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This is an exploratory study of populist political movement Sme rodina – Boris Kollár (We Are a Family – Boris Kollár, since November 2019 only Sme rodina). The paper first locates this movement into a lose concept/sui generis family of political parties (the niche party), arguing in contrast to some typologies that this is primarily protest populist party presenting some niche issues, and only secondarily, an entrepreneurial party. The paper also answers the question why this party is considered as being populist by many political and non-political actors and analysts. The paper also suggests that there is actually non-existent, but assumed direct correlation between the support for this party and the decline in the standard of living, as sometimes presented in public discourse. In contrast, it is suggested here that there may be stronger links between relative poverty, feeling of being abandoned by political elites/parties, and low educational levels. Moreover, there played an important role previous knowledge (celebrity status) of the party leader who was often presented and discussed in tabloid media. For this reason, many young females voted for this party. The party also managed to raise a widely perceived problematic issue that was seen as not tackled sufficiently or at all by the previous governments and other competing political parties (the niche or salient issue).

As a motivational factor of action, political efficacy is an important predictor of political behaviour. The term was invented to capture the extent to which people feel that they can effectively participate in politics and shape political processes. Today, we have a comprehensive knowledge of the individual-level factors (socio-demographic variables, political preferences etc.) that shape the level of internal and external dimensions of political efficacy. However, while it is widely demonstrated that media consumption influences the level of political efficacy, the country-level media context factors affecting it have rarely been studied. This paper reports the findings of extensive research on how two crucial features of the media context, the political significance of the media and the level of political parallelism in the media system, shape the level of external and internal political efficacy. The investigation draws upon the dataset of the seventh round (2014 – 2015) of the European Social Survey (ESS) and includes more than twenty-two thousand respondents from nineteen European democracies. The research hypothesizes that in countries where the media play a more important role, people have lower levels of external and higher levels of internal political efficacy. Political parallelism, which shows the extent to which media outlets are driven by distinct political orientations and interests within a particular media system, is expected to directly increase both external and internal political efficacy. Its indirect effect is also hypothesized, arguing that partisan media amplifies the winner-loser gap in political efficacy as a kind of "echo chamber". The findings show that in countries where the media play a major role in shaping political discourse, people have lower levels of external political efficacy, while the political parallelism of the media system indirectly affects the external dimensions of political efficacy. Internal political efficacy is, however, not related to these context-level factors.

A Hungarian Comparative Agendas Project (CAP) az MTA TK Politikatudományi Intézetében működik, célja a magyar közpolitika dinamikájának feltárása a különböző közpolitikai és politikai napirendek kvantitatív társadalomtudományi eszközökkel történő vizsgálatával. Mindehhez az Egyesült Államokban Frank Baumgartner és Bryan Jones nevével fémjelzett Policy Agendas Project közpolitikai tartalomelemző kódkönyvét adaptálja hazai környezetben. A kutatás azt célozza, hogy konzisztens adatbázist hozzon létre a magyar közpolitikai folyamatok meghatározó aktorai – így a parlament, a média és a közvélemény szereplői – számára meghatározó ügyekről. A mérések megbízhatóságát az egyértelműen megszabott, koherens kódolási szabályok garantálják, amelyek révén a kormányzat prioritásainak változásai időben és közpolitikai területenként konzisztens módon nyomon követhetők. Az "Országgyűlési képviselők (1990-2014)"adatbázis az 1990-2014 közötti országgyűlési képviselőkről nyújt tájékoztatást. A leiró tábla a 2014-2018 közötti képviselőket összegyűjtő táblával is kiegészül. A Bizottságok (1990-2014) adatbázis az 1990-2014 között felállitott Bizottságokról nyújt tájékoztatást, később az 1920-1990 előtti Bizottságokról szóló leiró táblával is kiegészül.

This contribution offers a reminder of the state of political forces in France and the course of the health crisis, which initially took place in a context of strong political tensions, particularly as a result of the controversial pension reform decided by Macron. The COVID crisis allowed populist parties to develop 'naming' and 'blaming' strategies, initially mobilized in different proportions, to attack the President of the Republic Macron. The analysis shows that the decision to introduce a lockdown led the two leaders of the parties described as populist to harden their criticism to similar proportions but also to 'claim' rapid responses to the crisis. These speeches are also part of the medical polemics that will have been omnipresent throughout the pandemic. Finally, we observe that these strategies have not been beneficial to the populist parties, since during the municipal elections the two parties did not manage to take advantage on this health and political sequence.

One striking aspect of the coronavirus crisis was the poor response of the right-wing populist leaders to the pandemic in countries such as the US, Britain, and Brazil. Despite this fact, the continuing voter support right-wing populist leaders attract across countries with different socio-economic traits is puzzling. In this paper, we argue in favour of a cognitive anthropological view of populism scholarship. Cognitive and evolutionary anthropology shows that mental systems common to all humans shape the way we understand the world, making some ideas more plausible than others regardless of their levels of accuracy. Even though the action of 'building a wall' to keep illegal migrants away can prove ultimately unfeasible and does not address real immigration issues, due to our cognitive evolution, it makes intuitive sense as a plausible option to reducing immigration. Populist leaders exploit our cognitive intuitions by providing such intractable but oftentimes intuitively-plausible ideas in order to get elected or to promote preferred policies. Furthermore, we intuitively admire powerful individuals and tend to defer to authoritative and charismatic figures as an evolutionary strategy for acquiring valued skills and negotiating hierarchies. As a result, by committing to the intuitively-plausible policies populist leaders promote, such as 'building a wall', they give additional credence to the political beliefs that are based on our cognitive intuitions, effectively increasing their plausibility for the "common folk".

This working paper investigates public policies that precede the rise of populism. A mixedmethod research design is applied: on the one hand, we use data from international surveys and databanks to explore the policy–populism nexus from a comparative European perspective. On the other hand, country case studies have been prepared to understand the country-specific historical and socio-economic features of populism and its potential policy roots. Four countries were selected as national case studies: two EU member states (Greece and Hungary) because of a strong, long-term support of populist parties; one EU member state (Lithuania), where support of populist parties remain moderate, although historical and socio-economic features suggest a likely rise of populism; and one country (Turkey) that exhibits the potential hybridization tendencies of populism and the role of policies in the shift from democratic towards authoritarian regimes. We found that the content of policies were weak predictors of the rise of populism. Country-specific measures were more important predictors than policy ideas. At the same time, our results demonstrate that the lack of activation policies may be a strong predictor of welfare populist attitudes of citizens, and the exclusion of a significant proportion of young people from the labour market clearly feeds populist attitudes. Another important finding is that crisis management policies matter, but not the socio-economic crisis in itself: the management of crisis by non-elected policy experts, through technocratic governance methods, will likely trigger populism. This is particularly true in societies where political polarization is high