Balkan Csárdás: Hungarian Foreign Policy Dance

This paper is one of few all-encompassing efforts to explain Hungarian policy and involvement in the Western Balkans, and it attempts to do so by asking the following questions:

What interests and strategic considerations drive Hungarian foreign and trade policy in the region? Who formulates foreign policy priorities in Hungary and what is the interplay between formal and informal actors? What economic interests shape Hungarian foreign policy in the region? How much has Hungarian foreign policy in the region changed as a result of the war in Ukraine?

To answer these questions, this paper is divided into four main sections. The first focuses on Hungary’s foreign policy strategy in the region. The second, as a special case study, investigates the effects of Orbán’s minority politics in Serbia’s Autonomous Province of Vojvodina (Vajdaság in Hungarian). The third, researching the Hungarian media empire in the region, and finally the fourth focuses on the economic drivers of Hungary’s approach in the region.

The paper builds upon numerous secondary sources and online and in-person interviews conducted with 19 government representatives, politicians, foreign policy experts, scholars, and journalists from Hungary, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia.