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The Effects of the 2011 Electoral Reform on the Results of the Hungarian Legislative Elections I. : Theoretical aspects of the reform
195-209Views:43The second wave of democracy after World Wa II, followed by the third wave in the 1970’s and
the 80’s – including the historic democratic transitions in Eastern Europe after the collapse
of the Soviet Empire – led to the expansion of democratic electoral systems around the world.
The design of electoral systems and of the undergoing electoral reforms has become a vital
component of the democratization process. The study of the theory and politics of electoral
reform led to the adoption of new theoretical and methodological approaches in order to cope
with the challenging phenomena.
The main goal of this paper is to interpret the concept of reform, and to unfold some of
theoretical aspects of it in order to identify some of the main components of the concept. With the theoretical approach we can get a better understandic of the reform itself, and we can
demonstrate that electoral reform is a complex process which should not be reduced to a simplistic
model in which a few actors driven by a few motives can fully explain the whole phenomenon.
The theoretical study of the reform can show that some politial events, the established party
system (first and foremost the distribution of power between the various parties), the type of the
actual electoral system (its advantages and disadvantages) as well as some contingents factors
must be taken into consideration in order to have a better understanding of the nature of the
political arena in which reform proposals are promoted and the reform itself takes place. -
Politics and media - Structure of the Hungarian media network in autumn 2018
107-129Views:37This article focusing on the changes within the Hungarian media sphere after the Orban–
Simicska conflict. After the conflict the Hungarian media sphere has changed radically. Those of
the media outlets which belonged to Lajos Simicska had cease their operation. Business persons
who have close ties to Fidesz has founded new media outlets. In my article I analyzed three
political case which happened during the Fall 2018. I assumed that the media sphere in Hungary
had become more polarized than before. In order to prove it, I created two groups of the media
outlets. The first one, which have close ties to the governing party, and the second one which has
not got ties to Fidesz. During my research I used three different methods. First, I
recorded astatistics about the articles. According to this, the media agenda shows large difference between
the groups. I did content analysis on the articles, which shows us a huge polarization between
the groups. The third one, was network analysis. The network analysis did not confirmed the
polarization hypothesis. -
Similarities and Differences of Students’ Labour Market Paths Graduated in the Field of Social Science
109-140Views:38We study graduate trainees’ (short) paths of four „social courses” and their transition from higher education to the labour market. We have thought in cases of the chosen social courses, that differences can become perceivable besides similarities. It has also been assumed that sociologists of the four chosen professions can be characterized by a diverse labour market behaviour from the other ones. It can be partially explained by the objectives, the content of their courses and the flexibility of the prospective institutional system. Compared to the above in cases of other social courses a diverse picture has been experienced by us based on the socio-demographic background and experience in labour market, expectations and satisfaction. Social workers and socio-politicians’ socio-demographic indicators are quite similar just like the socio-politicians and sociologists’ indicators are. This may be due to the effect of the level of master/academic education. We analyse the results of Graduate Tracking System (GTS) 2015 data collection in our presentation. The research was carried out by the Educational Office in co-operation with higher education institutions in the form of an online questionnaire. We sorted the respondents of the four chosen courses (828) out of all graduated (20 579).
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Demokrácia rózsaszín szemüveg nélkül
153-157Views:24Körösényi András (2019): Manipuláció és demokrácia. Politikaelméleti tanulmányok.
Budapest, Gondolat Kiadó, 289 oldal - Recenzió. -
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.
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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.
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“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.
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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.
