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• System Changes and Their Effects on the Society in Szabolcs-SzatmárBereg Country in the last one and a half centuries (part 1)

  6-15

  Magdolna Éva Láczay

  Views:

  42

  Starting from the mid-19th century numerous changes can be classified as systemic changes or shifts. The change of the landscape has shaped the ways lands were tilled and also caused changes in the economical structures. Then the Treaty of Trianon triggered ethnical, political, administrative and cultural changes with the new borders. The key issues of the most recent system change in 1989 the mobility of the society (and what threatens it) the survival of local traditions (and whether they are still followed) and the effects of being a border region of Hungary and the EU. The peripherical situation of the region threatens with lagging. This is threat is strengthened by the regions ethnical and social situation worsened by the decline of the educational system. Self-government is also severely damaged by the loss of local control over public bodies. Paradoxically enough, despite all system changes the life of local people improved only moderately and the region is still among the nation’s most vulnerable ones.

• Corruption as a concomitant phenomenon of the lack of democratic traditions or thoughts on the margin of failure of the democratic experiment in 1945

  15-26

  Attila Csönge

  Views:

  35

  For decades, there has been an open debate among historians about whether there was democracy in our country in 1945, and if so, what those few transition years were like, and what caused the failure of democracy. The study, – instead of the democratic state of the electoral system, the rule of law, respect for freedoms, self-government and civil society organization, – attempts to highlight the presence or absence of democratic traditions, which is generally less attended to, but undoubtedly was also part of the failure of the democratic experiment in 1945. Perhaps surprising, but the political and moral traditions of a society determine the chances for the development and survival of a democracy. In a corrupt, morally inferior society, it is more difficult to establish and operate democracy. Thus, democracy is guaranteed not only by the appearance of institutions and elections, but also by the thinking of the people living in it and by the norms that determine their behavior. The study illustrates the peculiarity of Hungary with examples mostly from Szolnok that in the 20th century the interchanging systems were struggling with a serious deficit of democracy, and therefore no democratic traditions could be formed in the society, and in 1945 they could not go back to such antecedents. Therefore, after 1945, Hungarian society appears as corrupt as it did before 1945. Corruption has affected not only politicians but also those at lower levels of society and has engulfed society as a whole. Thus, in order to consolidate democracy, it will not be enough in the future to replace politicians and reform institutions, but the society as a whole must change too, especially in its way of thinking and behavior.

• The border issue in the Central European and Eastern European regions

  11-17

  Éva Kiss

  Views:

  25

  The new borders play a key role in the geopolitical situation not only from the point of view to define what a border is and demarcation, particularly in the analytical process of the changes taking place in the Central European and Eastern European regions. The establishment and functioning of the new European Eastern border is related directly to the specific geopolitical situation, which also determines its specificity and parameters. It is indisputable that the new structure of the Central European and Eastern European geopolitical regions will fundamentally change its relationship to the area, region and its borders. Essentially, the new geopolitical configuration of the European continent leads to the fragmentation of the old Central and Eastern European region. The border, first of all, is a physical concept and it is the boundary of national territories. It is understandable that in this situation we are analyzing a new border, which a being formed, which is not the same as Europe’s cultural borders, a new border that to our opinion is not a simple linear space or spatial boundary, which in our case separates the regions of Central Europe and Eastern Europe quite sharply. It is the co-called transparency of the borders, examination of “permeability”, that allows us to study the new borders not only as a linear space between neighboring countries, but as a system that takes into consideration cultural, ideological features, using civilization and religious criteria’s.