Crucibles of Political Loyalty: Church Institutions and Electoral Continuity in Hungary by Jason Wittenberg

From the Publisher

This book investigates one of the oldest paradoxes in political science: why do mass political loyalties persist even amid prolonged social upheaval and disruptive economic development. Drawing on extensive archival research and an original database of election results, this book explores the paradox of political persistence by examining Hungary's often tortuous path from pre- to post-communism. Wittenberg reframes the theoretical debate, and then demonstrates how despite the many depredations of communism, the Roman Catholic and Calvinist Churches transmitted loyalties to parties of the Right. Contrary to conventional wisdom, Church resistance occurred not from above, but from below. Hemmed in and harassed by communist party cadres, parish priests and pastors employed a variety of ingenious tactics to ensure the continued survival of local church institutions. These institutions insulated their adherents from pressures to assimilate into the surrounding socialist milieu. Ultimately this led to political continuity between pre- and post-communism.

Foreign Affairs

Wittenberg weighs in on a long-standing puzzle: Why, like a watermarkon the printed page, do partisan loyalties survive within a society across generations and notwithstanding vast historical change — in France, for example, from back across the Fifth, Fourth, and Third Republics, back even to the French Revolution, and maybe before? Even more striking is the mystery of how the loyalties prevalent in central Europe in the early twentieth century, particularly on the political right, survived the long communist interlude only to resurface almost intact in our own day. In Hungary, he locates his explanation in the role of the churches (Catholic and Calvinist). Local priests and pastors, lay leaders, and believers, by playing a skillful cat-and-mouse game with the regime and its tamed church leadership, preserved their earlier mass allegiance, including the potential political configurations within it. In so doing, they provided a parapet behind which many avoided assimilation into the new socialist order. This is a rigorous explanation for a hard case, with relevance for other authoritarian transitions, but it is less convincing in the wider world of partisan persistence.

Product Details

• Table of Contents

Table of Contents