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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. -
The Gypsy card: Manifestations of the Anti-Gypsism in the Parliamentary speeches
131-155.Views:35The present paper aims to investigate the rhetoric of the Hungarian far right about Roma by the Parliamentary speeches of far right politicians. It unfolds the topics, discourses how the MPs of MIÉP and Jobbik talked about Roma. Within these topics it examines the different represen-tations, images of Roma used by far right politicians during those Parliamentary terms during which they entered the Parliament. The paper identifies when and how the far right has talked about Roma and unfolds how the far right rhetoric has contributed to maintaining, reproducing or even strengthening the anti-Roma attitudes in the Hungarian society.
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2019 Nyíregyháza City Council election: The Rawlsian interpretation of the local electoral reform
67-92Views:26One of the main perspectives and urgent tasks of the newly formed government following the general elections of 2010 was to reform the local eletoral system. It is true, that the number of seats of the local representative bodies were significantly decreased, but it begs the question whether this change can reasonably explain the fact that the government considered this step as one of the first and most significant measures of its governance. To raise this question is justified by the fact that the reform (Act No. L of 2010 on the election of local government representatives and mayors) was introduced on June 14, 2010, with only sixteen days after the new Parliament approved and voted for the government’s program, and elected Viktor Orbán as prime minister of Hungary. After a brief presentation of the institutional framewortk of the local electoral system, the aim of this paper is twofold: first, I would examine whether the local electoral reform of 2010 could be considered as a „fair” step, based on John Ralws’ conception of „justice as fairness”, second, I would like to explain the actual process of transforming votes into local legislative seats in the case of the city of Nyíregyháza, in 2019.
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The political representation of Hungary’s ethnic minorities in the context of voter turnouts in the local self-governmental elections and in the parliamentary elections
25-39Views:25The political representation of minorities within a nation-state is a task that has always posed a great challenge to countries with substantial ethnic minorities, since both the hardships of establishing an adequate legislative environment, both the sensitivity of the subject make it exceedingly difficult for the legislator to develop a sufficient system. The issue of the proper representation of those 13 recognised minorities that are considered constituent components ofthe state were part of Hungary’s political history since the regime change, and for a rather long period of time it seemed that the adequate solution for their political representation was the local governmental system of ethnic minorities. Since 2011 however, the electoral system makes it possible for ethnic minorities to be represented within the Hungarian Parliament as well, which raises the question of whether this will shift the attention of the affected minority groups from the local self-governments towards the parliamentary representation. In this paper, after reviewing the changes within the legislative environment and – in close connection with that – the problems surrounding the issue of political representation of ethnic minorities, I will attempt to answer this emerging question through a brief analyses based on the turnout-data regarding the 2014 and the 2019 elections local governmental elections.
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The 2022 Italian election under the microscope
53-72Views:70The 2022 parliamentary elections marked a turning point for the Italian political system in many ways. As a result of the measures approved and introduced over the past almost ten years to change the electoral system (electoral reforms, decisions of the Constitutional Court, constitutional amendments, parliamentary reforms, etc.), Italian voters had the opportunity to elect the new members of both chambers of the parliament under the same electoral system, for the first time in the Republican era. The purpose of the article is to present the steps leading to this historic moment by analysing in detail the different measures affecting the electoral system and their impact. The paper then describes the electoral results and explains the processes leading to the vast victory of Italy’s first female Prime Minister, with a particular focus on the return to the bipolar logic favoured by the electoral system following the release of the three-pole system in 2013.
