A “Meteoric” Career in Hungarian Politics

The central puzzle of this chapter is the meteoric rise and abrupt fall in the popularity of Ferenc Gyurcsány, the Hungarian prime minister between 2004 and 2009. The chapter applies the LCI to explain this riddle by analyzing his prime-ministerial career. The chapter also aims to contribute to the methodological refinement of the LCI. First, it introduces a milestone approach, which sets the data for six crucial moments in Gyurcsány’s political career to make the LCI a dynamic tool for the analysis. Second, in order to improve the reliability of the method and exclude researcher bias, it replaces researcher judgment with expert judgment in the cases of communicative performance and management skills, and with the fulfillment rate of the legislative program in the case of parliamentary effectiveness. The result of the research diverges from our initial expectations, since the aggregate value of the LCI decreased only rather moderately.