Euroscepticism and populism in Hungary: The analysis of the prime minister’s discourse

Migration flows, distrust in European institutions and transnational governmental ineffectiveness and low economic performance have become a favorable ground for the so-called populist governments that are widely using Eurosceptic and populist rhetoric today. Voters perceive traditional elite as powerless in front of contemporary socioeconomic problems. Consequently, populist leaders, at the regional level, have opposed the policies of European institutions. Populism has developed and become part of every European Union (EU) member state and today is gathering more and more Eurosceptic components too. This study is to investigate what message the Prime Minister of Hungary is conveying to his voters. In order to realize this primary objective, we will observe how the political discourse changed over time and how widely populist and eurosceptical rhetoric is present in today’s political discourse. In the first part of this study we briefly review the literature on populism and Euroscepticism to frame the articulations of different populist and various eurosceptical claims. Our goal is to identify, through thematic analysis, which concepts related to the European Union get more attention at the institutional level. We expect to find a significant occurrence of populist and Eurosceptical elements in the Prime Minister’s discourse.