The Data and Methods of the Hungarian Comparative Agendas Project

Since its establishment in 2013, the Hungarian Comparative Agendas Project has developed over 15 individual datasets on Hungarian public policy. In this chapter, we present these datasets focusing on the periods highlighted in Chapter 3 of this volume (1867–1918, 1920–1944, 1957–1989, 1990–2018). Our database covers all three phases of the so-called friction process of policymaking (Baumgartner et al., in American Journal of Political Science 53:603–620, 2009). We have data on the inputs of policy decision-making in the form of public opinion priorities, petitions, media coverage, party manifestos, and election results. The policy process phase is represented by data on prime ministerial speeches, interpellations, laws and decree-laws and executive decrees. These were companied for the period of Socialist autocracy by, inter alia, speeches of the first secretary, secret resolutions of the executive and the agenda of Politburo meetings. The output phase is investigated through budgets and final accounts. Taken together, this database contains more than 400,000 observations with information on the policy content and metadata of individual items such as speeches or laws.