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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. -
Revisiting enterprise politics in the interwar Hungary: The case of The Rimamurány–Salgótarján Iron Works Co.: Worker‘s lifestyle and rate of living on the colony of the steel factory in Salgótarján before the World War II.
151-166Views:57The Rimamurány–Salgótarján Iron Works Co. in Salgótarján started to run up from 1871. The
people who lived in the workers’ colony of the Steelworks in Salgótarján differentiated themselves
from the rest of the local residents not only spatially but also in their appearance, as a result of
their higher standard of living. At the begining of the 20th century the major streets of the colony
(Acélgyári Street) had macadam or stoned surface and were lit with public street lightning. The
duty of the socalled Dwelling Master was to guarantee neat, clean, tidy streets within the colony.
Steelworkers had more opportunity to visit the shops and barbershop than those men who lived
within the downtown. This difference was partly due to their higher income and partly due to
the fact that the services of the comany’s shop and the barber at the colony were much cheaper
than those of other local barbers since it was ordered so by factory management. Workers’
houses were up to the standards of the time, they did not pay rent or just a very low price and
workers had a possibility to build their own garden houses on the land of the company. All this
fundamentally changed in the second half of the 1940s owing to post-war lack of raw material
and Socialist ’modernization’ and uniformization. The period of communist dictatorship after
World War II, nationalization of the works and Socialist ’modernization’ created trauma at the
colony. -
Cseh fotográfia a két világháború között a művészet, társadalom és politika hármasa felől közelítve
105-122Views:60A tanulmány a két világháború közötti cseh fotográfiára fókuszál a média és technika szemszögéből. A fotózás jelentős szerepet játszott a 1920-as és 1930-as években a modern kultúra kialakításában az újfajta tömegtájékoztatás, az iparosítás, a megváltozott szabadidő és kulturális
kapcsolatok révén. A tanulmány tehát a fotóművészetre mint gondolkodást befolyásoló tényezőre összpontosít. A tanulmányban fontos cél, hogy az eszmék fordított áramlását mutassa be, tehát azon dimenziók felől közelítsen a fotográfiához, amelyeket maga a fotóművészet ragad meg. -
The Changes in political participation among Hungarian youth
25-41Views:51Citizens’ political participation is a key issue of a democratic political system. The starting point of the paper is political participation of young people in democratic institutions is not merely a question of young people’s interest in politics, but also the result of institutional opportunities and mobilization channels that are available for them. The present article aims to interpret the political participation of Hungarian youth is interpreted more broadly than in former studies. On the one hand it shows how a change of attitudes occurred among Hungarian youth concerning the perception of political participation perception. On the other hand it describes the institutional and social context where participation of Hungarian young people is taking place today.
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Environmentalism of university students in relation to their materialism, life satisfaction, views on politics and pandemic
70-97Views:104Recently, an increasing focus has been made on studying environmental problems and the
related social phenomena. Understanding the environmentalism and its influencing factors
in the case of higher education students can greatly help the preparation and identification
of sustainability policies and educational practices in higher education institutions. In this study, we investigated environmental attitudes and pro-environmental behavior of
students at 17 Hungarian universities as a function of a number of hypothesized influencing
factors. These included materialistic values, life satisfaction, political views, and views on the
Covid-19 pandemic. According to our results, these were all related to environmentalism. More
environmentally conscious students were less materialistic, less right-wing in their political
views, more satisfied with their lives, and also differed in their views on pandemic issues. Beside
a weaker impact of environmentalism and political views, life satisfaction was largely influenced
by the relative financial situation perceived by respondents. -
The 2019 local elections in Szeged
52-66Views:46The 2019 local, municipal election outclasses the second-order elections in the given political constellation. This is especially true in the case of Szeged, where the opposition – unlike the situation at the national level – has the power for a long time. To change this situation, the governing parties, taking advantage of their dominant position – and using all means – conducted a very vigorous campaign, changing the city into a battlefield. According to the results, the governemt’s attempt was not successfull, it was rather contraproductive. The reigning mayor and city management won an unprecedented victory. The root cause of it is a special urban policy which extracted the local politics from the partyfights and overrode party interests, and which represented the interests of the city succesfully and with credibility even against cross-wind. Based on the cooperation of the entire opposition the implemented urban policy is symbolized by and embodied in the person of the mayor in office since 2002.
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Competitive elections and the challenges of the concept of competitiveness
37-52Views:136The paper relates to the literature on contemporary non-democratic systems with multi-party elections. It aims to prove that electoral competitiveness is a key concept for understanding these systems, but this concept is currently underdeveloped. It first reviews the main approaches of competition and competitiveness, then, using the widely accepted type of competitive authoritarian hybrid regime, argues that the concept developed by its inventors does not provide sufficient support to detect competitiveness, because the factor of uncertainty used by the concept creators to justify its existence is not accompanied by any real indicators. The conclusion of the article is that competitiveness should therefore be derived not from the unidentifiable uncertainty factor, but from the concept of electoral integrity, which indicates the existence or the absence of genuine (competitive) elections, and from the concept and characteristics of electoral manipulations.
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From Sunday lunch to the ballot box: Political socialisation and political homophily in Hungarian society
8-36Views:197Political socialisation is the process of forming an individual’s political identity, in the course of which the individual’s attitude to politics and political worldview is formed. Political socialisation takes place in different spheres, of which the family and parents are of particular importance. Previous research in Hungary has confirmed that the family is an “incubator” of citizenship. However, there is little data available in Hungary that would allow for a more precise understanding of the transmission of political attitudes. This study investigates political homophily within the family (between parent and child) and the effects of parental political characteristics on the individual in Hungary. Our data are drawn from a nationally representative telephone survey of 2000 respondents sampled in 2023. The results show that in nearly two-thirds of Hungarian families, family members held the same political views during the respondent’s childhood, with the highest proportions of homophily indicators, fathers’ and respondents’ voting activity, and mothers’ and respondents’ conservative-liberal attitudes. The effect of parental characteristics was tested using structural equation modelling (SEM). Parents’ political interests and ideological positions had a strong direct effect on the same child characteristics, but the individual’s political participation and party preference were only indirectly influenced by parents. The success of attitudinal transmission was strongly enhanced if the parents were themselves, homophiles, along with the trait in question. Our results point to the important role of the family as a primary agent in political socialisation and suggest new research directions.
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Hopes and concerns of democratization: Ideas about popular vote in Hungarian political discourse 1985–1989
5-27Views:85The 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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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. -
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. -
The slave trade and trust
172-177.Views:56Does culture have an impact on society, and if so, how? The study by Nathan Nunn and Leonard Wantchekon set out to examine the impact of the slave trade, which has left its mark on the African continent and its economy, but which ended some 100 years ago, on the cultural, norm-following, beliefs and values of individuals. Their aim is to explore the reasons that led to the historical disconnect within Africa between local governments or municipalities (politics), between the outlying communities (neighbours) and even within family relations, which may still influence economic development today. Nunn and Wantchekon's hypothesis is based on an earlier study by Nunn, which showed a causal link between the 400-year slave trade and the income conditions of the African population today, looking at the long-term economic effects of the slave trade.
