Clothes Trading and Issue Ownership, a Strategic Countermove : A case study about Hungary; Fidesz’s intrusion into the Far-right

Abstract: This research touches the basics of a clothes-trading process. The process occurs as an outsideparty is being politically absorbed by a mainstream party which aim is to oust the smaller party from the electoral arena. The outside-party would ensure survival by dismiss its policy dimension, thus moving towards an opposite strategic direction away from the incoming mainstream party. The toolkit is taking from the PSO-theory by Bonnie M. Meguid (2008) in order to describe the clothes-trading process by each step as a party strategy. It is a defeat fire with fire type of conflict, with the end not yet discovered, but assumed to be a total exchange between the parties’ issue ownership. So far it is too early to predict the outcome. Further studies have to be made on the future elections in order to elaborate the clothes-trading process more in detail. But the research has set the basics of how and why such a process would occur.