POLITIKÁTÓL VEZÉRELVE A büntető populizmus diskurzusai a magyar politikában és a médiában
GUIDED BY POLITICS. DISCOURSES ON PENAL POPULISM IN HUNGARIAN POLITICS AND MEDIA

Summary/Abstract: Penal populism, which advocates severe punishment of criminals, has greatly infl uenced justice policy measures in Central and Eastern Europe over the last decade. International research has found that radical and populist right-wing political parties and the tabloid media have taken a leading role in legitimizing the discourse of penal populism. This paper investigates the Hungarian discourse of penal populism revolving around the recent criminal policy reform known as the ‘three strikes’ measures. We explore the interpretive frames of the main populist and the anti-populist actors through content and frame analysis of the political communication and the media. Our results show that penal populism was dominant in the Hungarian political discourse of the criminal justice policy reform. The role of the media, including the tabloid press, however, has been rather controversial: explicit penal populism has been present only in a tiny minority of the analyzed media sources. Yet, by the frequent and expressive portraying of crime in a descriptive manner without offering any social explanations, the Hungarian media might have potentially contributed to an atmosphere legitimizing penal populism. The results thus partly contradict previous fi ndings and offer a more nuanced view on how penal populism is being constructed and promoted in Hungary.

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