Informational autocracy at work: Evidence from Hungarian anti-immigration campaigns

Abstract

The paper examines the transformation of Hungarian popular attitudes on immigration throughout the 2010s, with particular reference to the 2015 European refugee crisis. Using a before-and-after study design combined with a potential outcome framework with Eurobarometer survey data, we analyze pre- and post-crisis shifts and compare Hungary to the broader EU. Our findings show that Hungarian attitudes toward immigrants from non-European backgrounds became significantly more negative during the crisis, diverging from trends observed in the EU as a whole. Conducting large scale anti-immigrant and anti-EU campaigns during and after the crisis, the Hungarian government leveraged the attitudinal change, demonstrated by settlement-level electoral data. Following Guriev and Treisman (2019, 2020), we regard this as ‘informational autocracy’ at work: a democratically elected autocratic government employs broad-based propaganda campaigns to secure popular support.