Prime ministers in minority governments: The case of Hungary

Abstract

Whereas early scholarship depicted minority cabinets as weak recent findings demonstrate how various factors contribute to effective minority governance. Nevertheless, the role of prime ministers (PMs) was largely ignored in the performance of these cabinets. The paper addresses this problem by comparing Hungary's only two minority governments in an MSSD framework. Combining a qualitative review with a quantitative analysis of voting patterns in Parliament, it argues that differences in aforementioned cabinets’ policy performance can be traced back to contrasting ideological position of PMs and subsequent ideological moderation. These findings have important implications for minority governments in majoritarian and polarised contexts.