Opposing the Opposition: What Serbian and Hungarian Opposition Parties Have in Common

Serbia's snap election on 25 October has raised high expectations for a viable challenger. A victorious Student List, however, would enter government with an incomplete programme and face a deeply entrenched system. Such a win would say less about the future direction of Serbian politics, and more about how Serbians, like Hungarians with Orbán, have simply had enough of Vučić.

“We got a ‘progressive’ [ruling] party; no wonder everything is falling apart before their eyes, especially the institutions they’ve so ‘expertly’ destroyed. And the remaining opposition parties can’t even agree on small things such as uniting […], so I conclude that they, too, actually care more about parliamentary privileges than about a genuine fight to […] fix the country. The people see this.”

“Confidence in the entire political elite that has been in power for 30 years has been shaken. The […] people no longer trust the government, which treats the country as its own fiefdom, nor the discredited opposition.”

Two countries, one populist grammar: a corrupt incumbent, a compromised opposition, a public that trusts neither. The first quote is from Serbian millionaire Alek Kavčić, speaking on behalf of the Student List political movement in 2025; the second is Péter Magyar, then Hungarian opposition leader and now Prime Minister, speaking in 2024.

Two countries, one populist grammar: a corrupt incumbent, a compromised opposition, a public that trusts neither.

For the first time since 2014, the Serbian incumbent party, the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), appears vulnerable to electoral defeat, or at least facing a close race. Much of that hinges on a leaderless student movement whose populist tactics pit the virtuous ‘people’ against a corrupt elite, echoing those of Hungary’s Tisza Party, which unseated Viktor Orbán earlier this year. Whether the Student List can achieve something similar remains an open question, depending as much on the movement’s strategy as on an electoral environment far less forgiving than Hungary’s.

Why an early vote?

Serbia’s snap parliamentary elections will be held on 25 October, as President Aleksandar Vučić announced on 9 September. Protesters have called for an early vote since the collapse of the railway-station canopy in Novi Sad in November 2024, which claimed 16 lives. The disaster shed light on rampant corruption within the Serbian leadership and was followed by widespread protests across the country, which marked the SNS’s deepest political crisis. The announcement also came just days after the public burial of Ratko Mladić in Belgrade. The former commander of the Army of Republika Srpska was convicted of genocide and war crimes in The Hague, where he died while serving a life sentence. His burial placed Vučić in a difficult political position. He was caught between, on the one side, the SNS’s nationalist core and many Bosnian Serbs, who regard Mladić as a hero, and on the other, the broader Serbian electorate, for whom he is what he is: a convicted war criminal. The date itself may be no accident. On the one hand, setting an earlier election date partially responds to protesters’ long-standing demand for a vote before the originally scheduled December 2027 election. On the other hand, Vučić delayed making a firm announcement for more than a year. As a result, the election date was confirmed only 46 days before the vote, giving the opposition relatively little time to prepare in earnest. The student-led protest movement has since entered the race as the Student List. It recently named all 250 of its candidates, mostly artists, professors, actors, and doctors rather than students, and published an 11-point programme titled “Serbia or Mafia.” The ruling SNS will contest the election as ‘United Serbia’, with Vučić as its prime-ministerial candidate. He has also resigned as president, ending a second term that was, under the Serbian constitution, his last permitted one.

If Vučić and the Student List are both populist, what sets them apart?

According to Rastislav Dinić, a Serbian MP from the Green-Left Front who now backs the Student List in the upcoming elections, the key difference lies in what each side’s populism is built on. Vučić’s appeal rests on an anti-elite, anti-professional rhetoric similar to Donald Trump’s, targeting the average working citizen and evoking nationalistic sentiments. The Student List, by contrast, represents a kind of technocratic populism. It is built around nameless and leaderless students, professionals, and intellectuals who claim indifference to ‘politics as usual’ and present themselves as untainted by the ‘dirt’ of party politics. Their goal is to defeat the system that failed them, and to do so, they reject any ideology that might divide them. Therefore, they can appeal to a wide range of audiences, and rhetorically also refer to themselves as “representing 100% of the people.” This implies that they do not need to form alliances or focus on specific issue areas or ideologically divisive questions, such as relations with Kosovo, war-crimes accountability, or EU integration. Instead, their approach can remain centred on criticising both the corrupt government and the perceived incompetence of the opposition. As a consequence, the campaign may seem like a fight not only against the SNS but also against the rest of the opposition: the ‘us vs. them’ framework is clearly crystallised in line with populist theory. Built around the paradox of an ideology that rejects ideology and a populism positioned against populism, the campaign gives the upcoming election an increasingly referendum-like character. Rather than determining the future direction of Serbian politics, the vote is consequently shaping up as a verdict on Vučić’s rule itself.

What does Hungary have to do with it?

This technocratic-populist playbook isn’t unique to Serbia. Hungary’s ‘new’ opposition, the Tisza Party led by Péter Magyar, was careful to “stay clean” from the “old opposition” consisting of the left and liberal opposition, which could not unseat Fidesz in 16 years and four consecutive elections. Their sweeping success also lay in channelling existing anti-Orbán sentiment, without getting too entangled in other divisive political questions, allowing them to dominate the opposition scene. They even welcomed the withdrawal of old opposition representatives. Meanwhile, their own candidates — now ministers — come mostly from leadership positions in industry and academia, professionals almost across the board, with the notable exception of the leader himself, who comes from the previous political elite. This approach carried through into the election: Tisza openly framed the vote as a referendum on Fidesz, while steering clear of locally divisive issues such as the war in Ukraine and migration.

What are the differences?

There are, however, three big differences between the strategies and electoral environments of the Student List and Tisza. First, the Student List has no concrete leadership — no ‘Petar Srbin‘, a Serbian counterpart to Tisza’s Péter Magyar (whose surname translates to “Hungarian”), around whom support and communication can concentrate. The opening quote of this article illustrates the point with some irony: a millionaire speaks as if he were the leader of thousands of students who are fighting against corruption. Second, Serbia’s fully proportional electoral system means opposition parties don’t need to build broad coalitions to compete, unlike in Hungary’s mixed system, giving Serbia’s opposition an ‘easier path’, at least in theory. Third, that theoretical advantage runs up against a much less favourable electoral environment than Hungary’s. Unlike Hungary, Serbia is not an EU member, and its elections are less free and fair. V-Dem, a leading academic democracy index, classifies both countries as “electoral autocracies,” meaning they hold multiparty elections that fall short of democratic standards. Yet election monitors from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) have generally found Hungary’s elections well administered, while in Serbia observers reported procedural shortcomings alongside vote-buying, breaches of ballot secrecy, and group voting. Additionally, votes are frequently miscounted, and “phantom” voters are registered in the system. Further complicating factors include the diaspora vote from Republika Srpska, which is also holding its own elections on 4 October, keeping voters there politically engaged, suspected foreign interference, and the documented use of spyware against the opposition.

What are the implications?

Some observers attach high expectations to the Serbian election and the emergence of a viable challenger to the SNS, especially given the potential reinvigoration of Serbia’s EU accession negotiations, which have de facto been frozen for years.

That optimism deserves some caution, however. A closer look at how the opposition is organising shows it is deliberately avoiding questions of EU integration, precisely to preserve its catch-all appeal. A Student List win would therefore say less about the future direction of Serbian politics, and more about how Serbians, like Hungarians with Orbán, have simply had enough of Vučić’s system.

A Student List win would therefore say less about the future direction of Serbian politics, and more about how Serbians, like Hungarians with Orbán, have simply had enough of Vučić’s system.

What comes after is far less certain. A victorious Student List would enter government with an incomplete programme centred on fighting corruption and expanding social measures in education, housing, and healthcare. Yet without a clear position on EU integration, Kosovo, or relations with Russia and China. It would also face the deeply entrenched system Vučić has built, which may not give way quietly. If the SNS instead retains power, Vučić could tighten his grip further, leaving civil society and the student movement’s candidates particularly exposed. A third possible outcome is a state of “cohabitation” with some degree of power-sharing in parliament. This is unlikely, however, since any effort by the Student List to expose corruption would require targeting MPs from United Serbia.

Views expressed in ICDS publications are those of the author(s).