Competing external demoi and differential enfranchisement: The case of the 2022 Hungarian election

Abstract

This analysis of the 2022 Hungarian parliamentary election highlights the phenomenon of competing external demoi, a situation that emerges when an incumbent government differentially enfranchises and mobilizes different external national communities for electoral purposes, thus triggering a competing mobilization of external voters by non-incumbent political actors. Hungarian parliamentary elections have increasingly become battlegrounds between the ethnic Hungarians living in countries neighboring Hungary, who have access to non-resident Hungarian citizenship and the right the vote in Hungarian elections by mail; and Hungarian emigrants in Western Europe who must vote in person at home or at embassies. These differences in voting access and the highly partisan mobilization of these two external demoi came to a head during the 2022 parliamentary election. This article seeks to explain the development of two different sets of external enfranchisement policies within a single case, a variation that is undertheorized in the literature, and uncovers the causes and consequences of the unique structure of external partisan polarization that emerged in the 2022 election. It argues that we must look at Hungary’s competitive authoritarian regime type in the context of “divided nationhood” and the relationship between incumbent hegemony and opposition mobilization in different types of external communities to explain this outcome.