstrates that general-population surveys are fit to examine issue-specific participation patterns. The results expose an insider and outsider divide, captured by the effect of attitudinal and behavioral indicators, and demonstrates that the two groups are equally likely to participate in noninstitutional forms. However, insiders engage on the established issues of climate and anti-racism, whereas outsiders engage on the new issues of Covid-19 related economic assistance and civil liberties restrictions. In addition, dynamic models reveal that noninstitutional participation is rooted in volatile issue preferences. Overall, the paper argues that participation during the Covid-19 crisis has furthered the trend towards a differentiated protest arena.

2022

1. ECEU

   A Typology of Postcommunist Successor Parties in Central and Eastern Europe and an Explanatory Framework for Their (Non-)Success

   Kim, Seongcheol, and Borbáth, Endre

   East Central Europe 2022

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   This article revisits the phenomenon of postcommunist successor parties – defined as the formal successor organizations of state-socialist ruling parties – in Central and Eastern Europe three decades after the transformative events of 1989–91 and two decades after the most recent period of sustained academic interest in the topic. The article begins with a critical reexamination of the late 1990s and early 2000s comparative politics literature on postcommunist successor parties, noting in particular its reliance on path dependency as well as subsequent empirical developments that cannot be explained by established approaches. From here, this article argues that major changes in the electoral fortunes of numerous successor parties since the mid-2000s require instead a relational perspective on party competition and interactions with competitor parties in the respective party systems, allowing for the identification of realigning elections in which successor parties are programmatically outflanked or crowded out on one or more issue dimensions by competitors or vice versa. The article applies this perspective to reexamine successor parties in six countries that exhibit a pronounced explanatory deficit vis-à-vis the previous literature: Czech Republic, (the former East) Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia. In doing so, it draws on expert survey (ches) data and postelection studies on voter flows in addition to qualitative case analyses in order to demonstrate these interactions at work in critical phases of successor-party decline or growth.

2. German Pol.

   Protest and Electoral Breakthrough: Challenger Party-Movement Interactions in Germany

   Weisskircher, Manès, Hutter, Swen, and Borbáth, Endre

   German Politics 2022

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   This paper studies party-movement interactions in Germany, focusing on Die Linke and the AfD, the two most recent additions to Germany’s multi-party system. The electoral rise of both challenger parties went along with mass protests, opposition to Hartz IV in the mid-2000s and anti-Islamic PEGIDA mobilisation in the mid-2010s. We shift the emphasis from how social movements turn into political parties, including significant organisational and personal overlap, to more indirect ways of how protest and electoral politics interact. Specifically, we identify a process composed of two interrelated mechanisms: an external politicisation spiral and an intra-party innovation spiral. We show how mass protest triggers both discursive shifts in the public sphere and internal strategic realignment, providing an opportunity for parties to ride the wave, secure their competitive advantages, and mobilise on the protestors’ grievances in the electoral arena. In such a way, challenger parties can take advantage of street protests even when they do not directly emerge from a movement. Methodologically, the article is based on a paired comparison, relying on survey data and an original protest event analysis that provides novel data on anti-Hartz IV and PEGIDA protest mobilisation in Germany.

2021

1. Gov&Opp

   How do populist radical right parties differentiate their appeal? Evidence from the media strategy of the Hungarian Jobbik party

   Borbáth, Endre, and Gessler, Theresa

   Government and Opposition 2021

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   As they become more successful, populist radical right parties face a tension between keeping their nativist credentials and moderating their appeal to gain new voters. We argue that differentiating party messages to core supporters and the wider electorate allows parties to pursue both goals. We outline and empirically illustrate the previously underexplored phenomenon of selective messaging based on the communication strategy of the Hungarian Jobbik party throughout its lifespan (2006–19) in partisan outlets, press releases and Facebook. Using a dictionary approach, we map the co-evolution of populist and nativist mobilization under conditions of supply- and demand-side changes. Our results show the decline and transformation of Jobbik’s nativist appeal, and an increasing reliance on populism. The trend is not uniform; Jobbik relies on nativism as a function of targeting party identifiers or the general electorate in specific media outlets. Our findings show the importance of mapping parties’ programmatic appeal across platforms and over time.

2. SPSR

   Civic and Political Engagement during the Multifaceted COVID-19 Crisis

   Borbáth, Endre, Hunger, Sophia, Hutter, Swen, and Oana, Ioana-Elena

   Swiss Political Science Review 2021

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   Measures to cope with the COVID-19 pandemic have put a sudden halt to street protests and other forms of citizen involvement in Europe. At the same time, the pandemic has increased the need for solidarity, motivating citizens to become involved on behalf of people at risk and the vulnerable more generally. This research note empirically examines the tension between the demobilisation and activation potential of the COVID-19 crisis. Drawing on original survey data from seven Western European countries, we examine the extent, forms, and drivers of citizens’ engagement. Our findings show the remarkable persistence of pre-existing political and civic engagement patterns. Concurrently, we show that threat perceptions triggered by the multifaceted COVID-19 crisis have mobilized Europeans in the early phase of the pandemic. Similarly, the role of extreme ideological orientations in explaining (regular) political engagement indicates that the current situation may create its specific mobilisation potentials.

2020

1. Party Politics

   Two faces of party system stability: Programmatic change and party replacement

   Borbáth, Endre

   Party Politics 2020

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   Despite extensive research on party system stability, the concept is often reduced to the survival of existing parties. This article argues for introducing programmatic stability as a separate dimension and shows how the combination of party replacement and programmatic instability shapes patterns of party competition. Based on their interaction, the article distinguishes four ideal types: stable systems, systems with empty party labels, systems with ephemeral parties, and general instability. The empirical analysis relies on media data and proposes a new measure of programmatic stability to study its interaction with party replacement in fifteen European countries during the period of the economic crisis. As the article shows, the two dimensions shape the transformation of party systems in northwestern, southern, and eastern Europe. Relying on multidimensional scaling, the article analyzes in detail the cases of the United Kingdom, Romania, Ireland, and Latvia to showcase party competition under different conditions of systemic instability.

2. EJPR

   Different worlds of contention? Protest in Northwestern, Southern and Eastern Europe

   Borbáth, Endre, and Gessler, Theresa

   European Journal of Political Research 2020

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   Despite the voluminous literature on the ’normalization of protest’, the protest arena is seen as a bastion of left-wing mobilization. While citizens on the left readily turn to the streets, citizens on the right only settle for it as a ’second best option’. However, most studies are based on aggregated cross-national comparisons or only include Northwestern Europe. We contend the aggregate-level perspective hides different dynamics of protest across Europe. Based on individual level data from the European Social Survey (2002-2016), we investigate the relationship between ideology and protest as a key component of the normalization of protest. Using hierarchical logistic regression models, we show that while protest is becoming more common, citizens with different ideological views are not equal in their protest participation across the three European regions. Instead of a general left predominance, we find that in Eastern European countries, right-wing citizens are more likely to protest than those on the left. In Northwestern and Southern European countries, we find the reverse relationship, left-wing citizens are more likely to protest than their right-wing counterparts. Lessons drawn from the protest experience in Northwestern Europe characterized by historical mobilization by the New Left are of limited use for explaining the ideological composition of protest in the Southern and Eastern European countries. We identify historical and contemporary regime access as the mechanism underlying regional patterns: citizens with ideological views that were historically in opposition are more likely to protest. In terms of contemporary regime access, we find that partisanship enhances the effect of ideology, while ideological distance from the government has a different effect in the three regions. As protest gains in importance as a form of participation, the paper contributes to our understanding of regional divergence in the extent to which citizens with varying ideological views use this tool.

3. Party Politics

   Protesting Parties in Europe: A comparative analysis:

   Borbáth, Endre, and Hutter, Swen

   Party Politics 2020

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   The article provides the first large-scale study of protest activities by political parties. The empirical analysis draws on original protest event data for 30 European countries based on semi-automated coding of news agencies. The article innovates by (a) proposing a standardized indicator for the extent to which protest and electoral politics relate to each other, (b) showing that parties’ involvement in protests differs across political contexts, and (c) mapping the profile of a typical party-sponsored event and a typical protesting party. Despite long-term trends toward differentiated modes of interest intermediation, the results indicate that a wide range of parties does protest. However, in highly differentiated contexts, the typical protesting party mirrors the outsider image of movement parties: it does not belong to a mainstream party family and has no government experience. By contrast, more strategic factors, such as opposition status, drive parties to the streets in less differentiated contexts.

2019

1. European Soc.

   Challenges from left and right: the long-term dynamics of protest and electoral politics in Western Europe

   Hutter, Swen, and Borbáth, Endre

   European Societies Aug 2019

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   The paper looks at how protest politics has developed in Western Europe since the 1970s and how these developments are related to changes in electoral politics. We take up arguments on the two-fold restructuration of political conflict and its different impact on protest and electoral politics. Most importantly, we highlight that the second wave of political change sweeping across Western Europe since the 1990s with increasing conflicts over immigration and European integration left different marks on protest politics as compared to electoral politics. We argue that this difference reflects the driving forces of change and their preferences for specific political arenas, as the momentum shifted from the libertarian left to the populist radical right. More specifically, the results indicate that challengers from the left and challengers from the right follow different logics when it comes to the interplay of protest and electoral mobilization. Empirically, we rely on two large-scale protest event datasets as well as on data on electoral results and campaigns from the 1970s to 2015.

2012

1. Magy. Kisebb.

   A nacionalizmus és a liberalizmus történeti-logikai összefonódásai (II.)

   Borbáth, Endre

   Magyar kisebbség Aug 2012

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2. Magy. Kisebb.

   A nacionalizmus és a liberalizmus történeti-logikai összefonódásai (I.)

   Borbáth, Endre

   Magyar kisebbség Aug 2012

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2011

1. Magy. Kisebb.

   Védhető-e a paternalista állam? - liberális, kommunitárius álláspont

   Borbáth, Endre

   Magyar kisebbség Aug 2011

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Chapters in edited volumes

2022

1. Oxford HB

   Bridging Electoral and Nonelectoral Political Participation

   Borbáth, Endre, and Hutter, Swen

   2022

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   The chapter examines political participation by citizens who bridge electoral and nonelectoral action forms. While often studied separately, we argue for integrating our understanding of political participation across the two main arenas of mass politics: the electoral and protest arena. We review the scholarly literature, focusing on individual-level drivers and the mobilization context of political participation. We argue that individual-level characteristics do not sufficiently explain variation in the extent of arena bridging. Analyzing voting and attending demonstrations on the individual level in Europe shows that nonelectoral, protest participation complements electoral participation. However, on the macro level, their co-evolution depends on political context conditions and strategies of political parties and social movements. Importantly, the link tends to be closer in moments of crisis and profound cleavage transformation. We back up the literature review with illustrative empirical results about the interplay between electoral and nonelectoral participation based on mass surveys and protest-event analysis.

2021

1. UMP

   COVID-19 in Central and Eastern Europe - Focus on Czechia, Hungary, and Bulgaria

   Löblová, Olga, Rone, Julia, and Borbáth, Endre

   2021

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2. Springer VS

   Politische Parteien Als Protestakteure

   Borbáth, Endre, and Hutter, Swen

   2021

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2020

1. CUP

   Are political parties recapturing the streets of Europe? A cross-regional study of party protests in the Great Recession

   Borbáth, Endre, and Hutter, Swen

   2020

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   Political mobilization in the electoral and protest arenas have long been studied as separate phenomena, following their own, independent dynamic. Parties and protests are rarely examined within the same framework, although the protest engagement of political parties is often assumed to be one of the main driving forces of the wave of protest in southern European countries, those most exposed to the economic crisis. The chapter provides the first large-scale study of protests sponsored by political parties across Europe before and after the Great Recession. It relies on a novel protest event dataset, collected by semi-automated content analysis of news agencies. The data cover protests in thirty countries, from 2000 to 2015. The results show the ’crowding out’ of political parties as the driving force of the protest wave in southern Europe. We find the highest share of party sponsored protest in eastern Europe, where unlike in north-western and southern Europe, right-wing and non-mainstream parties are also active in protest. In line with the overall findings of the book, our results confirm the distinctive dynamic of protest in the three European macro-regions and put the link between social movements and the new challenger parties in perspective.

2019

1. CUP

   Romania - Polity Contestation and the Resilience of Mainstream Parties

   Borbáth, Endre

   2019

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2018

1. EGPP ch.

   When the Post-Communist Left Succeeds: The 2016 Romanian Parliamentary Election

   Borbáth, Endre

   2018

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Book reviews

2022

1. Party Politics

   Book Review: Extreme Reactions: Radical Right Mobilization in Eastern Europe

   Borbáth, Endre

   May 2022

2017

1. EEQ review

   Philipp Ther. 2016. Europe since 1989: A History

   Borbáth, Endre

   May 2017

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2016

1. EAS review

   Post-Communist Romania at Twenty-Five. Linking Past, Present, and Future

   Borbáth, Endre

   May 2016

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