Public Perceptions of People-Centric Political Actions
A Qualitative Analysis of the Views of Hungarian Adults on Political Elite Measures
Copyright (c) 2025 Tóth Tamás, Liszkay Aliz
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Abstract
People-centrism is one of the fundamental elements of populism. However, qualitative research that tries to interpret a specific part of the demand side of populism – the people’s perceptions of people-centrist political actions – is scarce. In this paper, therefore, we analyse the perceptions of Hungarian adults of the people-centrist measures conducted by the domestic political elite, and scrutinise a large dataset of semi-structured interviews (n = 109) through thematic content analysis. Our results suggest that respondents deemed three important political actions by the Hungarian political elite to be ‘people-centrist’: family subsidies, immigration policies and tax reductions for younger citizens.
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Funding: Tamás Tóth was supported by the EKÖP-24-4-II-1 University Research Scholarship Program of the Ministry of Culture and Innovation from the source of the National Research, Development and Innovation Fund.