Personalized Alliances and Informal Networks in Populist Foreign Policy: The Case of Viktor Orbán

Populist leaders increasingly challenge alliances by prioritizing personal ties over institutional commitments. This paper examines how Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán constructed international partnerships in his foreign policy discourse. Using network and discourse analysis of his posts on X between June 2023 and June 2025 (N=638), the study identifies central actors, their characterisation, and patterns of partnership-building. Findings indicate that Orbán’s discourse on international entities was shaped by politicisation, personalisation and structural constraints. Politicisation projected domestic friend–enemy narratives internationally, personalisation privileged leader-to-leader ties and links to popular non-state figures, while structural constraints weakened partnerships by exposing them to the interests of larger powers and the opportunistic behaviour of populist allies.