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  • The Party System of the European Parliament between 2004–2019
    112-130
    Views:
    43

    The 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.

  • Political reorganization in the shadow of the pandemic and war: The 2022 Latvian parliamentary election and its consequences
    73-94
    Views:
    70

    Latvia’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.

  • The Effects of the 2011 Electoral Reform on the Results of the Hungarian Legislative Elections I. : Theoretical aspects of the reform
    195-209
    Views:
    70

    The 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
    26-50
    Views:
    47

    The 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.

  • Politics and media - Structure of the Hungarian media network in autumn 2018
    107-129
    Views:
    65

    This 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.