Playing the Hungarian card: An assessment of radical right impact on Slovak and Hungarian party systems and post-Communist democratic stability

Through comparative case studies of Slovakia and Hungary, I explore the competitive relationship between governing parties and radical right parties in post European Union accession parliaments. This research highlights the roles of ethno-nationalism and populism and employs Slovakia’s ethnic Hungarian minority, as manifested through the 2009 Slovak language law and the 2010 Hungarian citizenship law, as a focal point of competition between party groups. I argue that this competition reveals a more influential role than typically attributed to radical right parties. The first half of the article tests these cases against Meguid’s (2008) position, salience, and ownership theory of competition between unequals. The second half of the article analyzes this competition and points to electoral strategies, coalition and opposition policy payoffs, governing party reputations, and each country’s legal landscape as areas affected by the radical right’s presence. Keywords: Radical right; Hungarian minority; language; citizenship; accommodation, issue ownership, issue salience; competition