Zsófia Papp

• PhD
• Research Professor at Centre for Social Sciences

The REDIRECT Survey Dataset includes data from citizen and elite surveys conducted in 2025 across Belgium, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Norway, and the United Kingdom. While the citizen survey data remains under embargo and the elite survey is ongoing, the aim of this first version of the Codebook is to present the topics and dimensions...

Both material and symbolic issues were on the national political agenda in 2023. While education, the economy and health care were the most contested policy areas, the Fidesz government continued its campaigns against LGBTQ rights, migration and liberal values. Crucially, the government and its left-liberal opposition vehemently criticised each oth...

This study examines question-order effects in measuring satisfaction with democracy (SWD). Particularly, the authors are interested in whether the relative position of the question regarding satisfaction with the state of the economy (SWE) in the questionnaire affects responses to the SWD item. The authors conducted three independent split-ballot e...

This study presents the results from a series of conjoint experiments evaluating how the various components of political systems affect citizens’ satisfaction with democracy (SWD). Compared to earlier studies, our approach is unique in that we were able to disentangle the effects of otherwise highly collinear variables corresponding to three defini...

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected all domains of human life, including the economic and social fabric of societies. One of the central strategies for managing public health throughout the pandemic has been through persuasive messaging and collective behaviour change. To help scholars better understand the social and moral psychology behind public...

Objectives: Prior research highlights the role of efficacy, vaccine safety, and availability in vaccine hesitancy. Research is needed to better understand the political driving forces behind COVID-19 vaccine uptake. We examine the effects of the origin of a vaccine, and approval status within the EU on vaccine choice. We also test if these effects...

The article addresses the budgetary implications of constitutional adjudication by analysing the decisions of the Hungarian Constitutional Court (HCC) between 1990 and 2018. Our results highlight that the HCC does not narrow the parliamentary majority's room to manoeuvre by blocking policies with serious budgetary consequences, and the potential bu...

Prior research reveals a relationship between various political system outputs and the citizens’ satisfaction with democracy (SWD). The current study contributes to this line of inquiry and demonstrates that the perception of the district legislators’ overall performance positively correlates with the citizens’ democratic satisfaction. The multivar...

At the beginning of 2020, COVID-19 became a global problem. Despite all the efforts to emphasize the relevance of preventive measures, not everyone adhered to them. Thus, learning more about the characteristics determining attitudinal and behavioral responses to the pandemic is crucial to improving future interventions. In this study, we applied ma...

This study investigates the relationship between environmental attitudes and the ‘greenness’ of party choice, moderated by exposure to environmental problems such as the incidence of natural disasters and poor air quality. The ‘greenness’ of party choice is operationalised as the share of environmental policy in the parties' election manifestos. Vo...

Do the relative numbers of young people in the adult population affect their extent of participation in electoral politics? The answer to this question remains elusive in both the theoretical and empirical literature on youth political participation. In this study, we test the hypothesis that young people’s cohort size has a significant effect on t...

Changing collective behaviour and supporting non-pharmaceutical interventions is an important component in mitigating virus transmission during a pandemic. In a large international collaboration (Study 1, N = 49,968 across 67 countries), we investigated self-reported factors associated with public health behaviours (e.g., spatial distancing and str...

The aim of this study is to understand how electoral rules affect citizens’ satisfaction with democracy. The focus is on the extent to which this effect is mediated by the constituency orientation of legislators and the proportionality of election results. The analysis combines data from the European Social Survey and the Comparative Candidates Sur...

Kutatásunk azt vizsgálja, hogy milyen országjellemzők befolyásolják a különböző európai országok politikai kampányainak hangvételét. Ennek során olyan tényezőket vizsgálunk, amelyeket a szakirodalom általában összefüggésbe hoz a kampány negativitásával, viszont hatásukat szélesebb összehasonlításban eddig nem tesztelték. A kutatás 9 európai ország...

There is plenty of evidence that legislators think that aligning with voter preferences benefits their re-election. But whether or not legislators are constrained by demand, we have limited knowledge. This article tests whether issue representation in a generally salient field affects legislators’ electoral performance. The analysis uses data from...

Policy responsiveness is considered an effective tool for representing the aggregated interests of an electoral district. This article asks the question whether or not legislators in a mixed-member electoral system act on the profile of the constituency in their parliamentary work and, if yes, whether the magnitude of their actions is dependent upo...

Legislators are often viewed as ‘single-minded seekers of re-election’, and hence their actions are attributed to their ultimate goal of staying in office. However, an alternative approach ‘liberates’ legislators from the ever continuing struggle for re-election and argues that MPs carry out certain tasks simply because it is part of their jobs. Th...

Members of Parliament are often thought to attract funding into their constituencies to increase their local support, and eventually, secure re-election. Nevertheless, there is only limited research focusing on the question whether or not government funding indeed affects the MPs’ electoral performances. I focus on pork barrel politics in a single...

Covering the largest sample of countries to date, this study examines the effect of three country-specific factors on the tone of electoral campaigns across Europe: electoral system disproportionality, party system fragmentation, and the polarization of the electorate. We use an original dataset of statements made by political actors during eightee...

Campaigns, especially the level of personalisation is often perceived as a common tool for gathering extra votes. It may carry the promise of the representatives’ tendency to deviate from the party line and focus on more particularistic activities such as constituency service. The main question of this article is whether we can expect MPs who perso...

This article aims at capturing how the recent changes in Hungary’s mixed-member electoral system altered the candidates’ personal vote-seeking strategies. Based on the literature, one might expect that strengthening the role of the Single-Member District (SMD) tier increases the incentives for personalisation. By utilizing the data from two consecu...

The article investigates whether or not the amount of work legislators carry out in parliament affects their chances of re-selection in a mixed-member electoral system. A unique dataset collecting Hungarian Members of Parliaments’ (MPs) publicly available electoral, socio-demographic and parliamentary activity data between 1998 and 2010 is analysed...

Parliamentarians greatly differ with regard to the amount and quality of their work in parliament. Students of legislator behaviour mostly view Members of Parliament (MPs) as ‘single-minded seekers of re-election’, which is often argued to be the motivation for carrying out various activities. However, less attention has been paid to what extent MP...

Although 25 years have passed since the Hungarian transition of 1989–90, to date, there have been no systematic analyses of candidate characteristics and candidate selection patterns. This article asks: What candidate features do party selectorates value when deciding on candidate nominations from 1994 to 2010? I investigate the candidate selection...

Most empirical studies of the effect of incumbency conclude that being a defender of the seat is an advantage and that newcomers and challengers alike have increasingly lower probabilities of winning. Yet, the majority of these studies in Eastern Europe have been based on tumultuous political environments in which electoral rules change frequently....

This article aims to capture the effect of candidate selection on campaign personalisation during two Hungarian general elections (2010 and 2014). Our main hypothesis is that candidates who think their selection was mostly influenced by the national party leadership (i.e. it was centralised and at the same time exclusive) pursue less personalised c...

It is often suggested in the case of mixed-member electoral systems that legislators with close ties to the single member districts (SMDs) are more constituency oriented than those with weaker ties. This article investigates the effect of three career-related variables (mandate type, tier of candidacy and the number of formerly held SMD mandates) o...

In modern democracy, voters should be able to use elections to control parties and politicians. Citizens lose control when their electoral voice does not compel them to act according to the will of the people. Repeated free and fair elections are supposed to function as a mechanism of electoral control. To evaluate electoral control, citizens need...

The aim of this paper is to uncover the micro-factors structuring campaign personalization in the case of Hungarian Members of Parliament. It is presumed that in a party-centred environment, the effects of the various independent characteristics are filtered by the parties. Thus, due to the electoral rules, personalization cannot contradict party c...

A tanulmány a választási rendszerhez köthető karrierváltozók szerepét tárja fel a helyi érdekek parlamenti képviseletének alakulásában magyarországi vonatkozásban. A mandátum típusa, az egyéni választókerületi jelöltség és a korábban szerzett választókerületi szintű parlamenti tapasztalat magyarázza a helyi relevanciával bíró írásbeli kérdések megj...

A tanulmány célja annak bemutatása, hogy a magyar választási rendszer közelmúltbeli változásai hogyan befolyásolták a képviselőjelöltek kampánystratégiáit a perszonalizáció nézőpontjából. A nemzetközi szakirodalom tanulságai alapján azt várjuk, hogy a többségi ág hangsúlyosabbá válása a perszonalizációnak kedvez. A Comparative Candidates Survey két...

A kötet az OTKA által támogatott (K 106220) Jelöltek és képviselők c. kutatás néhány eredményét tartalmazza. A három éven át tartó munka nyomán négy adatbázis és több már megjelent, illetve megjelenés alatt álló publikáció készült el a Corvinus Egyetem Politikatudományi Intézetének keretében működő Elitkutató Központ gondozásában. Időben és tartalm...

Legislators’ behaviour in and outside parliament is shaped most crucially by the electoral rules. Existing studies literature linking electoral systems, personal vote-seeking incentives, and legislative behaviour, however, have been hindered by the lack of comparative data and ‘direct evidence of a personal vote’ (Shugart 2008: 46). This chapter co...

This work aims to contribute to our knowledge about the circumstances under which personal representation prevails. The main question is whether constituency orientation appears in a country where electoral rules encourage party representation. Previous research has established that electoral systems and member personalization are closely connected...

The aim of this paper is to uncover the micro-factors structuring campaign personalization in the case of Hungarian Members of Parliament. It is presumed that under party-centred electoral rules, the effects of the various independent characteristics are filtered by the parties. Thus, due to the electoral rules, personalization cannot contradict pa...

A fejezet négy módszertani problémára koncentrál. (1) A hangsúly-és ígéret-központú megközelítések előnyeinek és hátrányainak áttekintése alapján az ígéretalapú módszer mellett teszi le a voksot. (2) Bemutatja, milyen elvek mentén választottuk ki az ígéreteket a kampányszövegekből, és milyen korlá-tokkal és nehézségekkel néztünk szembe. (3) Érvel a...

The main argument of this article is that parliament–citizen connections in Hungary have been conditioned by broad political systemic features between 1990 and 2010. After a brief review of the institutional choices that lead to the current parliamentary set-up, the connections between representatives and the represented are mapped out by examining...

The 2010 general elections presented something that post-transition Hungary has never seen before. The parliamentary elections, described as ‘revolution in the polling booths’ led to a two-third majority of one party, the Fidesz. This fact provides a motivation to investigate the event by placing it into the framework of critical elections. The pap...

This paper presents the results of the first stage of a more extensive research on electoral connections in Hungary that investigates the attitudes of representatives, campaign strategies, constituency service both in the districts and in Parliament, as well as the personal vote. In this study, the inquiry remains at the level of attitudes, seeking...