Abstract

This is an accepted article with a DOI pre-assigned that is not yet published.

In the East Central European countries the direct success orfailure of large scale mobilizations, selected cases and mostly alternativeactivist networks have been researched. This paper discusses the impact ofprotests in Hungary between 1998 and 2010 on the legislative agenda, morespecifically on the interpellations. We distinguished five main topics (radicalright issues, women’s rights and LGBT rights issues, agricultural issues,social policy issues, environmental issues), in which cases we analyzed thecorrelation between the number of protests (N=1808) and interpellations (N=346), and also when a significantly rising number of protest events wasfollowed by a growing number of interpellations on the same subject. Only inthe case of agricultural protests could be a statistically significantcorrelation identified between protests and interpellations. The qualitativeanalysis of interpellations and protest waves could identify some impact on thelegislative agenda in other cases as well. According to the results, largescale protest campaigns, with a firm organizational background could havelegislative impact in Hungary between 1998 and 2002. The results also supportthe thesis that due to the restricted impact, social movements in Hungarybefore 2010 followed the party organization model. 

Keywords: protest outcome, legislative agenda, populism, Hungary, movement parties, social movements, protests