Leveraging Crises: How the Russian Aggression in Ukraine Benefited the Populist Government in Hungary’s 2022 Election Campaigns

This article contributes to the literature focusing on the relationship between crises and populism. It argues that the timing, the crisis type, and the contextual factor of whether populists are in power, matter for changes in the discursive strategies of populists and their ability to turn crises into opportunity structures. Guided by the constructivist literature on external shocks and a thematic content analysis of 561 online media news reports on the 2022 Hungarian national elections before and after the outbreak of the Russian aggression in Ukraine (RAiU), the article shows that this crisis helped to refresh the people-centrist elements of Fidesz’s populist discourse while slightly downgrading its anti-elitist aspects. The absence of any material impact of the RAiU on Hungarian society at the time of the elections, combined with the dominance of Fidesz’s ‘pro-peace vs. pro-war’ discourse, transformed the RAiU into an opportunity structure for Fidesz during the elections.