ATTITUDES to EUROPE Ideology, Strategy and the Issue of European Union Membership in Hungarian Party Politics

PARTY POLITICS VOL 8. No.5 pp. 525–539

ATTITUDES TO EUROPE Ideology, Strategy and the Issue of European Union Membership in Hungarian Party Politics

Agnes Batory

ABSTRACT

The objective of the article is to assess the extent to which party ideology and strategic incentives account for political parties’ attitudes to European integration in one of the East Central European EU-applicant countries, Hungary. Starting with general propositions regarding the relationship between particular ideological strands and orientations to European integration, the main focus of the article is on individual parties’ policies and rhetoric on the EU as shaped by the dynamic context of the party system. The Hungarian case suggests that, while ideology structures underlying attitudes to integration, parties’ predis- positions are not directly translated into a corresponding policy of supporting or rejecting membership per se: the parties are constrained by their own early pro-European rhetoric as well as short-term competitive pressures and the need to be acceptable as coalition partners.

KEY WORDS European integration Hungary ideology post-communist

Introduction

The signiﬁcance of the European Union’s (EU) decision to take in a large number of post-communist countries can hardly be overstated, either for the EU or the former East bloc countries themselves. Membership of the EU as an objective is strongly supported by political elites in the applicant countries. This broad agreement can be contrasted not only with the pre-accession debates that divided the political classes in the latest EU member states, but also with ‘politics as usual’ in post-communist democracies where inter-party relations are often more conﬂicting than those in Western Europe. However, moving beyond a clear-cut choice between supporting or rejecting membership per se, analyses of the party politics of EU accession in East Central

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Europe (ECE) can reveal a background that is not entirely unlike the Western European cases explored in the literature. In the present case study I investigate this subject by looking at the way the issue of EU membership and European integration is channelled into party politics in one of the leading ECE candidate countries, namely Hungary. In addition to the empirical findings on this relatively little known case,1 Hungarian politics also serves to illustrate a more general argument about the importance of ideological, as opposed to purely strategic, factors in explaining partisan responses to Europe. Hungary appears to offer little ground for the study of party political variation on Europe. All six parties represented in Parliament following the 1998 elections formally expressed support for the country’s accession to the EU (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2000), with public opinion backing them on this issue. This convergence, as in many other post-communist countries, has its roots in the democratic transitions the majority of today’s political parties were born into. In the early 1990s, ‘returning to Europe’ as a symbol of democracy and prosperity was a common theme for both the new parties emerging from the democratic opposition and the social-democratizing successor parties (Henderson, 1999): for the former, as part of a ‘default’ Western (i.e. ‘anti-communist’) orientation, for the latter, as a device to emphasize a radical break with a tainted past. Thus, in these early formative years the major post-communist parties’ identities incorporated an ill- defined pro-European outlook almost irrespective of any ideological colouring they may have had. However, two parallel processes in the past decade changed all that beyond the ageing and, in some candidate countries, crumbling facade of the ‘foreign policy consensus’ on integration as a long- term objective. Firstly, having gone through the inevitable internal debates and splits and survived the ride in the roller-coaster of post-communist electoral volatility in three elections, the parliamentary parties’ profiles crystal- lized and, to some extent, solidified, with the party system taking shape along well-defined ideological dimensions. Secondly, the broad notion of returning to Europe was gradually replaced by actively seeking membership of the EU, the institutional embodiment of a far-reaching economic and political integration process, with all its very specific and often costly pre- requisites. How do parties, as a consequence of these processes, relate to the European project? And to what extent are these partisan responses ideo- logically driven? While so far their own histories and/or strategic incentives arising from the dynamics of coalition-building and electoral competition maintained the increasingly fragile pro-membership policy consensus in the Hungarian case, substantial differences emerged in the parties’ attitudes to European integration in this country and across the region. This variance – detectable in rhetoric in electoral competition, views on the accession negotiations and evaluations of how (if at all) the country may benefit from EU membership – corresponds to the parties’ ideological make-up and 526 BATORY: ATTITUDES TO EUROPE position on the map of the party system. In the following, this, in some cases, contradictory relationship between policy and ideology is the primary concern, although strategic incentives are also taken into account. I start with the theoretical context and then establish the nature of the Hungarian political space; finally, I focus on individual parties’ policies and rhetoric on the EU. This analysis draws primarily on election mani- festos and other party documents. The Hungarian case suggests that, through structuring underlying attitudes to integration, ideology is an essential part of the explanation of attitudes to Europe. Ideological pre- dispositions are, however, not directly translated into a corresponding policy of supporting or rejecting membership per se: as with Western European parties closely associated with the development of the European project, ECE parties are constrained by their own early pro-European rhetoric as well as short-term competitive pressures and the need to be acceptable as coalition partners.

National Parties’ Responses to European Integration

Although academic interest in European integration in partisan and ideological terms is a relatively recent development, much effort has already been put into explaining and predicting how political parties would view the EU or its specific policies. The rapidly growing literature on Euroscepticism tes- tifies to the multiple uses of the European issue in ‘trac[ing] the contours of changing party systems’ (Taggart, 1998: 363), and a wide variety of factors has been identified as having a bearing on parties’ stances on the EU or (further) integration (e.g. Featherstone, 1988; Johansson and Raunio, 2001). Less is known, however, about the relative importance of these factors in distinct national settings (Kopecky and Mudde, 2001) and, given that empirical research still tends to focus on a handful of Western European cases, how post-communist politics may modify the picture.2 Nonetheless, from the case studies that continue to dominate the field, three broad clusters of variables emerge as obvious candidates for the analysis of domestic politics in the accession countries. First, party attitudes to the European issue (membership and/or specific developments within the EU) are influenced by competitive pressures and incentives: public opinion, constituency interests and the main competitors’ policies and electoral strategies (Sitter, 2001b). Parties’ freedom to manoeuvre in response to these incentives differs according to their position at the centre or periphery of the party system (Taggart, 1998) and the dynamics of government and opposition (Sitter, 2001a). Second, in multiparty systems, policy coordination among potential or actual coalition partners and the need to project a mainstream image to be considered as such also affect parties. This impact is relevant primarily in relation to ‘hard Eurosceptic’ parties (explicitly or de facto ‘opposed to the whole project of European integration’ and/or EU 527 PARTY POLITICS 8(5) membership) as hard Euroscepticism tends to be perceived as an obstacle to a governmental role (Taggart and Szczerbiak, 2001b: 4). A third, and perhaps most controversial, factor is basic ideology. While in the Downsian tradition short-term strategic incentives arising from inter- party competition and coalition-building easily transfer across political systems, the long-term impact of ideological colouring, party histories and identities is clearly more problematic, which may explain the tendency to focus on the former in the literature. If ideology is modelled as positions on a single Left–Right dimension to facilitate comparative research, attitudes to Europe do not appear to be linked (Taggart and Szczerbiak, 2001b: 24). If, however, both the ideological space of party systems and European integration itself are conceptualized as multidimensional, it is possible to map party responses based on the relationship between particular ideologies and their affinity with the European project. By distinguishing between integration as an economic and as a political process, ‘Europe’ can be interpreted in ideological terms: the former generating issues relating to levels of regulation, social redistribution and economic (in)equality, the latter relating to sovereignty and indirectly democracy and national identity (Hix, 1999a, b; Marks and Wilson, 2000). While the first aspect may correspond to the well-known socio-economic Left–Right dimension of West European party systems, historical party identities, most pre-dating European integration, bear little or no relation to the second. In socio-economic terms, a pro-integration stance is considered more ‘natural’ for market-oriented parties – provided that European integration, in its current state, is perceived as a neoliberal project and the emerging social dimension is not expected to transform it drastically in the future (Marks and Wilson, 2000). In terms of identity politics, the more complex second aspect, the principal question is what is considered to be the most ‘appropriate focus for identity’ (Taggart, 1998: 379) and thus allegiance and loyalty: the nation (state) or a community (entity) beyond, above or below it. Thus, nationalist parties can reasonably be expected to be less supportive of European integration, while identification with a community other than the nation, i.e. a sub- or supra- national community, is only associated with a pro-EU stance if it is perceived to be more compatible with European governance than a national one (Hooghe and Marks, 1999; Taggart, 1998). Much of the ambiguity in this scheme arises from the fact that con- sidering European integration as a ‘constant’ independent variable is problematic in relation to parties in member states. Not only is the EU changing, but its transformation is essentially affected by party governments across the member states through EU institutions (Hix, 1999b). Moreover, national traditions and regulatory systems from the viewpoint of which parties make judgements about the future direction of market or social integration on the European level also vary widely. In contrast, having started from a ‘status quo’ of central planning, parties in post-communist countries are more likely to associate the EU with market integration and, 528 BATORY: ATTITUDES TO EUROPE having at present little or no influence on the changes taking place within it, relate to the EU as it is. In other words, ECE candidates react ‘to the vision provided by the member states . . . and the exigencies of the EU accession process’ (Henderson, 2001: 5). Therefore, on a purely ideological basis, the strongest supporters of the EU can be expected to be both pro- market and non-nationalistic in identity politics, with Euroscepticism confined to parties characterized by various degrees of nationalism and a preference for social protectionism. In the case of parties belonging to either the protectionist–cosmopolitan or the free market–nationalist quad- rants, the predisposition of the party is connected with the relative weight within the party’s ideological profile of one or the other of these dimensions. Any deviation from this scheme needs to be accounted for by strong counterbalancing pressure from the party system itself. The long-term costs, in terms of potential internal dissent and/or damage to the party’s distinctive profile and reputation, of inconsistency between policy on a high profile issue such as the EU and the party’s basic ideology have to be offset by short-term strategic benefits.

The Hungarian Party System

Before these propositions are examined in relation to individual parties, the nature of the Hungarian political space, and the main parties’ location within it, needs to be established. The relative importance in post-communist politics of the two ideological dimensions substantially differs from the general West European picture (Kitschelt et al., 1999). With some exceptions, the socio-economic dimension had relatively less potential to struc- ture ECE party systems. In economic policy, the main expression of that dimension, ECE governments were more constrained than their Western counterparts by foreign indebtedness, large uncompetitive sectors and expensive and ineffective social services inherited from the previous regimes. Thus, while party policies differed considerably in the 1990s regarding the pace and strategy of reforms, economic realities and the general course of the transitions left little scope for party competition on socio-economic issues (Körösényi, 1999). Moreover, in Hungary economic liberalization started before political regime change, leaving the larger communist successor, the Socialist Party, with a credible economic reformer proﬁle. In contrast, the importance of identity politics is reinforced by the historical disjuncture in the region between language, culture and ethnicity on the one hand and state on the other, which in the case of Hungary is made especially evident by the presence of large Hungarian minorities in the countries neigh- bouring Hungary. Unsurprisingly, the identity politics dimension – strength- ened also by inter-war legacies some post-communist parties seek to emphasize – incorporated elements of ethnic nationalistic versus more civic, cosmopolitan notions of political community (Fritz, 1999; Schöpﬂin, 1992). 529 PARTY POLITICS 8(5)

At the end of the 1990s, the parties represented in Parliament consisted of the conservative Fidesz – Hungarian Civic Party (Fidesz-MPP), the Christian-conservative Hungarian Democratic Forum (MDF), the agrarian Independent Smallholder Party (FKGP), the Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP), the liberal Alliance of Free Democrats (SZDSZ) and the national- populist Party of Hungarian Justice and Life (MIÉP) (see Table 1). Since 1998, the first three of these formed the government with Fidesz-MPP as senior coalition partner, taking over from the Socialist–Free Democrat coalition of 1994–8. Apart from the founding election of 1990, largely fought on regime change, the main axis of electoral competition involved the Social- ists and the largest party of the conservative bloc (Fidesz-MPP since the mid- 1990s). While the electoral support of individual parties varied greatly in the three post-communist elections to date, only one party that had previ- ously been in Parliament failed to secure representation and only one new party (MIÉP) entered during the 1990s. To locate the six parliamentary parties in relation to the two ideological dimensions, surveys conducted with members of the party groups in Parlia- ment by the Institute for Political Science of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (MTA PTI) were used.3 The parties’ positions on the socio-economic axis were indicated by their representatives’ responses to survey questions about the role of the state in the economy, while a twofold measure – tapping into the definition of the nation in terms of ethnicity or citizenship and the national or European/cosmopolitan identification of the MPs themselves – was created in relation to the identity politics axis. A graphic summary of this analysis is presented in Figure 1 (note, however, that the figure does not indicate precise ideological distances between parties).4

Party Attitudes to European Integration

How did this ideological structuration and the interplay of strategic factors bear on the parties’ attitudes to European integration? While treating parties as unitary actors can clearly be problematic given the degree of internal

Table 1. Distribution of seats in Parliament Party 1990 1994 1998 Alliance of Free Democrats 93 70 24 Fidesz-MPP 22 20 148 Hungarian Democratic Forum 165 37 17 Hungarian Socialist Party 33 209 135 Independent Smallholder Party 44 26 48 Party of Hungarian Justice and Life – 0 14

Note: Only the six parties represented in Parliament after 1998 are included. Source: Kitschelt et al. (1999: 117). 530 BATORY: ATTITUDES TO EUROPE

Cosmopolitan SZDSZ

MSZP

Fidesz-MPP

Soc. Protect. FKGP MDF Market

MIÉP National

Figure 1. Parliamentary parties’ location in the ideological space, 1998 Note: Party positions established on the basis of MTI PTI parliamentary survey data, except for MIÉP, the position of which is estimated on the basis of policy documents. Source: (Batory 2001), on the basis of MTA PTI data.

dissent on European integration in many parties in member states (Ray, 1999), the question of EU membership has not yet been salient enough to divide Hungarian parties. Nonetheless, internal divisions are noted to the extent that they are connected with conﬂicting ideological strands possibly associated with the issue. As far as parties’ views on European integration are concerned, the most evident indicator is support for, or rejection of, EU membership itself. As the MTA PTI surveys showed, hardly any members of the mainstream parties’ parliamentary groups were ‘against’ the accession of Hungary to the EU (the Justice Party did not take part in the surveys) (Batory, 2001a; Simon, 1997). However, while these results draw attention to the overwhelming support for the general idea of Hungarian EU membership, this measure is only suitable for identifying ‘hard Eurosceptics’: it says nothing about intermediate positions or the ideological bases of these attitudes. These positions may include contingent and qualiﬁed opposition or emphasizing the national interest as being ‘at odds with the EU trajectory’ (‘soft Euroscepticism’) (Taggart and Szczerbiak, 2001b: 4). The ethos of the Justice Party, the most likely candidate for hard 531 PARTY POLITICS 8(5)

Euroscepticism in the Hungarian party system, was based on claims to defend the Hungarian nation from both its own ‘cosmopolitan’ elite and foreign influence in any shape or form. Not unexpectedly given this ideological baggage, the party had opposed Hungary’s membership of NATO and warned of the consequences of EU enlargement, described by the party leader in terms of colonization by Western powers and global financial interests (Magyar Forum, 4 June 2000). Particularly unacceptable to the party was the perceived danger that, in case Romania and Slovakia joined the EU later than Hungary, the Union’s ‘Schengen’ borders would reinforce the ‘par- tition’ of the nation by cutting the Hungarian minorities in the neighbour- ing countries away from the motherland. Yet, rather than categorically ruling out EU membership, the party leader ‘merely’ proposed to postpone a final decision to the distant future in the 1999 parliamentary debate and, a year later, formally endorsed the six-party declaration expressing support for accession (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2000). These concessions clearly served to downplay the Justice Party’s Euroscepticism towards the mainstream parties, especially those it hoped would become its allies in the national-conservative camp, although not necessarily the party’s sympa- thizers. The party’s shifting position on the EU was thus part of an effort to project a more moderate image as MIÉP, entering Parliament in 1998 for the first time, attempted to rid itself of the role of political outcast while at the same time keeping its voters’ support. As exemplified by its motto ‘God, Fatherland, Family’, the defence of the nation and a traditional Hungarian way of life were similarly central to the Smallholder Party’s rhetoric, a party that at times also flirted with populism. This profile could reasonably be expected to go hand in hand with a lack of enthusiasm for European integration. Yet, while the 1995 manifesto of the party indeed called for taking a ‘tougher’ stand vis-à-vis Brussels and described the dangers of premature accession, FKGP explicitly endorsed EU membership as a policy objective. This stance reflected both the Small- holders’ position within the party system (FKGP was coalition partner in the pro-EU conservative governments of the first and third terms) and the fact that, unlike its major, catch-all competitors, it drew support from a well-defined and relatively stable agrarian constituency. The claim to rep- resent its voters’ material interests as the key to its survival clearly made FKGP the least ideological of Hungarian parties. As its 1998 manifesto showed, the Smallholder Party’s support for accession was thus based on, and made conditional upon, the expectation of substantial direct financial transfers from the EU, while the political implications of integration were played down. More recently, however, the moderating effect of governmental role considerably weakened as conflicts with the senior coalition partner Fidesz-MPP and unresolved leadership issues divided the FKGP. In an attempt to boost his party’s standing in the polls, the party leader sharply rejected ‘selling out the country’, i.e. that following a short transition period EU citizens be allowed to own land in Hungary (Magyar Nemzet, 10 July 532 BATORY: ATTITUDES TO EUROPE

2001). While this predictably strained relations with its coalition partners, this wing of the party’s divided leadership obviously felt the issue, through its obvious relevance for FKGP’s agrarian basis, would help regain the support of its traditional voters. The Democratic Forum, in contrast, showed no signs of the volatility that characterized the Smallholders’ stance. In the early 1990s, it was the Forum that launched Hungary’s quest to return to Europe as the major government party of the time. The absence of electoral incentives to change its position and the departure of the radical national-populists (leaving to form MIÉP in 1993) from the party ensured that this legacy would continue to define MDF’s views on EU membership, despite the ideological diversity of the party. The party’s distinctive ethos, emphasizing ‘Christian and traditional values and the concept of nation’ (Körösényi, 1999: 38) did, however, sit slightly uneasily at times with its European policy. A potential contradiction surfaced when the conclusion of basic treaties with the countries neigh- bouring Hungary – considered by many as an informal condition for NATO and EU membership – forced each of the parties to choose foreign policy priorities in the second term. MDF’s stance suggested that representing the interests of ethnic Hungarians in these countries had to take precedence, even if that meant possibly slowing down the accession process. Nonethe- less, in the third term, having secured its presence in Parliament as the smallest party through a favourable electoral agreement with Fidesz-MPP, MDF faithfully supported the Fidesz-led coalition in its negotiations with the EU. In any case, the party’s dependence on its larger coalition partner considerably restricted its capacity for independent policy-formulation. Fidesz-MPP itself, having started life as a radical anti-communist youth movement before the first free elections, spent the first two parliamentary terms in opposition, initially as a liberal party. In 1998, however, the party became the senior coalition partner in the national–conservative government, marking a spectacular ideological transformation – affected in response to the electoral defeat of 1994 – in which it effectively occupied MDF’s previous position in the party system. Thus, while the 1994 manifesto of the party had been built around the idea of limited state, ‘new’ Fidesz toned the free market rhetoric down and emphasized the national community instead, with, for instance, its 1996 policy document devoting an entire section to the party’s own definition of what constituted ‘Hungarian- ness’. Corresponding to the drift across the ideological spectrum, the party’s attitude to integration also changed, from Hungary’s fastest possible integration into West European structures as its primary foreign policy objective in 1994 to pledging to stand up for the national interest in Brussels in 1998. This is not to say that Fidesz-MPP became a Eurosceptic party: Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s critical statements about the EU may well have reflected mounting disappointment and frustration with the speed of the enlargement process rather than waning commitment to the strategic goal of accession. Nonetheless, treating accession as a question merely of possibly 533 PARTY POLITICS 8(5) conflicting economic interests clearly represented a change in rhetoric that seemed to supplement and anchor Fidesz-MPP’s new position as the major party of the national centre–right. Moreover, by contrasting the negotiation strategy of the then governing Socialist–Free Democrat coalition, portrayed by Fidesz-MPP as servile vis-à-vis the EU, with the party’s own, the EU issue also served to play the ‘national interest’ card in electoral competition. The party’s history is a similarly important part of the explanation in the case of the Socialists. The MSZP was founded as the larger successor to the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party in 1989. The change of name, the redesigning of the party’s programmatic profile, and its affiliation to the Socialist International, however, clearly signalled the intention to make a radical break with the party’s past (Waller, 1995). Although the party’s popularity in the mid-1990s had much to do with the electorate’s nostalgia for extensive social services, returning to power with the Free Democrats as their junior coalition partner in 1994 the Socialists implemented an economic policy of privatization, liberalization and fiscal discipline. The party’s strong support for EU membership reflected not only this policy, but also long-term strategic choices the Socialists had made in the formative period of the first parliament. While in the early 1990s the dominant strategic vision within the MSZP leadership was a traditional, working-class social democratic appeal, by 1994 the technocratic, social–liberal wing took over (Ziblatt, 1998: 134). Together with these changes, the party also opted for a pragmatic, ‘modernizer’ stance, which implied an imperative ‘to catch up with Europe’ (Bozóki, 1997: 8) and therefore also European integration as a top foreign policy priority. Altogether, MSZP’s transformation resulted in a party profile of which a pro-EU stance was a logical part, with both the economics and the politics of European integration clearly substantiating the new Socialist image. The shared commitment to European integration also played a part in making the Socialists acceptable as coalition partners to the Alliance of Free Democrats, a liberal party that came into being in the democratic opposition to MSZP’s predecessor at the end of the 1980s. While the coalition the two parties formed in 1994 followed an economic policy that was rather close to the Free Democrats’ market liberal views, the two parties seemed most alike in their views on identity politics. Consequently, as for the Social- ists, the unambiguous top priority for the Free Democrats, both in government and opposition since 1998, was the fast integration of the country into Euro-Atlantic structures. European integration, however, was a more emphasized part of the Free Democrats’ ethos than perhaps of any other party, with Hungarian EU membership by 2002 as the first among the party’s 10 key objectives in its programme for 1998–2002, overtaking all the ‘bread-and-butter’ issues in importance (Magyar Nemzet, 10 April 1998). Altogether, the party’s profile corresponded to its location on the ideological map of the Hungarian party system as most committed to free market principles in socio-economic policy and most prone to define 534 BATORY: ATTITUDES TO EUROPE political community in terms of shared values rather than nationality. Indeed, as the party’s 1998 manifesto illustrates, the broad notion of European integration as a synonym of modernization, and the more specific goal of becoming a member of the EU as a guarantee of democracy and deepening market economy, made up much of the Free Democrat party identity.

Conclusions

The general idea of joining the EU is clearly a popular one with political elites in post-communist applicant countries. However, stressing this broad consensus seems to be missing the point. What differentiates parties is the way they perceive the EU and the terms they find acceptable for joining it, rather than whether or not they want to join (Szczerbiak, 2001: 6). This in turn suggests that analyses of the party political dynamics of EU accession need to focus on more nuanced party attitudes: motivations for supporting the EU and the strength of parties’ commitment to membership rather than its mere presence or absence. The distinction between attitudes to integration and policy on EU membership (Kopecky and Mudde, 2001) is important in explaining how the broad pro-EU consensus could be maintained despite the absence of any agreement on why, and whether, the long- term political implications of European integration are desirable. As far as the latter aspect is concerned, there are detectable differences in party attitudes which, as the initial proposition ran, ideological variation explains. In the Hungarian case, these range from the strongest EU-commitment char- acterizing the cosmopolitan–market-oriented parties to a markedly scepti- cal, if not hostile, attitude to European integration at the ‘bottom’ of the national–social protectionist quadrant, with rather more ambiguous positions in between. A changing ideological profile, as in the case of Fidesz- MPP, also implies changes in rhetoric on Europe. This correspondence clearly indicates the importance of party ideology in explaining party responses to Europe. However, ideology does not determine party positions as far as a clear- cut choice between the support and outright rejection of EU membership is concerned. If ideology was sufficient to predict party positions, the Justice Party and possibly the Smallholder Party would be ‘hard Eurosceptic’ parties in the Hungarian case. The fact that, despite scepticism about or hos- tility to both the economic and the political foundations of the European project, this is not the case confirms that viewing parties individually, without tracing changes over time, is insufficient: their policy positions can only be understood in the dynamic context of inter-party relations and electoral politics. These parties’ shifting positions on the issue of EU membership resulted from a delicate balancing act between the need to attune their policies to those of potential or actual coalition partners, on the one hand, 535 PARTY POLITICS 8(5) and to keep their voters’ loyalty, on the other. In the case of the Justice Party, the latter may require upholding a radical ideological appeal that Euroscep- ticism is clearly part of, while precisely the same could continue to confine the party to the political wilderness. Not rejecting EU membership thus needs to be seen in light of the party’s efforts to achieve a degree of coalition potential. For the leadership of the divided agrarian party, having already been included in governing coalitions, recovering lost electoral support – and, indeed, control over the party – was the priority even at the cost of tensions with its allies. Previous records in government or opposition also greatly influenced the way the Democratic Forum and the Social- ist Party related to the issue of EU membership; the former, as the party governing the country when it started its way ‘back to Europe’, and the latter, as the successor party demonstrating its commitment in the early formative years of competitive politics to the values and rules of ‘Western-style’ liberal democracy. Ideology nevertheless seems to have an independent impact on how the issue of EU membership is framed. Parties, such as the SZDSZ in Hungary, the ideological profile of which is compatible with (or, indeed, reinforced by) both economic and political integration may approach EU membership in more value-laden terms, although not necessarily exclusively so. In contrast, parties with ideologies that may conflict with the foundations of the European project, such as the Smallholder Party, can successfully avoid the sensitive, potentially divisive questions that arise from a country’s membership bid by approaching the issue from a purely economic perspec- tive. Emphasizing direct gains to be secured in the accession negotiations reduces the complex issue to a manageable material cost-benefit analysis, which can easily be interpreted, and changed, as the strategic context may require. Long-term influences arising from party ideology and historical development thus need to be understood in conjunction with short-term incentives arising from coalition-building and electoral competition. Perhaps the main conclusion to be drawn from the Hungarian case is that broad party political support for joining the EU by no means implies that the issue of integration is depoliticized. On the contrary, parties in this country, like their counterparts already in the EU, use the set of issues surrounding European integration for partisan advantage.

Notes

I am grateful for helpful comments on various versions of this article to the partici- pants of the ‘Opposing Europe Research Network’ panels at the Annual Conference of the Political Studies Association (Manchester, 10–12 April 2001), in particular Paul Taggart and Aleks Szczerbiak, and to Ian Herbison, Cas Mudde, Ulrich Sedelmeier, Alaka Singh, Nick Sitter, Julie Smith, Pieter van Houten and the journal’s referees. I also thank János Simon (MTA PTI Budapest) for allowing me access to data from the parliamentary surveys. 536 BATORY: ATTITUDES TO EUROPE

1 See, however, Navracsis (1997), Hegedüs (1999), Grabbe and Hughes (1998). 2 Among the most recent notable exceptions are Henderson (1999 and 2001), Kopecky and Mudde (2001), Szczerbiak (2001) and Taggart and Szczerbiak (2001a, b). 3 The survey data were made available by János Simon (MTA PTI) for the purposes of the author’s doctoral research. 4 The survey results are reported in more detail by Simon (1997, 1999) and, in the context of the present study, Batory (2001).

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AGNES BATORY received her ﬁrst degree in law in Budapest in 1997 and an MA in International Relations and European Studies at the Central European University in 1998. Since October 1998, she has been a PhD candidate at the Centre of Inter- national Studies, Cambridge University, UK. ADDRESS: Centre of International Studies, Cambridge University, Fitzwilliam House, 32 Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 1QY, UK. [email: [email protected], [email protected]]

Paper submitted 11 May 2001; accepted 3 October 2001.

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