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Neo-Hobbesian democracy: The theory of modus vivendi and democratic legitimacy
25-41Views:44In 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. -
Political development: what, why, how? A comparative framework for Hungarian history
5-26Views:90The essay focuses on the comparative analysis of Hungarian political development before 1989–90. Instead of dealing with the 32 years since the change of regime, the author is interested in how many different interpretations of political development can be identified. The author singles out examples of political development in developed countries (for example the United States) as well as developing countries (those countries which have become decolonized in the 1960s). The starting point of the analysis is that Hungary cannot be described by either the categories used for developed countries or those that are used for developing ones. While the essay recognizes that the measure of progress at all times for Hungarian development is the example of Western development, it does not accept the approach according to which Hungarian development is a “dead-end” because it differs from Western development in many ways. The essay puts forward the hypothesis of the “normality” of Hungarian political development.
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Conflicts and democracy: Considerations on political conflicts and the need of their delimitation
8-24Views:51According 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. -
Hybrid regimes and the grey zone: new answers to fundamental problems in the study of political regimes
42-59Views:72Contrary 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. -
Globalization theory of late modernity and identities in risk society
101-121Views:56Modernity is the sum of the fragmented cultural systems of meaning, that are mutually influential
on each other, plus of economic and political relations continually changing and transforming –
a complexity that manifests itself in the structure of the (world) risk society even on the level of
the individual. Following the late modern turn, the phenomenon of the means and opportunities
determining the ability of choice is not being shared equally, but multiplied as regards global
actors, as well as choice of identity, perceptibility of risks and facing them. The study presents
the new inequality factors and the asymmetric power relations of the late modernity along the
works by the recently died sociologists of the globalization theory (Ulrich Beck and Zygmunt
Bauman). In the world risk society, each community and individual bear the risks indifferently.
Accordingly, the ascertainments of the study are that the globalised economy and the subjects
of the local poverty do not possess the same degree of the freedom of maneuvering. In order
to demonstrate this and also to identify each postmodern life-strategy, the study relies on the
works on identity by the discussed sociologists. According to the latter, the study concludes, that
the reflexivity of the risk is the most profitable for those who are in the high position of the new
inequality, thus, have the power to determine conflicts generated by them and inflict them on
those excluded from the struggle of definition of risk. -
Thomas Hobbes and the dilemmas of the natural state: First chapter – The axiomatic nature of total war
3-24Views:96The purpose of this paper is to reflect on some the ideas of Thomas Hobbes, one of the founders
of modern political philosophy, best known for his masterpiece, Leviathan. The aim of this essay
is not to provide a full scale analysis of Hobbes’ main work, nor to present his moral or political
philosophy, nor to reflect on the significance of his impact on later political thinkers. The aim is
more modest, and the theme under scrutiny is more narrow: the paper is devoted to a critical
analysis of the main premise (state of the nature) of Hobbes’ theory of power, including the
ambivalent character of the state of nature, as well as the logical dilemmas that arise during
the analysis.After a general presentation of Hobbes’s philosophy and of the logical construction of his
work, I will tend to focus on two aspects of the state of nature: firstly, I will analyse the assumed
analogy between the state of nature and the Book of Genesis; secondly, I will examine whether
the „war of all against all” is an axiomatic outcome of the „primitive” state. It turns out, that the
answers for these questions are not so unanbiguous. -
Legitimacy and tax morale in fiscal contract: The role of collective services and government communication in shaping taxpayers’ moral considerations
140-156Views:62The purpose of this paper, building on the so-called fiscal contract theory, published by Margaret Levi (1988, 1998) and Jeffrey F. Timmons (2005), is to investigate the nature of the relationship between the so-called tax morale and government legitimacy. More specifically, it discusses the important theories and empirical researches to highlight on the significance of the role of the government in influencing citizens’ moral considerations during taxpaying. According to the fiscal contract theory, there is an unspoken agreement between taxpayers and the government to oblige the government to maintain services reflecting on collective needs and to oblige citizens to comply with the law, i.e. to pay their taxes. Thus, taxpaying is voluntary, but conditional. This paper relies on this theory when it argues that fiscal contract is rooted in citizens’ responsibility for their community, inducing their tax morale. In other words, this bilateral agreement suggests, that tax morale, what is rooted in citizens’ responsibility, is a significant factor of taxpaying motivations.
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The social representation of radicalism among young people
64-78.Views:46In the study, using data from an international research (Myplace), relying on the theory of
social representations, we examined the understanding of radicalism of young people aged 15
to 26 and living in two towns in Hungary (Ózd and Sopron) which differ significantly regarding
their political socialization. In accordance with an empirical method based on the theory,
we analyzed the relationship between young people’s attitudes towards nationalism and the
democratic principles and the representation of radicalism, following the structural and content
characterization of the representation of radicalism through the quantification of associational
responses received in the questionnaire survey conducted in 2012. -
Thomas Hobbes and the dilemmas of the natural state Second chapter: The tipology of the state of nature
3-22Views:81The primary purpose of this paper is to reflect upon four aspects of the Hobbesian state of nature. Firstly, the question is whether we can interpret this original state as a mythical, abstract,
imaginative and timless state, focusing only on the final conclusion of the Hobbesian theory, or
it may contain a well-defined timspan, having its own historical development based on a clear
logical construction. Secondly, this study aims at examining the natural character of man in
the state of nature, and his harmony with his environment in respect with their „naturalness”.
Thirdly, it tries to describe the assumed interpersonal relationships within the „primitve” state.
Fourthly, the paper presents different states of nature reasoned out from a close reading of the
text. All four aspect may help us to get a better understanding of the ambivalent character of the
Hobbesian state of nature. -
The Effects of the 2011 Electoral Reform on the Results of the Hungarian Legislative Elections I. : Theoretical aspects of the reform
195-209Views:70The 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. -
What’s the matter? A text mining analysis of political topics and user engagement on politicians’ Facebook pages during the 2018 Hungarian general election campaign
94-123.Views:37The research investigates the way users interact with leading topics of the 2018 Hungarian
general election campaign on candidates’ Facebook pages. It expects that the prominent
(immigration, corruption) and campaign-related topics generate more user engagement, while
policy topics and mobilization content are less interacted. It also tests the theory of issue ownership
in relation with user engagement. These expectations are tested on a dataset that includes all
posts (38030 posts) posted by all candidates during the campaign (511 candidates). Topics
are identified by text mining methods. The study demonstrates that corruption, development
policy and campaign are highly engaged topics, while immigration was more interacted only on
opposition politicians’ pages since the followers of pro-government candidates engage less with
immigration-related content. The most surprising result is that a reversed issue ownership effect
can be detected since politicians are generally less successful with their own topics.
