Driven by politics: agenda setting and policy-making in Hungary 2010–2014

Zsolt Boda and Veronika Patkós

Policy Studies, 2018, vol. 39, issue 4, 402-421

Abstract: Studies on media and politics generally find an effect of the media on the symbolic policy agenda. Analysing data from the Hungarian Comparative Agendas Project, we demonstrate that this effect is extremely weak in the Hungarian policy-making process. We identified those issues that received greater than average coverage in the media. However, we found that in the majority of cases governmental initiatives or decisions preceded the media coverage – that is, instead of the media agenda pulling the policy agenda, the general logic is the opposite: the media are talking about the policy initiatives of the government. The ambition of the paper is twofold. First, our findings reinforce those claims in the literature that point to the many institutional and political factors affecting the media-politics nexus. This suggests that policy-making might be very different in new(er) democracies. Second, our research analyses the policy-making side of Viktor Orbán’s governance. Changes in the polity, democratic backlash and illiberal tendencies are usually the focus concerning the political changes in Hungary since 2010, but no attention has been devoted to how this type of governance is reflected in policy-making. Our paper seeks to make a contribution also in this respect.

Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/01442872.2018.1478075 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:cposxx:v:39:y:2018:i:4:p:402-421

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/cpos20

DOI: 10.1080/01442872.2018.1478075

Access Statistics for this article

Policy Studies is currently edited by Toby James

More articles in Policy Studies from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().