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• The Effects of the 2011 Electoral Reform on the Results of the Hungarian Legislative Elections II. –: Empirical Analysis

  89-111

  Levente Nagy

  Views:

  72

  A 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.

• Does the corruption affect to the voters? – a Bayesian econometric analysis

  25-66

  Andras Toth

  Tamas Barczikay

  David Atanaszov

  Views:

  23

  The study examines the agenda-setting aspirations of Hungarian political life between 2010
  and 2016 from a corruption research perspective. Using the available data, we estimate, based
  on the monthly data series of a six-year period, using different statistical methods, whether the
  allocation of European Union funds used as a proxy for corruption had an impact on the support
  of the ruling party. The results of the applied Bayesian vector autoregression do not provide
  evidence for the hypothesis that the increase in corruption associated with the increase in EU
  subsidies reduces the popularity of the ruling party among the entire voting population.

• Mobilization incongruence in the Hungarian local electioms

  5-24

  Views:

  27

  In local elections, national voting patterns are often not repeated as results show significant incongruence in terms of turnout, party performance and seat shares. Political science explains these various differences with several distinct theoretical frameworks that approach this incongruence from the aspect of voter behavior. The aim of this study is not to provide an alternative for these conventional explanations but to complement them with the detailed analysis of mobilization in an attempt to clear up certain gaps in the models. My main proposition is that parties can mobilize their supporters for the local elections with differing effectiveness producing incongruence in voter turnout and seat shares. In the capital and in the larger cities there is a mobilization gap mainly affecting left-wing voters that causes lower turnout and weaker electoral performance by these parties. This gap can most probably be explained by a combination of social and institutional factors and has a profound effect on election outcomes.

• From Sunday lunch to the ballot box: Political socialisation and political homophily in Hungarian society

  8-36

  Dömötör Gere

  Ádám Stefkovics

  Views:

  151

  Political 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.