The article reveals how Hungarian parties expand their members’ participatory
repertoires in intra-party democracy with the help of information and
communication technology. By answering the question of how Hungarian
parties use digital tools for their internal procedures the article adds to the
literature on parties’ use of technology. To make visible the promises and
boundaries of online political participation in a post-communist country the
article relies on 26 semi-structured interviews with Hungarian politicians from
10 parties conducted in 2020. The findings indicate that top-down
communication dominates Hungarian parties’ practices, and social media is
highly popular and is used for both external and internal reasons.
