MORES Glossary

Hope

/həʊp/

On 12 April 2026, Hungarian voters chose to end more than a decade of illiberal rule. They did so not because they were certain of defeating Viktor Orbán, or that an opposition victory would eventually restore democratic standards, but because enough of them had come to believe that both were possible. That emotional register, which carries Péter Magyar and the TISZA party into office in May 2026, was hope.

Hope is a forward-looking, positively valenced emotion directed at a desired but uncertain outcome. Appraisal theory accounts for its structure: hope arises when a future state is evaluated as goal-congruent (something good to gain, or something bad to avoid), uncertain but still attainable, and personally or collectively meaningful. Certainty transforms that emotion into joy alone. The conviction that the desired outcome is impossible converts hope into despair.

Hope is also distinct from optimism and from expectations. Expectations concern what is most likely to happen; hope concerns what is most desirable. People may still hope for outcomes they consider improbable. The emotional charge of hope, unlike the temperamental quality of optimism, depends on the outcome remaining genuinely uncertain.

Motivationally, hope requires two further components: agency (a sense of willpower sufficient to pursue a goal) and pathways (a perception that viable routes towards it exist). When either is absent, hope cannot easily translate into sustained effort.

In political life, hope is a future-oriented emotion that often becomes morally charged when citizens see their situation as unsatisfactory yet changeable; for instance, when they believe in a better future for their society as a whole (greater justice, peace, dignity, safety, or democratic renewal) rather than merely for themselves. Hope’s political function is not celebration but orientation, a sort of sustained commitment under uncertainty, where resignation might otherwise be the rational response. Empirical work links political hope to greater willingness to vote, campaign, and join collective action, and to resilience after defeat. Yet again, Hungary’s election offers striking evidence: turnout exceeded 80%, the highest in the country’s history.

The relationship between hope and action is not automatic, however. When citizens can identify what they want, but cannot imagine a route towards it, hope shifts register. It regulates distress rather than driving behaviour, making people feel better without yet mobilising them. The two functions are not mutually exclusive: hope can do both at different moments in a political cycle.

Like all moral emotions, hope can be manipulated. Political actors who promise a better future can use that promise to delay actual change, sustaining patience amid ongoing hardship or exclusion. Citizens kept hoping may remain less likely to demand immediate accountability. The emotional structure of hope, anchored in a desired outcome still held to be possible, is what makes it so common in politics.

The Hungarian case illustrates each of these dynamics unusually clearly. For over a decade, the Orbán government built support around fear: of migrants, foreign interference, the European Union, wars—threats from which only the incumbent, Viktor Orbán himself, could offer protection. Péter Magyar did not argue against that framing, as if fear could simply be replaced. Instead, he offered a rival appraisal of the same uncertain political situation. Orbán’s politics of fear concentrated attention on catastrophe and decline. Magyar’s hope redirected it towards the possibility of political renewal, social inclusion, better public services, a stronger economy, a restored democracy. In his campaign, Magyar could not promise certainty on any of these fronts, but he made the possibility feel real. That is what hope, at its most politically effective, does.