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Neo-Hobbesian democracy: The theory of modus vivendi and democratic legitimacy
25-41Views:38In political theory, the criticism of Rawlsian constructivist liberalism has been articulated in
theories of political realism. John Gray, one of the promoters of realist liberalism, recommends
a neo-Hobbesian way of social coexistence which is based on the conflictual and antagonistic
idea of political life. It takes social values and forms of life as incommensurable in modern
multicultural societies. Taking value-pluralism and its conflicts seriously, a theory of modus
vivendi has been articulated among realist political thinkers. Being a post-liberal (or post-Enlightenment) theory, modus vivendi is more a practice oriented and open-ended theory than
philosophical constructions based on high morality. Modus vivendi theorists make an emphasis
on the peaceful co-existence of social groups and a moral minimum of the political society. One of
the deficiency of the theory is that it says not much about democracy, though it would be highly
useful according to two contextual considerations.On the one hand, a modern political system
would be impossible or outrageous without any form of democratic legitimacy. On the other
hand, there is an exhaustion of the liberal project(s) and the societies featured by multicultural
prosperity. Besides constitutional protection, defending democracy in this new context means
balancing between cultural and other value-oriented groups in modern societies. In my paper,
I make an attempt to examine the concept of democracy in the light of modus vivendi theory. -
Hybrid regimes and the grey zone: new answers to fundamental problems in the study of political regimes
42-59Views:58Contrary to widely held expectations, the third wave of democratization has brought about not
only democracy but also the emergence of many regimes of whichtraditional democratic theory
cannot make sense. The overwhelmingly dichotomous, teleological, and minimalist approaches
fail to adequately describe political regimes in the grey zone between outright autocracy and
full-fledged democracy. In our essay, we discuss the theoretical approaches that aim to grasp
what has been increasingly called hybrid regimes, namely political regimes that combine
autoritharian and democratic elements. We point to the theoretical and empirical limitations
of these efforts and argue that the concept of hybrid regimes is still inextricably linked with the
concept of liberal democracy. Nevertheless, even if the existing approaches to hybrid regimes
suffer from a series of shortcomings, by providing fine-grained and more realistic descriptions of regime transformations, they make an important contribution to the literature on political
regimes. -
Conflicts and democracy: Considerations on political conflicts and the need of their delimitation
8-24Views:46According to our common experience of political life, the relationship between politics and
conflicts seems to be obvious. However, it is also common to think about delimiting the intensity
of conflicts in a democratic context. This kind of complexity of the relation of democracy and
conflicts can be cexplained from two theoretical perspectives. First, in order to protect democratic
order, conflicts may lose their relevance in comparison to the value of consent or compromise. Second, even if we accept the importance of conflicts, we also should take into account the limits
of their intensity. These theoretical problems arise in the context of contemporary politics which
nature is eminently public and in which every announcement is open to discussion. This is what
discourse as a theoretical horizon means. The core concept for theorizing the conflictual character
of politics in a discursive manner is political debate. The article explores three kinds of debate
and communicative conflicts: John Stuart Mill, as a classical nineteenth century liberal, sheds
light on the importance of debate in issues of collective truth-seeking and emotional devotion
to our personal values. Márton Szabó, a leading theorist of political discourse in Hungary, also
treats debate as a core concept of political discourse studies, and theorizes debate not only as
a series of singular acts in the realm of politics, but as a mode of existence of politics itself.
Contrary to other contemporary ideas of communication and politics, discourse is therefore
inherently conflictual in its character. Similarly, but more embedded in contemporary debates
over democracy, Chantal Mouffe, one of the eminent theorists of agonism, interprets conflicts
in the context of democratic order, and emphasises the democratic conditions for constructing
democratic identities. Her ideas on agonistic democracy can fathom the relation of valuable
conflicts and their limits in a democratic regime. -
Hopes and concerns of democratization: Ideas about popular vote in Hungarian political discourse 1985–1989
5-27Views:76The article analyzes the political discourse concerning direct democracy between 1985–89, when the issue of introducing popular vote at local and national level became relevant, both as a general institutional reform of political decision-making, and as the result of some major initiatives launched by social movements. The analysis covers the related law journal articles, party-state documents, the writings of political and intellectual elites (including the opposition), and the wider public (mainly daily and weekly newspapers). The discourse analysis is based on the academic literature of direct democracy and some new aspects, like the timing of introducing direct democracy, its role and perspectives, the consideration of threats and benefits, and the relevance of international examples as possible models for reform. The paper finds that the opposition and the party-state regarded the introduction of popular vote differently: while the emerging opposition emphasised the function of controling the state power by popular votes, the party-state expected to stop shrinking its social legitimacy. Meanwhile, general public seemed to be indifferent about this remarkable democratic reform.
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College and university students’ attitudes towards democracy in Hungary
47-69Views:44The existence of education for democracy has positive impact on citizens’ political knowledge
and the identification with the democratic values. In the process of civic education, the
universities and high schools play an important role. Many scholars argue that the high schools
have a civic mission to serve a public good or the university is the civic mission itself. To examine
democratic citizenship among high school and university students we use a dataset composed of
three surveys (2011/2012, 2013, 2015) of 4800 Hungarian students. We build on the literature
about the empirical and theoretical framework of democratic citizenship to answer the question
if 25 years after the collapse of communism we can witness the emergence of a new generation
of democrats in Hungary? Have young people successfully come to terms with their countries' authoritarian past and developed a commitment to democracy as a system of rule? Are they
ready to defend it in the face of challenges? Based on the empirical framework of citizenship we
derive a number of significant lessons from the Hungarian case, with important implications
about the ability to teach the norms and responsibilities of democratic citizenship in the world’s
emerging democracies. -
Demokrácia rózsaszín szemüveg nélkül
153-157Views:31Körösényi András (2019): Manipuláció és demokrácia. Politikaelméleti tanulmányok.
Budapest, Gondolat Kiadó, 289 oldal - Recenzió. -
Trojan horse and fig leaf: the role of populism in the global crisis of democracy and the postmodern autocracies
30-61Views:56It is my contention that populism could be an appropriate framework to understand and link the phenomena of global crisis of democracy and spread of postmodern autocracies. In order to substantiate this claim with the method of literature review, I have examined first the characteristics of these phenomena and then I have focused the nature of relationship between them, in particular with regard to the complex system of stability of new types of autocracies, in which, I think, populism playing a key role. Populism, understood it as an autocratic interpretation of democracy and representation, could be a particularly dangerous Trojan horse for democracy. Above all, because of its idea of a single, homogeneous and authentic people that can be genuinely represented only by populists, and because of this representative claim is a moralized form of antipluralism. In addition, populism is also an important feature of postmodern autocracies, especially of electoral autocracy. By means of populism, it is possible for these regimes to camouflage and even legitimise the autocratic trends and exercise of power, as well as the creation an uneven playing field for political contestation behind their formally multi-party elections and democratic façade. As a radical turn towards traditional forms of autocracies would be too expensive, postmodern autocrats need manipulated multi-party elections and other plebiscite techniques that could serve as quasi-democratic legitimation, as well as populism that could transform political contestation to a life-and-death struggle and, provides other important cognitive functions. Therefore, populist autocracy, as a paradigmatic type of postmodern autocracies, will remain with us for a long time, giving more and more tasks to researchers involved in them.
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Democracy trip, what leaves us in the middle of the forest
112-115Views:23Jason Brennan (2023): Democracy – A guided tour. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 320 oldal
