Volunteers and volunteering in Hungarian political arena – Results of a pilot study, 2026
Anna Mária Bartal – Andrea Béla-Csovcsics – László Dorner – Rita Hegedűs – Eszter Nándori Sipos
Abstract
The research on political volunteers and volunteering in Hungary is particularly relevant because in recent years we have witnessed the emergence of new and revived party-related communities that base their operations on the work of volunteers and/or activists. The investigation of the topic is also justified by the fact that, apart from the nonprofit statistics of volunteers in political civil-nonprofit organizations, little is known about the characteristics and motivation of the Hungarian volunteers who formally undertake political volunteering. Based on this, the aim of this pilot study was to explore and analyze a sub-area of traditional political volunteering, the sociodemographic characteristics of party-related volunteers, and their involvement and motivations, by establishing the research on Hungarian political volunteers and volunteering. These authors base their analysis on the online, snowball method-based survey conducted between November 2025 and January 2026. The results are formulated taking into account the small sample size (51 people) of the pilot study and the limitations resulting from the characteristics of the sample that can be described with relatively homogeneous socio-demographic characteristics. A significant majority of the political volunteers included in the study were also members of a civil society organization committed to some public policy issue, which shows the "multifunctional" nature of their volunteering. Their involvement in politics – in line with the results of the literature – began with some type of protest participation, and it was triggered by a specific event. The leading motivations of the political volunteers in the respondent sample were determined by normative (value identification) and affective motivations (emotional identification with the given party and/or political dissatisfaction). In terms of the nature of the activity, online social media activities and offline activities dominated such as brochure distribution and signature collection. Half of the respondents completed at least four activities as political volunteers, usually with episodic or one-time frequency. Based on the literature analysis, four clusters were identified along the orientation of volunteering: community-dominant-issue-oriented, issue-dominant-community-oriented, issue-dominant-goal-oriented, and goal-dominant-issue-oriented groups. Despite the small sample size, these groups differed in terms of their sociodemographic background, civil society participation, volunteering characteristics, and motivations. Based on this, it is believed that research on Hungarian political volunteers and volunteering is an area that requires further investigation with a larger sample and a larger research apparatus.
Keywords: political volunteering, involvement, motivations, volunteer activities, recognition, cluster types