Search
Search Results
-
Thomas Hobbes and the dilemmas of the natural state Second chapter: The tipology of the state of nature
3-22Views:40The primary purpose of this paper is to reflect upon four aspects of the Hobbesian state of nature. Firstly, the question is whether we can interpret this original state as a mythical, abstract,
imaginative and timless state, focusing only on the final conclusion of the Hobbesian theory, or
it may contain a well-defined timspan, having its own historical development based on a clear
logical construction. Secondly, this study aims at examining the natural character of man in
the state of nature, and his harmony with his environment in respect with their „naturalness”.
Thirdly, it tries to describe the assumed interpersonal relationships within the „primitve” state.
Fourthly, the paper presents different states of nature reasoned out from a close reading of the
text. All four aspect may help us to get a better understanding of the ambivalent character of the
Hobbesian state of nature. -
Debunking Myths about the American Presidential Elections of 2016 and Failures in the Social Sciences
51-61Views:24Throughout the campaign and following the elections of 2016, the two major political parties
cherished stories about what happened, and why it happened. Some of these stories have some
basis in fact, while others are completely mythical, and nevertheless believed. These stories, or
myths, arise from the political desires and belief systems of those who tell them. In what follows
we will examine these stories in the lights of the facts -
Preferred leadership style, leadership and entrepreneurial inclination among university students
3-26Views:33Although many researches have been conducted on leadership styles and university students
are participants in exploratory social science research quite frequently, fewer examples can be
found on the application of the Full Range Leadership model among the youth. In this article,
the authors examine preferred leadership styles among Hungarian students, and map their
connections with managerial and entrepreneurial inclination. The online questionnaire used inthe research was completed by university students studying economics, technology and social
studies in the capital and beyond. The questionnaire was completed by 335 university students.
The results are exploratory, and they seem to modify the existing typologies. Four distinct
leadership styles could be observed within the target group, embodying the transformative,
supportive, defensive, and laissez-faire leadership types. Based on multivariate analysis one may
suppose that among students leadership willingness is positively connected to transformative
leadership, while entrepreneurial inclination to the transformative and supportive styles. -
Electoral Systems in East Central Europe
26-50Views:27The 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. -
The weird world of Russian strategic security culture
95-118Views:68The objective of this paper is to explore the Russian interpretation of the concept of security and to question this interpretation. The first part of the essay provides a historical overview of the relationship between NATO and Russia. Although the relationship between NATO and Russia has never been friendly, it has not always been hostile. How did it become so? How did Russian security policy makers come to the conclusion that NATO posed a clear threat to Russia? What is behind Russia’s intransigent stance towards NATO? Is there even a solid basis for this attitude? What does this tell us about the Russian understanding of security? After an overview of the different concepts of security and an examination of the notion of strategic security culture, the second part of the paper attempts to answer these questions. It concludes that Russia’s strategic security culture has imperialist features and points out why, in the longer term, Russia will be the main victim of this.
-
Changes in family decision-making and division of labor among weekly families
148-165Views:68The study deals with the transformation of decisions and division of labor within the family by
processing the results of a qualitative, interviewed study of the target group of weekly workers.
The study shows how decisions are restructured according to roles within the family and how
the roles of women and men change as a result of the regular absence of one family member.
From the point of view of the approach to domestic work, the differences between weekdays and
weekends, which can be considered as a consequence of weekend, come to the fore. In the course
of the analysis, we examined whether there was a change in the decision-making processes
within the family as a result of the weekly (and if so, what areas were affected by the change)
and whether there was a radical change in the division of family responsibilities as a result of the
weekend. I present the results on the basis of two dimensions, on the one hand, of the phenomena
of disposition and decision-making over income, and, on the other hand, of the division of family
responsibilities and problem-solving. -
Political reorganization in the shadow of the pandemic and war: The 2022 Latvian parliamentary election and its consequences
73-94Views:40Latvia’s party system has been one of the most unstable in European comparison since the 1990s, essentially since independence and democratization. Although there was a period in the middle of the 2010s, which showed the stabilization of the range of relevant parties and a decrease in the number of parties, by the end of the decade the fluctuation between the parties of the Baltic republics was again high. The Kariņš cabinet, formed after a record long time after the 2018 election, nevertheless set a unique record in the country: it was the first government to complete a full four-year parliamentary term. The government faced two challenges during its tenure, the pandemic that began in the spring of 2020, and the Russian aggression against Ukraine that began on February 24, 2022. Both had a significant impact on the development of the party structure. The aim of this paper is to present the changes in the political palette of Latvian parties in the last two legislative cycles, to analyze the results of the October 2022 election, giving priority to the effects of the Russian-Ukrainian war on the transformation of the party structure and the results of the elections.
-
“Can’t you see that we are in trouble?” – The environmental protection-related ignorance, its appearance in visual attentional patterns, and some possible explanation/interpretation
49-69Views:33The environmental crisis is an outstanding topic nowadays. Given that it is basically caused
by human activity, this issue is worth examining at all levels of society. The present study
investigated the individuals’ visual attentional patterns and the possible attentional biases related to pictures displaying environmental problems, in comparison to undisturbed nature
and social scenes as control stimuli, within the framework of a reaction-time task. Changes
in participants’ mood and their self-reported environmental awareness were also measured.
However, only the negative social scenes resulted attentional bias, the environmental topics
were not able to do that. Albeit the mood of the participants deteriorated during the experiment,
it did not have any correlation with any other variables, and either did the environmental
awareness. We displayed the stimuli during the task only for a short period of time, thereby we
targeted to reach automatic attentional responses. Our results reflect to the fact, that the topic
of the environmental crisis is not suitable to do this. This phenomenon propounds the demand of
explanations behind this phenomenon (like the possible evolutionary background). -
How should we think about Europe? The model adaptation and model formation strategy of the Hungarian political elite
110-133Views:25In the past decades, researchers in Hungary have looked at almost all segments of the behavior and organization of elites, nevertheless they have dealt surprisingly little with how external actors (Europe, the West) affect the actions and way of thinking of the elites. The lack of approaches from this perspective is so apparent because the European orientation of the elites has changed twice in the past thirty years. (In the 1980s and starting from the second half of the 1990s.) The essay focuses on presenting two concepts of Europe, of which one is based on model adaptation (the opposition represents this approach) the other on model formation (which is characteristic of the governing parties). The essay shows the origins of both, as well as their connections to macro and micro political motifs. Within the frameworks of this, the study touches upon why the appearance of the model adaptation perspective was adequate in the 1980s as well as to why the model forming approach to Europe appeared on the right in the middle of the 1990s as its challenger. The analysis does more than just dynamically present the past thirty years, it also aims to show that we have to integrate Hungarian political history in a broader sense into our studies if we want to understand the changes that have occurred in the past decades concerning the relationship of the elites to the West. The stratum which Fidesz has brought to surface lays deep in Hungarian political history. We have to take this stratum into consideration even if we find this perhaps unattractive and we reject it.
-
Planetary consciousness, biospherical governance, climatic rightfulness: Kim Stanley Robinson: The Ministry for the Future
13-28Views:60Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future was published in 2020. The novel is the sequel to the New York 2140 science fiction dystopian novel. The conceptual continuation presents a vision of unsustainable capitalism that functions via endless expansion. The Ministry for the Future brings into focus the outcome of externalities of capitalism: climate change and its effects on societies and individuals. The study emphasis on critique of capitalism, of mass production and mass consumption, at the same time it points at the techno-optimism in The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson. The analysis of appearance of climate change in the novel is interdisciplinary, the study’s approach is scientific and empirical.
-
Democracy trip, what leaves us in the middle of the forest
112-115Views:19Jason Brennan (2023): Democracy – A guided tour. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 320 oldal
-
The Party System of the European Parliament between 2004–2019
112-130Views:24The 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. -
Mobilization incongruence in the Hungarian local electioms
5-24Views:27In local elections, national voting patterns are often not repeated as results show significant incongruence in terms of turnout, party performance and seat shares. Political science explains these various differences with several distinct theoretical frameworks that approach this incongruence from the aspect of voter behavior. The aim of this study is not to provide an alternative for these conventional explanations but to complement them with the detailed analysis of mobilization in an attempt to clear up certain gaps in the models. My main proposition is that parties can mobilize their supporters for the local elections with differing effectiveness producing incongruence in voter turnout and seat shares. In the capital and in the larger cities there is a mobilization gap mainly affecting left-wing voters that causes lower turnout and weaker electoral performance by these parties. This gap can most probably be explained by a combination of social and institutional factors and has a profound effect on election outcomes.
-
Public administration reforms in Central-Eastern-Europe
124-142Views:36The goal of this paper is in one hand to summarize how public administration reform trends
have spread in Central-Eastern-Europe since the transition, on the other hand to overview the
techno-economical paradigms which can determine the near future in the region. To analyse
spreading and development of New Public Management to Post-NPM doctrines periodization of
Drechsler and Randma-Liiv (2014) is being used. At the end threads and opportunities related
to technological development are aimed to be found in relation with public administration and
governance. Using entrepreneurial state’s concept shows that solving wicked issues needs active
state’s involvement, which might have a strong effect on public administration’s reform as well.
