Zsolt Boda

Zsolt Boda is Research Professor and Director General of the ELTE Centre for Social Sciences. He holds an MA in Economics, a PhD, and a DSc in Political Science. His academic work focuses on policy change and styles of governance under different political regimes, as well as on institutional trust, its social roots, and its consequences for policy effectiveness. From 2019 to 2022, he was the principal investigator of DEMOS – Democratic Efficacy and the Varieties of Populism in Europe, a collaborative Horizon 2020 project. He is currently leading MORES – Moral Emotions in Politics: How They Unite, How They Divide, a collaborative research project funded by Horizon Europe.

The project

Title: "Conceptualiser la gouvernance – perspectives françaises"

"The dominant paradigm for analysing government activity in the sense of governing is today that of public policy studies, originating in the United States, whereas the concept of governance is hardly used in this broader framework. At its most general level, my project examines the limits of the American ‘public policy’ approach and the possibility of (re)introducing the notion of governance into contemporary political science. The underlying hypothesis is that, in order to better understand the process of governing in the European context, we need concepts and theories that differ from those developed in the United States. I propose to enrich the public policy approach with considerations more firmly grounded in the study of politics and polity. In recent years, I have conducted empirical research in Hungary on governance, but the aim is to incorporate additional European case studies. My research stay in France will seek to deepen my knowledge of French schools of thought concerning the state, public action, and public policy through a systematic review of the literature and through meetings with scholars and experts."

Hosting institution: The Laboratoire Aménagement Économie Transports (LAET), University Lumière Lyon 2. 

Selective Bibliography

• Zsolt Boda : Sur l’évolution du concept du populisme : d’un espace discursif à un outil analytique, Questions de communication, 48, 2025, 163-172.
• Zsolt Boda and G. Hajnal : The illiberal transformation of government bureaucracies: patterns and dynamics, Public Policy and Administration, On-line First, 2025.
• B. Bodo, M. Bene, and Zsolt Boda : False sense of security and a flurry of misplaced trust: the construction of trust in and by Facebook, Information, Communication & Society, On-line, 2025.
• A. Bartha & Zsolt Boda : Tax compliance motivations during corruption scandals in a fragile democracy: A before-and-after study, Europe-Asia Studies, 2024, 76(6), 1055-1077.
• Zsolt Boda : Shrinking space: the changing political opportunities of advocacy groups in illiberal governance, European Politics & Society, 2024, 25(4), 664–683.