The article reveals how Hungarian parties expand their members’ participatory repertoires in intra-party democracy with the help of information and communication technology. By answering the question of how Hungarian parties use digital tools for their internal procedures the article adds to the literature on parties’ use of technology. To make visible the promises and boundaries of online political participation in a post-communist country the article relies on 26 semi-structured interviews with Hungarian politicians from 10 parties conducted in 2020. The findings indicate that top-down communication dominates Hungarian parties’ practices, and social media is highly popular and is used for both external and internal reasons.

The paper contributes to the field of party politics and the use of deliberative practices by analyzing how a Hungarian political party uses deliberation to its own advantage. Our focus is on the National Consultation, which was designed by the elite populist radical right party Fidesz – Hungarian Civic Alliance (Fidesz-MPP) in 2005 as a deliberative practice to increase the party’s social embeddedness. The National Consultation became a government-funded questionnaire that is sent to Hungarian citizens by mail. Our article builds on existing typologies to show how the party established deliberative procedures to achieve strategic vote and policy seeking goals, as well as legitimacy and other normative objectives with the electorate. The article uses inductive thematic analysis of 27 semi-structured interviews with Hungarian politicians conducted in 2020. Our results provide evidence that deliberative practices can be hijacked by the political actors.

As deliberative and participatory practices play a greater role in political decision-making of democratic political systems in many parts of the world, political parties must adapt to demands of an increasingly more cognitively mobilized citizenry. While there is a growing body of literature about the functioning of such procedures in different social and political contexts, little is known about politicians’ reasons behind introducing them. Based on qualitative data collected among Hungarian politicians, this paper brings evidence to empirically assess why local politicians introduced Participatory Budgeting in Budapest, Hungary. Our findings suggest that politicians accept theoretical arguments for promoting citizens’ participation, newly elected local politicians expect to increase their party’s local embeddedness by creating new contact opportunities and emphasize that the introduction of Participatory Budgeting is a ground for experimentation. The article ends with a discussion about arguments that are put forth in the literature on European Participatory Budgeting but missing from the views of politicians, and concludes by highlighting the risks of institutionalizing Participatory Budgeting.

The relationship between political participation and the pursuit of sustainability at the local level has been investigated extensively in the literature. In this content, the emergence and extensive use of citizens’ assemblies receive particular attention. Much research focuses on the functioning of these assemblies and potential impact in the community. However, we know very little about why such initiatives occur. This article fills that gap in the literature and aims to explain why a citizens’ assembly on climate change was organized. It focuses on the Citizens’ Assembly in Budapest (Hungary), organized in the fall of 2020 with randomly selected citizens. The findings illustrate that although civil society initiated the deliberative process, the prime mover of the Citizens’ Assembly was political. Local politicians pursued this objective to fulfil their election pledges, ensure ideological consistency and promote sustainability.

Political parties use participatory practices to connect with their members and with the broader electorate. While substantial research indicates how people get involved, very little is known about why political parties use participatory practices. The present article addresses this gap in the literature and seeks to identify the reasons parties do so. We elaborate an analytical framework that includes three main categories of explanations: party characteristics, internal dynamics, and external dynamics. Our analysis focuses on Hungary, explores party statutes and manifestos, and relies on 26 semi-structured interviews with party elites from ten political parties. The findings indicate that parties have several purposes in mind, which vary across parties, that are often linked to broader concerns about citizen engagement and to attempts to give members a voice in internal and external decision-making processes.

National or supranational consultations on general policy questions are unusual phenomena. Nevertheless, they seem to play an important role in the political life of the community either because they might be considered as rudimentary forms of deliberative practices or because they are important strategic tools in the hands of political actors. Given this salience of consultations from both normative­deliberative and descriptive-strategic perspectives, it is surprising that academic analyses of national consultations are scarce. This paper tries to fill this gap in the literature by focusing on one of the most well­known examples of nation-wide consultations, the series of national consultations in Hungary. It aims to present why national consultations gradually lost their deliberative character and how they have been transformed into a strategic instrument for mobilising supporters.