Open Research Repository

The Open Research Repository (ORR) is the official institutional repository of the Central European University. The repository provides access to the research output of the CEU community by collecting open access versions of scholarly works authored or co-authored by CEU faculty and students.

For more information, please contact us at: scholcom@ceu.edu

Recent Submissions

  • ItemOpen Access
    The public opinion effects of antisemitic elite cues:a survey experiment on the Hungarian Soros campaign
    (2026) Hamrak, Bence; Jenne, Erin K.; Littvay, Levente; Simonovits, Gabor; Department of Political Science; Department of International Relations
    Right-wing populist leaders have long vilified left-wing activist George Soros to justify their policies. They accuse Soros and his organisations of being globalist elites who attack national sovereignty and traditional family values. The accusations themselves are loaded with antisemitic tropes. Despite this, it is unclear whether these populist, anti-elite messages effectively persuade citizens, or if antisemitic appeals specifically drive their impact. To answer these questions, we conduct a survey experiment in Hungary mimicking the Hungarian government's propaganda, which sometimes uses Soros as a symbol to mobilise support. We show that a random Soros' endorsement reduced policy support among pro-government respondents but increased it among anti-government ones. This suggests that Soros-bashing serves as a partisan cue in populist communication, helping to shape constituent preferences. However, overt antisemitic priming did not amplify the effects of Soros cues on policy preferences. These findings highlight the potential and limits of populist elite cueing.
  • ItemOpen Access
    US governors populism database:Assessing the impact of Donald Trump on state-level discourse
    (2026-03) Dzebo, Semir; Jenne, Erin K.; Littvay, Levente; Hawkins, Kirk A.; van der Veen, Olaf; Democracy Institute; Department of Political Science; Department of International Relations
    The election of Donald Trump in 2016 has often been characterized as part of a larger populist wave sweeping Western democracies. However, claims about populism’s pervasiveness often lack empirical support, particularly at the subnational level. This research note introduces the US Governors Populism Database (USGPD), providing the first quantitative measures of populist rhetoric among state-level officials in the United States. Analyzing 400 speeches from 100 governor terms across all 50 states, we find that a political system with a populist national leader is not necessarily associated with high levels of subnational populism. While Republican governors show higher levels of populist rhetoric than Democrats, this difference predates Trump’s presidency and shows no evidence of intensifying following his first election. By providing systematic evidence about populism’s presence and diffusion across different levels of government, this study demonstrates how populist rhetoric manifests differently across governmental tiers and contributes to scholarship examining populist discourse in multi-level political systems.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Kirchberg Salami Lost in Bosphorus:The Multiplication of Judicial Independence Standards and the Future of the Rule of Law in Europe
    (2022-09) Kochenov, Dimitry V.; Bárd, Petra; Democracy Institute; Department of Legal Studies
  • ItemOpen Access
    Legitimising policy knowledge in autocratising contexts:the case of Hungary
    (2026-01) Krizsan, Andrea; Fekete, Dorottya; Department of Public Policy; Department of Gender Studies; Democracy Institute
    In contexts of autocratisation and political polarisation, maintaining the legitimacy of policy expertise is cumbersome. Experts are clustered on two sides of the political divide: those not aligned with either side are excluded from regular policy processes, while those aligned to the regime are too close to the government to be seen as legitimate. This article analyses how policy-knowledge producers work towards achieving legitimacy for the knowledge they produce in such highly politicised contexts. It identifies three sets of legitimacy-building practices used to navigate the dominance of the political. First, knowledge producers increasingly embrace values-driven practices rather than insisting on neutrality and independence. Second, boundaries between political arenas and epistemic authority are tightened by the separation of individual and organisational identities. Third, the relevance of policy knowledge is reframed by diversifying audiences and outcomes to maintain usefulness. The practices identified are not specific to autocratising contexts, but they are exacerbated and become coerced responses to the hard constraints of an incrementally closing regime. Based on interview data with think tanks in Hungary’s polarised autocracy and highly politicised policy making, this research examines populist tendencies of questioning truth and neutrality of knowledge and expertise – all hallmarks of today’s turbulent policy environments.This makes it a valuable contribution to the broader literature on how think tanks negotiate legitimacy in contexts of de-democratisation.
  • ItemMetadata only
    Grounded Nationalisms over Time, Territory, and the State
    (2023-01) Jenne, Erin K.; Department of International Relations; Democracy Institute
    Grounded Nationalisms: A Sociological Analysis has become an instant classic in nationalism studies. In just over 300 pages, Siniša Malešević, one of the world’s leading nationalism scholars, has constructed a rich treatise on some of the central questions of our day: How should we think about nationalism? What is the future of nationalism? And what accounts for the ubiquity of national identities and national identification long after the so-called Age of Nationalism ended?
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