CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2016
| Author | Demková, Simona |
|---|---|
| Title | Political Elite Rhetorical Approaches Toward Immigration: An Empirical Study of Rhetorical Approaches of Political Elites in Hungary and Croatia |
| Summary | The present thesis studies what factors influence the choice of political elite rhetoric in Hungary and Croatia when addressing the immigration issue. Through a quantitative and qualitative content analysis of press releases on government websites during the period from May until October 2015, I demonstrate an existence of two diverging rhetorical approaches – cautious in the case of Croatia and autonomous in the case of Hungary. Following the evidence of political elite quotes and the elites’ respective actions, I develop an explanatory framework which uncovers the factors behind the existence of such rhetorical divergence, highlighting the importance of three rhetoric-situating factors: the elites’ stance toward the European Union, the analysis shows it to be highly euro-sceptic in the Hungarian case as opposed to highly pan-European in the Croatian case; the political response to a historical event of an ethnic suppression which is shown to matter extensively in the Hungarian contemporary domestic politics, while in Croatia, it is pronounced with warnings about the lessons from history; and party ideology and competition, as the Hungarian right-centre Fidesz government is shown to deal with the left-wing opposition as well as the far-right Jobbik party, while the Croatian SDP-led centre-left leaning government faces the right-leaning HDZ-led opposition, from which SDP tries to differentiate itself through more cautious rhetoric. The rhetorical divergence is further illustrated through the dimension of rhetoric-justifying themes, which includes cultural and religious appeals and appeals to safety or threat of immigration that become politicised in order to suit a preferred rhetorical approach. |
| Supervisor | Greskovits, Béla |
| Department | International Relations MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2016/demkova_simona.pdf |
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