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The 2024 European Parliamentary Elections
52-76Views:317One of the most important event of the 2024 super election year was the elections of the European Parliament – which took place from June 6 to 9 – because the European Union has reached a turning point. Classified as a second order election, it has taken on a new significance in the light of the current global political events, of the geopolitical, social, and political situation, as well as of the crisis resulting from the pandemic, wars, and migration towards Europe. All of this raises several questions: What characteristics possess the tenth EP election under these new circumstances? In case the EP election starts showing new features, one may ask whether it can be described in terms of the second order characteristics. Further: how have the changes under these circumstances affected the nature of the election, the participation, the electoral results, and the performance of major and minor parties, as well as the ruling parties? To what extent can secondariness of the EP elections still be considered evident?
The situation is further complicated by the fact that this was the first election held after Brexit, which not only influenced the number of seats in the European Parliament and their distribution among countries, but also affected the electoral process as well as the composition of the parliamentary seating arrangements. -
The Party System of the European Parliament between 2004–2019
112-130Views:231The paper examines the party system of the European Parliament (EP) between 2004–2019
through European Parliamentary Groups. It applies party system typologies in an international
case. The examined period starts from 2004, which marks the largest enlargement of the
dominating the decision-making In addition to the widely used typologies developed by Blondel
and Sartori, the present paper focuses on the relationship between the political groups in the
EP and their role in decision-making. It draws conclusions about the nature of the party system
and its changes over three cycles from the internal cohesion indices and coalition statistics of
the political groups. The party system of the EP is a polarised pluralist system dominated by
two political groups (bidominant). In the period under review, the party system of the EP can be
characterized as balanced, showing only small changes. -
The EU states innovation and competitiveness clusters in 2013
22-36Views:222In the era of the innovation economy it is natural that innovation is one of the key definitions, because of its literature is excessively far-reaching: global, micro and macro level, in connection of
the business and non-business sector, it’s also defined in social context. The literary background
of this essay shows a historical overview of the development that occurred in the definition of
innovation and its different interpretations.
After exploring the literary background a quantitative, descriptive and explanatory statistic
analysis will be written in a monothetic and deductive approach. In this phase of my research
I will make macro level international comparative analyzes with the help of the EU and the
WEF (World Economic Forum) data base (Innovation Union Scoreboard, illetve Global Competitiveness Index), and the SPSS software. This essay’s goal is to determine whether there is a
connection between innovation processes and the forming of competitiveness on a macro level
and if there is how it can be interpreted. Later with a similar goal and methodology I would like
to make international micro level comparative analyzes and then by combining the macro and
micro level results, I will determine how the macro level innovation policy influences the micro
level innovativeness and competitiveness. Using all of these results I would like to determine the
special features of the national innovation policy and the chances for optimalization. -
Causes of the educational and labour market overrepresentation of women among NEET youth – Trends in Hungary’s Northern Great Plain region
32-51Views:285In the member states of the European Union, the gender distribution of the NEET generation (young people aged 15–24 or 15–29 who are not in education, employment, or training) does not follow a uniform pattern. While in Western countries men tend to be overrepresented in this group, in Eastern European member states, including Hungary, women are affected disproportionally. In this study, beyond a review of the relevant literature, we also present the results of our qualitative research from 2024 carried out in Hungary’s Northern Great Plain region (Hajdú-Bihar, Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg, and Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok counties). In this research, we examined the forms of gender inequality among NEET youth in terms of education and the labour market. Our key finding is that although men have, on average, lower levels of educational attainment and a higher rate of early school leaving than women, their long-term labour market prospects are more favourable. This is due to their greater geographic and occupational mobility, broader employment opportunities, and smaller burden of family responsibilities.
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East or West? Finnish national identification in the light of historical narratives
33-57Views:153The study presents the main milestones in the formation of Finnish national and state identity, the process of building the Finnish nation state, based on the regional archetypes of historian Jenő Szűcs and researcher Antonsich. The analysis of the literature presents four main identity narratives of Finland. These narratives do not follow each other chronologically, but are time-to-time reinforced at different historical periods and turning points. These narratives include: „Finland has always been part of the Western world,” „Neither East nor West,” „Finland as a bridge between East and West,” „Finland as a northern country.” During the study the influence of Eastern and Western European historical developments on Finland’s historical self-identification, described by Szűcs, is highlighted, which includes both Eastern, Byzantine (Russian Empire) and Western (Swedish Empire) elements and symbols. In various approaches, we view identity conveyed by the state as a construct that was created under the influence of the ruling elites of the time, but for the purpose of forming and strengthening national identity. These elites mainly used folk motifs and social identities that have strengthened the sense of belonging to the nation among the predominantly agrarian population of Finland. After all, the national identity expressed by citizens and the identity narrative conveyed by the state can influencing each other resulting in a stronger sense of identity and identification. In the case of Finland, the most significant events influencing the formation of national identity include the wave of Russification that began at the end of the 19th century and the policy of Finnish neutrality that developed during the Cold War. The former led directly to the creation of the Finnish nation state, while the latter represented a kind of forced return to Eastern identity, reinforcing the narrative of Finland as a bridge between East and West, which is also often emphasized in the case of Hungary. Today, Finland’s identification with the West is clearly pronounced, but nationalist, populist ruling parties, primarily the Finns Party, are promoting narratives that once again bring the „neither West nor East” approach to the fore. In addition, the national populists emphasize Finland’s marginality and separateness, which is manifested in the emphasis on efforts to break away from the European Union.
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Electoral Systems in East Central Europe
26-50Views:237The democratic transition in Eastern and Central Europe provides a good opportunity to
examine how to apply the findings of the science of elections in a new dimension. This study
based on 167 elections in 23 countries shows the formation, evolution and political consequences
of the new electoral systems. The hypothesis of the paper is that the elections and electoral
systems in this region not always correspond to the conventional wisdom. Our analysis divides
into five parts the region (Central Europe, Western and Eastern Balkans, Baltic States and the
other former republics of Soviet Union). This division helps to get an sophisticatad picture about
the emergence and changes of the new electoral systems. By showing country by country we can
demonstrate the similarities and differences between and within subgroups as well. Finally
using three well-known indices (least square index, effective electoral and parliamentary
number of parties) the study summarizes – country by country and subgroups by subgroups by
type – the political consequences for the proportionality and party structure. The analysis of the
167 elections demonstrates that Eastern and Central Europe does not show uniformity regarding
the political consequences of the electoral systems. Their influence is more moderate than in the
established democracies and they are also much more volatile. Their changes have shown rather
diverging than converging trend in the last quarter century. The conventional findings are
difficult to apply for this region, they are only partially valid, especially the formation of party
structure differ from the previous experiences. In sum the Eastern and Central European elections
do not invalidate the conventional statements of the elctoral studies but they offen do not show
corresponding image. So they significantly contribute to the further development and refinement
of the previous findings. -
Does the corruption affect to the voters? – a Bayesian econometric analysis
25-66Views:249The study examines the agenda-setting aspirations of Hungarian political life between 2010
and 2016 from a corruption research perspective. Using the available data, we estimate, based
on the monthly data series of a six-year period, using different statistical methods, whether the
allocation of European Union funds used as a proxy for corruption had an impact on the support
of the ruling party. The results of the applied Bayesian vector autoregression do not provide
evidence for the hypothesis that the increase in corruption associated with the increase in EU
subsidies reduces the popularity of the ruling party among the entire voting population. -
The transformation of nationalism in Hungary and Russia between 1995 and 2013: Results of a comparative study
43-63Views:284In this paper we are focusing on the metamorphosis of nationalism in Russia, in Hungary and in the other countries in the European Union between 1995 and 2013. For the research we had used the ISSP research. We had researched the dimensions like spontaneous national identity, ethnocentrism, national categorization, national pride, nationalism and xenophobia. First we introduce the several aspects, then we reveal the features of the nationalism. This paper focus ont he role of the nationalism in the running of the capitalism.
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Exploring the possible expressions of social dominance in an online context: Discourse analysis below the video contents of the representatives of Finn’s Party
104-127Views:221In the course of the study, discourse analysis was used to examine the comments posted under the videos of three representatives of the Finns Party with the largest YouTube following. The aim of the research was to identify discoursive manifestations of social dominance in the comment field. In addition, we also aimed to validate a word list of socially dominant terms. To this end, we have identified four linguistic categories that could form the basis of socially dominant communication, based on the literature of social dominance. The words with the highest number of elements in each category were presented in a word cloud. After collecting the most frequent terms, three external groups were identified against which social dominance orientation may be relevant. These suggest that the European Union, immigrants and the domestic left may constitute the out-group category in the eyes of populist supporters. Finally, the hierarchical terms were not validated as they occured in a negligible number of items in the sample. The successfully validated categories were plotted on a cross-tabulation, from which we created four different types of Finns Party supporters based on the out-group they named and the dominant common words and phrases in the comment categories. The presence of authoritarian, political out-group category points to the spread of political polarization in Finland. Since social identity underlies both social dominance orientation and political polarization, it may be relevant to examine both together in future research. Nonetheless, social dominance was not expressed in the way that was initially assumed and commentators perceived “real Finns” as the sufferers of a socially dominant situation. The background to this phenomenon is presumably the populist political rhetoric of the Finns’ Party, which tries to portray Finns as people left behind in disadvantaged social positions.
