Working with data
The webpage focuses on political parties and their perception of nationalism and national identity. Firstly, the webpage contains a profile of each party in a national context based on basic facts, well known officials, and their electoral gains in national and European elections. Secondly, it gives an analytical insight into parties’ perceptions of national identity and nationalism. The parties are categorised according to mentions of related to national identity issues in election manifestos. These issues cover minorities, national myths, European integration, national sovereignty, integration of immigrants and related categories.
Selected case studies show parties’ "real politics" and strategies using national identity to politicise certain policies, such as using national mythologies in election campaigns. Case studies focus on up to three specific national identity issues for each country. They cover opposite positions of different parties to show different strategies and policies used to attract voters. For this purpose, visual (e.g. billboards) and text (e.g. given speeches) material was analyzed.
Acknowlegment
The Visegrad parties' profiles from 2006 - 2010 are based on a scholarly study published at Masaryk University: Černoch Filip, Husák Jan, Schütz Ondrej, Vít Michal (2011): Political parties and nationalism in Visegrad countries. Brno: Masarykova univerzita, Mezinárodní politologický ústav, Monography servies 46, 2011; and on the scholarly paper Husák Jan, Schütz Ondrej, Vít Michal (2012): National identity of the Political parties in Visegrad region and their European dimension, Journal on European Integration and Federalism, Science Po, Nice.
Party of the Hungarian Coalition (Strana maďarskej koalície – Magyar Koalíció Pártja, SMK)
The Party of the Hungarian Coalition was formed before the general election of 1998 in response to the amended election law which made the candidacy of coalitions of parties in elections pointless. SMK was formed by three parties representing the Hungarian minority in Slovakia: the Hungarian Christian-Democratic Movement, Coexistence and the Hungarian Civic Party. By 1998, these three parties had cooperated together for six years already, and therefore they had no problem to adjust to the new circumstances and to merge into one party. The chairman of the Hungarian Christian-Democratic Movement, Béla Bugár, became the leader of the new party. SMK has proved to be the most stable party on the Slovak political scene for almost ten years. Not only has it kept all internal struggles private and none of the prominent members of the party have left, SMK has also managed to have very stable election results. It gained 10.2 percent of the votes in the 1998 general election and became part of the so-called anti-Mečiar coalition. In 2000 SMK was accepted into the European People’s Party as a full member. The stability of the party and its performance was proved in the general election of 2002 when it got more than 11 percent of the votes and entered the centre-right coalition for the second time. SMK achieved great success in the first European elections in Slovakia in 2004 when it gained 13.24 percent of the votes and two seats. In 2006 SMK again got 11.7 percent of the votes but this time went into opposition, while Slovak National Party formed a coalition with Direction – Social Democracy.