This blog is post 2 of the SLSA blog series ‘Empirical Approaches to the Rule of Law’, which takes a socio-legal and citizen-focussed approach to the rule of law, exploring its social foundations, innovative methods, and perspectives from Hungary, Poland, Germany, the Netherlands and Serbia. The series is guest edited by Dr Erin Jackson, postdoctoral researcher at the University of Groningen on the comparative research project CITIZENS-LAW, which aims to strengthen the rule of law in the EU through mixed method research on societal conceptions of law.

How does the rule of law look in Hungarian public thinking? Major patterns in defining the rule of law in Hungary

Balázs Fekete, Professor, ELTE Faculty of law / senior research fellow, Centre for Social Sciences

The concept of the rule of law has been a major component of the Hungarian public discourse since the formation of the second Orbán government in 2010. In addition to external legal and political criticism, the idea of the rule of law has also been playing a major role in internal political debates. Political parties opposing the government have repeatedly raised strong claims addressing the deterioration the state of the rule of law when discussing or fiercely challenging problematic governmental measure such as the transformation of the competences of the Constitutional Court or the introduction of various emergency measures since 2022. The rule of law is a legal issue that is (unusually) widely represented in the Hungarian public discourse, either pro or contra.

Surveying public opinion of the rule of law in Hungary

In this intellectual climate, the analysis of responses coming from a three-country representative survey (N=1000) are especially intriguing. This survey in three countries – Denmark, Hungary, and the Netherlands – carried out in the frame of the CITIZENS-LAW project by Ipsos in January 2024, looked at citizens perceptions of the rule of law and contained one open-ended question addressing the ideas of the respondents about the rule of law. This open question was posed as such: (Q16) “This study deals with the rule of law. What comes to mind when you think of the rule of law?” The respondents were encouraged to reply openly, with the phrasing of the question including that “There are no right or wrong answers. Everyone can have a different image of the rule of law in mind.”

The aim of this blog post is to present a possible structure of the Hungarian responses by identifying the main underlying patterns that appeared in the various survey replies. With the qualitative coding and pattern analysis, one can get closer to those main ideas that structure the public thinking about the rule of law in Hungary. In time, a future comparison of these Hungarian findings with the patterns structuring the Dane and Dutch responses can help us to understand both what is common within European societies and what is unique in the Hungarian society’s thinking about the rule of law.

In the collection of responses to the question, two aspects are worth mention. First, the ratio of answers to this question was extremely high, as almost all respondents answered the question, and the ratio of those replies that made at least some sense (neither trolling or nonsensical) was around 90%. The level of their quality, including linguistic competences, composition and legal knowledge varied to a great extent, but even the apparent less educated answers proved to be extremely telling about public attitudes towards the rule of law. Second, the length of these responses typically ranged from one word to one or two complex sentences. Three respondents provided personal stories (6-16 lines) with some examples from their lives that in their eyes were connected to the rule of law. All in all, the responses to open survey question offered more initially anticipated. The qualitative data gathered enables us to identify some major patterns, setting up a framework for interpreting the rule of law in public thinking. It is a treasure trove of popular ideas about the rule of law.

Coding popular interpretations of the rule of law

Having read, analysed, and coded all these answers a structure of patterns can be set up relatively easily. I considered something, typically appearing in the main clause or, in certain cases, in a subordinate clause of a sentence, to be a pattern if it appeared at least in a substantial amount of answers and it looked to have a primary role in the meaning of the given answer. Of course, these patterns sometimes overlapped, and sometimes they did not appear explicitly. In these cases I interpreted their primary meaning and classified the statement according to it, so scholarly subjectivity necessarily appears in the following analysis.

The following pattern structure was built inductively, with the first reading enabling me to identify patterns, to structure them and to (sub-)code the answers. Upon second reading, I then refined both the classification of the answers and the structure, if necessary, based on the earlier code structure.

The more than 900 survey responses were classified with the help of this code structure:

A detailed analysis of the replies to the question would require more elaboration than available in this blog post, however some preliminary conclusion can be reached.

Associations with the rule of law in the Hungarian population

First, it can be argued that the idea of the rule of law means much more in citizens’ thinking than it does in conventional legal scholarship. The real question is, in what sense the public understanding is broader? First of all, it has to be emphasized that the formal requirements of the rule of law – with special regard to legality and its various sub-components as well as to non-discrimination – are widely present in the responses. In addition, various substantive claims – such as punitiveness, responsivity and idea of justice – also pop up. Furthermore, it appears from the replies that for a considerable number of respondents, politics is also associated to the rule of law, either by considering the rule of law as a political tool or by regarding it as a starting point to criticise the government or its policies. Mostly dominantly, the idea of the rule of law looks to have no pure legalistic meaning in the Hungarian public discourse, but it is intertwined with either political or substantive social claims.

Second, the idea of the rule of law seems to be not only a descriptive term but the basis for political criticism. For a greater part of the respondents the idea of the rule of law is not only about its supposed meaning but it can also be applied to argue about the recent state of public affairs in Hungary. That is, the rule of law is part of the country’s political vocabulary, and it is mostly used to formulate strong criticism towards the government. Thus, the idea of the rule of law is not exclusively a descriptive concept to denote a given state of constitutional and legal affairs, but in many cases it can also have an intense political meaning positioning it in the context of internal political debates.

Third, the most frequent associations are undoubtedly connected to the patterns of legality and anti-discrimination that is why these codes – code 3 and 4 – are the most detailed. Therefore, it can be argued that the majority of the Hungarian public is certainly aware of certain components of the conventional formal understanding of the rule of law. A more elaborated analysis of these answers may offer us a picture on the ‘popular’ understanding – or in Ehrlichian terms: a living law interpretation – of the classic idea of the rule of law in Hungary. This popular understanding of the rule of law can have a huge impact on the everyday perception of legality of ordinary citizens in Hungary. Thus far, it is obvious that both the requirements of legality and prohibition of discrimination are relatively widely spread and known concepts.

Finally, and interestingly, though the open question (Q16) was predominantly answered in a descriptive way, meaning that the respondent gave a detailed description of his or her ideas about the rule of law, another type of response emerged. In these cases, the respondents’ replies had at least two main components and the response had a rather complex structure. Most typically, these answers set forth a definition as a first component, and then critically compared the recent state of affairs in Hungary to the definition, highlighting the current situation as deficient from this perspective. In these cases, the responses contained: (1) a descriptive component and (2) an evaluative one, and the respondents used their idea of the rule of law to critically assess the recent political situation. For example:

“In a properly functioning ‘state based on the rule of law’ (jogállam) laws equally apply to everyone. This, unfortunately, doesn’t exist in Hungary.” (code 3 + code 4)

These kind of answers show that the rule of law is not simply an abstract and descriptive idea in the eyes of some citizens, but it can also be mobilized when assessing the recent state of public affairs. In this sense, the rule of law tends to have another layer of meaning – one of regime opposition – as a political argument in a Hungarian contemporary political discourse heated by tribal-like oppositions.

Conclusion

If representativeness is about “capturing the range or variation in a phenomenon”[1] in qualitative studies, it can be argued that the pattern structure above points out well the main variations of the idea of the rule of law that present in the Hungarian public discourse. And, even though an elaborated analysis of these replies needs more time and space, it is obvious that for the Hungarian public, the rule of law is more than a simple descriptive legal term. Here, the idea of the rule of law seems to be enriched with substantive justice, punitive and responsive claims, and it even looks to have a potential to mobilize critical political views.

Thumbnail image: Jennifer Aitkens, Ontario, Canada, CC BY 2.0 cropped

[1] Webly, L (2010) ‘Qualitative Approaches to Empirical Legal Research’ in P Cane and HM Kritzer (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Empirical Legal Research (Oxford, Oxford University Press) 934.