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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. -
The Party System of the European Parliament between 2004–2019
112-130Views:43The 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 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:45The 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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Politics and media - Structure of the Hungarian media network in autumn 2018
107-129Views:65This 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. -
Exploring the possible expressions of social dominance in an online context: Discourse analysis below the video contents of the representatives of Finn’s Party
1-24Views:20In the course of the study, discourse analysis was used to examine the comments posted under the videos of three representatives of the Finns Party with the largest YouTube following. The aim of the research was to identify discoursive manifestations of social dominance in the comment field. In addition, we also aimed to validate a word list of socially dominant terms. To this end, we have identified four linguistic categories that could form the basis of socially dominant communication, based on the literature of social dominance. The words with the highest number of elements in each category were presented in a word cloud. After collecting the most frequent terms, three external groups were identified against which social dominance orientation may be relevant. These suggest that the European Union, immigrants and the domestic left may constitute the out-group category in the eyes of populist supporters. Finally, the hierarchical terms were not validated as they occured in a negligible number of items in the sample. The successfully validated categories were plotted on a cross-tabulation, from which we created four different types of Finns Party supporters based on the out-group they named and the dominant common words and phrases in the comment categories. The presence of authoritarian, political out-group category points to the spread of political polarization in Finland. Since social identity underlies both social dominance orientation and political polarization, it may be relevant to examine both together in future research. Nonetheless, social dominance was not expressed in the way that was initially assumed and commentators perceived “real Finns” as the sufferers of a socially dominant situation. The background to this phenomenon is presumably the populist political rhetoric of the Finns’ Party, which tries to portray Finns as people left behind in disadvantaged social positions.
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Majority Decision Making
81-100Views:50Modern democracies, based on pluralism, recognize and affirm diversity, permit peaceful
coexistence of different interests, values and convictions, and advocate a form of political
moderation. For democracy to function and to be successful two of the most challenging
questions must be raised and answered: Who have the right for collective decision-making?
What principle should be used for these people to be elected? With the development of modern
democracies it has become more and more accepted the idea that democracy should rest upon
the principle of majority rule, coupled with individual and minority rights. Majority rule thus
refers to the quantitative aspect of democracy, while individual and minority rights express
the qualitative or constitutional aspect of it. A detailed analysis of democratic decision-making
processes shows that not all decisions made by legislature – whose members are elected by the
majority of the people – are effective and good decisions, and points at the fact that most of the
democratic decisions are not made by the majority but by minority groups, who quite often take
the initiative and can seriously influence the majority. This paper focuses on these issues. -
Sociological and Social Psychological Context of the Transition of Hungary, with Special Regards to Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén County
166-185Views:48The article gives a summary of the most relevant results of the sociological and sociopsychological special literature concerning the transition to market economy and political
pluralism in Hungary. The transition affected the different regions and different social groups
disproportionately. The article points out that the last three decades were not enough for the
destruction of the legacy of state socialism resulting learned helplessness and paternalism.
