Moving online: political parties and the internal use of digital tools in Hungary

ABSTRACT

The article reveals how Hungarian parties expand their members’ participatory repertoires in intra-party democracy with the help of information and communication technology. By answering the question of how Hungarian parties use digital tools for their internal procedures the article adds to the literature on parties’ use of technology. To make visible the promises and boundaries of online political participation in a post-communist country the article relies on 26 semi-structured interviews with Hungarian politicians from 10 parties conducted in 2020. The findings indicate that top-down communication dominates Hungarian parties’ practices, and social media is highly popular and is used for both external and internal reasons.

KEYWORDS:

• Political parties
• digital tools
• communication
• decisions
• Hungary

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 In 2004 The Law on Party Foundations introduced the German model in Hungary. Party foundations are eligible for central funding, though central funding cannot be used to finance the daily operation of parties.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Hungarian Scientific Research Fund [grant number PD_131408].

Notes on contributors

Daniel Oross

Daniel Oross is Research Fellow at the Eötvös Loránd Research Network, Centre for Social Sciences, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Centre of Excellence. His areas of expertise are youth policy, political participation, democratic innovations.

Paul Tap

Paul Tap is Research Assistant at the Department of International Studies and Contemporary History, Babes-Bolyai University. His research interests lie in political leadership, political parties and security studies.