Exit, voice, loyalty, and neglect in an electoral autocracy: Hungarian university students’ political engagement and perceptions of system legitimacy

This study examines political participation and perceptions of system legitimacy among university students in Hungary’s electoral autocracy through an adapted Exit–Voice–Loyalty–Neglect (EVLN) framework. Drawing on the 2024 Active Youth survey, it investigates how patterns of political engagement and disengagement relate to subjective regime evaluations while testing the EVLN framework beyond democratic contexts. The findings reveal that students’ political behaviour is more fluid and ambivalent than the original framework anticipates. The EVLN strategies do not form a single, coherent continuum. Instead, a sharp polarisation emerges along the loyalty–voice axis, while exit and neglect occupy a more ambivalent and overlapping position. The findings suggest that the relationship between political participation and system legitimacy is reconfigured under electoral autocracy, implying that assumptions developed in democratic settings require reinterpretation. More broadly, the study shows how participation and withdrawal may coexist in ways compatible with regime stability despite widespread political discontent.