CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2025
| Author | Hatarova, Natalia |
|---|---|
| Title | Ideological Worlds Colliding: Questioning Smer's Alliance with the Political Radical Right |
| Summary | For many, Robert Fico’s or his political party’s, Smer’s, position on the political spectrum is murky and vague. This is often due to frequent switches in position, but also to Fico’s ideological differences from other political leaders who are part of the radical-right family. Furthermore, Fico built a good relationship with Victor Orbán from the ruling Hungarian Fidesz party, who is not only part of the radical right-wing but also plays on Hungary’s grievances that time-to-time go against Slovakia’s territorial integrity. To overcome this puzzle, a text analysis based on Maerz’s and Schneider’s (2019; 2021) research method was conducted. Speeches by Fico and Orbán were collected, uploaded to R studio, turned into data-feature-matrices where a dictionary, a list of ideological keywords was applied. After the keywords were counted by R, the sum of keywords was put into ratio log-odds equations to determine Fico’s ideological positions from 2016 to 2024 and to what extent these positions align or collide with Orbán’s. A two-dimensional ideological space was created to better locate Fico and Orbán in a shared political landscape. Overall, this research helps to clarify Smer’s position and the logic behind its collaboration with Fidesz. |
| Supervisor | Zsolt Enyedi |
| Department | Political Science MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2025/hatarova_natalia.pdf |
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