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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.
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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. -
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. -
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 Effects of the 2011 Electoral Reform on the Results of the Hungarian Legislative Elections II. –: Empirical Analysis
89-111Views:72A radical electoral reform took place in Hungray in 2011, as a consequence of the sweeping
victory of the Fidesz-KDNP coalition in 2010. The government initiated and implimented
a reform which was not based on a consensus of all political parties. Taking advantage of its
political position (qualified majority government), Fidesz introduced among other changes the
winer compensation, and gave voting right to non-resident Hungarians. The present paper tries
to present some of the value-based and interest-oreinted arguments related to the reform of
2011, showing that the real (power) interests were hushed up, while the government tried to
legitimize the electoral reform based on several value-oriented arguments. -
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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Trojan horse and fig leaf: the role of populism in the global crisis of democracy and the postmodern autocracies
30-61Views:31It 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.
