Attila Ágh
Biographic Data
| ID | 370128 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Attila Ágh |
| GIVEN NAMES | Attila |
| FAMILY NAME | Ágh |
| SIGNATURE | ÁGH A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Corvinus University of Budapest |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6960-8004 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 37 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 299 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 37 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1981 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2022 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
The Orbán regime as the ‘perfect autocracy’: The emergence of the ‘zombie democracy’ in Hungary
All ECE countries have covered the same historical trajectory of ‘the third-generation autocracy’, but Hungary has been reaching its ‘perfection’, since the two-thirds, constitutional supermajority in the Hungarian case has allowed for the Orbán regime to complete this ‘reverse wave’ in all fields of society and turning it into a zombie democracy. The conceptual frame of this paper is that the decline of democracy and the turn to autocratisation …
Rethinking the historical trajectory of ECE: From the “original sin” in democratization to redemocratization
This paper treats East-Central Europe as a region and investigates its common historical trajectory in the last decades. After 30 years of systemic change and 15 years of EU membership, it is high time for the re-evaluation and reconceptualization of the Europeanization and Democratization process in ECE. It is the key to understand the false start as the original sin in democratization and the reasons of ECE divergence from mainstream EU develop…
Declining Democracy in East-Central Europe
The dramatic decline of democracy in East-Central Europe has attracted great interest world-wide. Going beyond the narrow spectrum of the extensive literature on this topic, this book offers a comprehensive analysis of ECE region – Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia – from systemic change in 1989 to 2019 to explain the reasons of the collapse of ECE democratic systems in the 2010s
The neoliberal hybrid in East-Central Europe. The ‘treason of intellectuals’ and its current re-assessment
The Europeanised, progressive intelligentsia in East-Central Europe (ECE) made a fundamental mistake in the nineties that amounts in some ways to the ‘treason of intellectuals’ and the basic reassessment of these naïve illusions has only begun nowadays. Motivated by the radical change in the ‘miraculous year’ (1989) the progressive intellectuals uncritically accepted and supported the Europeanisation in that particular form as it entered into the…
The Deconsolidation of Democracy in East‐Central Europe: The New World Order and the EU’s Geopolitical Crisis
In recent decades, the most remarkable feature of East-Central European (ECE) states has been their engagement in a deconsolidation process that necessitates the reconceptualising of European Studies and the theory of democracy. In the early ’90s, during the “revolution of high expectations,” consolidation was the key term in the conceptual framework of the transitology paradigm, but this approach was questioned increasingly in the 2000s and reje…
The Decline of Democracy in East-Central Europe: Hungary as the Worst-Case Scenario
All of the East-Central European countries have been diverging from the European Union (EU) mainstream in recent years, but Hungary most of all. This paper offers a country study of Hungary, focusing on both internal and external political transformations and on the “de-democratization” and “de-Europeanization” process as a serious divergence from mainstream EU developments due to the socio-economic and political crises of the past quarter-centur…
The Bumpy Road of Civil Society in the New Member States: From State Capture to the Renewal of Civil Society
This theoretical paper discusses the controversial development of civil society in the new member states (NMS) over a quarter century of systemic change and after 10 years of EU membership. In doing so, it attempts to elaborate a new conceptual framework for the decline of top-down democracy and the return to democratisation as a bottom-up process. This study of the bumpy course of NMS civil society analyses the gap between large formal legal ins…
The Triple Crisis in the New Member States: The Historical Trajectory of nms-8 in the Past Quarter Century
After the first decade following their inclusion, it is a good occasion to evaluate the developments of the New Member States in the eu . This paper tries to conceptualize the historical trajectory of the nms from the perspectives of the first quarter century, in which the states have undergone three crises, termed in the paper as the ‘triple crisis’. The triple crisis is discussed in this paper in the case of eight nms ( nms -8). The first part …
The Transformation of the Hungarian Party System. From Democratic Chaos to Electoral Autocracy
Article The Transformation of the Hungarian Party System. From Democratic Chaos to Electoral Autocracy was published on February 1, 2015 in the journal Comparative Southeast European Studies (volume 63, issue 2)
The roller‐coaster ride of the Hungarian administrative elite: Politico‐administrative relations in east‐central Europe
Les montagnes russes de l’élite administrative hongroise : les relations politico?administratives en Europe centrale et orientale —. Cet article traite des évolutions de l’élite administrative hongroise restituées dans le contexte de l’Europe centrale et orientale. Il se concentre sur la Hongrie, qui représente le pire scénario en Europe centrale et orientale, particulièrement dans la période du gouvernement Orbán après 2010. Le rapport de la Fre…
The Hungarian Rhapsodies: The Conflict of Adventurism and Professionalism in the European Union Presidency
The Hungarian Presidency of the European Union (EU) in the first half of 2011 was the third in the Spanish–Belgian–Hungarian (SBH) team Presidency. There have always been many good arguments for a given rotating Presidency to claim that it has taken place in the most difficult period in EU history. The Hungarian Presidency was no exception, but as the first of the new Member States to hold the position under the new Lisbon rules and coming at the…
Regionalisation as a Driving Force of EU Widening: Recovering from the EU ‘Carrot Crisis’ in the ‘East’
This article focuses on the ‘globalisation-cum-regionalisation’ process in the European Union that has led to the emergence of functional macro-regions. It provides first a classification of regionalisation, and describes the organisational and mental barriers of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP). The second part traces the shift of the ENP from the South to the East that has also activated the EU's pre-accession policy in the West Balkan r…
Civil Service Reform in Post‐Communist Countries – By Alexander Kotchegura
Hungaryʹs EU Integration: Institution-Building in the Central Government
The article examines the ups and downs of Hungarys accession to the European Union. It considers Europeanization as a process parallel to EU accession, and uses key terms accordingly. Hungarys development in the 1990s is thus described as anticipatory Europeanization, the more concrete EU perspective taken up in 1998 as adaptive Europeanization, the years between 1998 and 2002 are labeled as derailed Europe-anization, and the years after the actu…
The dual challenge and the reform of the Hungarian socialist party
This paper deals with the new contradictions facing the social-democratic parties in ECE due to the ‘Dual Challenge’. The EU candidate countries have to perform a structural accommodation at the same time as the globalization and Europeanization when they have entered the period of early consolidation with its enhanced tensions due to the polarizing party system. Overcoming the economic deficit through drastic economic crisis management, they hav…
Public Sector Reforms, Institutional Design and Strategy for Good Governance in East Central Europe
Early consolidation and performance crisis: The Majoritarian‐consensus democracy debate in hungary
The current period of early consolidation has been a turning point in East‐Central European democratisation. It has provoked, however, a majoritarian‐consensual debate, first of all in Hungary, as is discussed in this article in a shorter theoretical and in a longer ‘empirical’ part. The introduction deals with the conceptual framework, followed by its application as a Hungarian case study in an East‐Central European context. It is argued that Hu…
Party Formation Process and the 1998 Elections in Hungary: Defeat as Promoter of Change for the HSP
Europeanization of policy-making in East Central Europe: The Hungarian approach to EU accession
This article discusses Hungary's accession to the European Union (EU) in the East Central European (ECE) context. After the relatively well-accomplished Europeanization of their polities, the ECE countries now have to turn to policy-making, that is, from democratization to political modernization to improve the efficiency of policy-making. The Europeanization of the polity and policy process involving 'political harmonization' is a precondition f…
Processes of democratization in the East Central European and Balkan states: Sovereignty-related conflicts in the context of Europeanization
This paper discusses the Central and East European democratic transitions as parts of the global democratization process, including their both external and domestic aspects. The analysis covers six East Central European (ECE) and six Balkan states. It provides a systematic overview of these twelve states with a classification of their external and internal developments. The paper classifies these states according to the three stages of systemic c…
The Politics of Central Europe
This book provides a thorough introduction to Central and Eastern Europe since its emergence from the Soviet bloc. It uses theories of democratization to develop a common conceptual and theoretical framework
Emerging Democracies in East Central Europe and the Balkans
This book offers a comprehensive analytical comparison of the democratization process in twelve countries of East Central Europe and the Balkans. It characterizes the types of democratization which have occurred in the region from 1989 until the end of 1997 and sets these recent changes within the framework of the political history of the countries
Changing parliamentary committees in changing east‐central Europe: Parliamentary committees as central sites of policy making
In the 1990s, the east‐central European (ECE) parliaments have developed extensive committee systems. Common to all of them are European affairs committees which are part of each nation's efforts to achieve ‘political harmonisation’ with the European Union. This institution transfer enables us to discuss the ECE committee systems in terms of west European criteria. This analysis shows a major contrast between their legal‐formal arrangements and t…
Parliaments as Policy-making Bodies in East Central Europe: The Case of Hungary
The parliaments of East Central Europe (ECE) have been the central sites of systemic change and have been widely analyzed with respect to their roles and functions. It is time, however, to deepen this analysis and to deal with ECE parliaments as policy-making bodies. The period of democratic institution-building in East Central Europe is more or less over, but modernization of new institutions has just begun. This article investigates policy-maki…
Defeat and Success as Promoters of Party Change: The Hungarian Socialist Party after Two Abrupt Changes
This paper argues that the East Central European parties have already reached an early stage of maturation as a partial consolidation of a party system. In this respect the case of the Hungarian Socialist Party (HSP) is characteristic, since this party has gone through two drastic changes, first after an electoral defeat in 1990 and second after a landslide victory in 1994. The change by defeat was easier than the change by success, but against a…
The Thick and the Thin: On the Interpretive Theoretical Program of Clifford Geertz [and Comments and Reply]
The promise of interpretive theory has led Clifford Geertz to call for a new and different anthropology as well as a broad "refiguration of social thought" in the social sciences and humanities. This essay examines Geertz's theoretical program, including its application to the specific cases of Balinese trance and the Balinese theatre state. Special attention is given to Geertz's claim that interpretive theory is superior to conventional social s…
The Decline of Democracy in East-Central Europe: Hungary as the Worst-Case Scenario
All of the East-Central European countries have been diverging from the European Union (EU) mainstream in recent years, but Hungary most of all. This paper offers a country study of Hungary, focusing on both internal and external political transformations and on the “de-democratization” and “de-Europeanization” process as a serious divergence from mainstream EU developments due to the socio-economic and political crises of the past quarter-centur…
Partial Consolidation of the East-Central European Parties: The Case of the Hungarian Socialist Party
The Hungarian party system is stable and only moderately fragmented. The Hungarian Socialist Party, the largest party after the 1994 elections in the Hungarian parliament, shows some features that illustrate partial consolidation of the east-central European parties, since these features can also be observed in some other (Polish and Czech) parties. The Hungarian Socialist Party has a rather large national organization and disciplined membership,…
Europeanization of policy-making in East Central Europe: The Hungarian approach to EU accession
This article discusses Hungary's accession to the European Union (EU) in the East Central European (ECE) context. After the relatively well-accomplished Europeanization of their polities, the ECE countries now have to turn to policy-making, that is, from democratization to political modernization to improve the efficiency of policy-making. The Europeanization of the polity and policy process involving 'political harmonization' is a precondition f…
The Hungarian Party System and Party Theory in the Transition of Central Europe
The emerging East Central European multiparty systems share many specific features of democratic transition yet cannot be characterized or even described by the usual typologies. The rise of party systems in Southern Europe, however, suggests some parallels for an historical and theoretical approach. This paper first analyses the stages of emergence of the Hungarian party system in a Central European context and then draws some theoretical conclu…
The experiences of the first democratic parliaments in East Central Europe
Parliaments have been the “central site” and parties the chief actors of the East Central European democratic transitions. The parliamentarization of political life and of its actors has taken the form of “overparliamentarization,” since the East Central European parliaments have had an overwhelmingly dominant role in politics. The parliamentarization has been both an institutional and an “educational” process for the new political elite. The ins…
Early consolidation and performance crisis: The Majoritarian‐consensus democracy debate in hungary
The current period of early consolidation has been a turning point in East‐Central European democratisation. It has provoked, however, a majoritarian‐consensual debate, first of all in Hungary, as is discussed in this article in a shorter theoretical and in a longer ‘empirical’ part. The introduction deals with the conceptual framework, followed by its application as a Hungarian case study in an East‐Central European context. It is argued that Hu…
The `Comparative Revolution' and the Transition in Central and Southern Europe
The Latin American, South European and, later, the Central and East European democratic transitions have led to a `revolution' in comparative politics. Instead of the polar notions of democracy and dictatorship, different types of `transitions' have emerged and democracy has appeared also as a function of the world-system. The paper suggests that there are four scenarios for Central and East European democratic transitions in their international …
The Orbán regime as the ‘perfect autocracy’: The emergence of the ‘zombie democracy’ in Hungary
All ECE countries have covered the same historical trajectory of ‘the third-generation autocracy’, but Hungary has been reaching its ‘perfection’, since the two-thirds, constitutional supermajority in the Hungarian case has allowed for the Orbán regime to complete this ‘reverse wave’ in all fields of society and turning it into a zombie democracy. The conceptual frame of this paper is that the decline of democracy and the turn to autocratisation …
The Hungarian Rhapsodies: The Conflict of Adventurism and Professionalism in the European Union Presidency
The Hungarian Presidency of the European Union (EU) in the first half of 2011 was the third in the Spanish–Belgian–Hungarian (SBH) team Presidency. There have always been many good arguments for a given rotating Presidency to claim that it has taken place in the most difficult period in EU history. The Hungarian Presidency was no exception, but as the first of the new Member States to hold the position under the new Lisbon rules and coming at the…
Evolutionary Epistemology and Human Values [and Comments and Reply]
The theory of evolution is a body of concepts and relations that applies to social and cultural phenomena as well as to biological ones. The fundamental ideas of the theory-taxonomy, developmental relations, processes of change, and directionality-are shown to apply to human society and culture. Next it is argued that an evolutionary approach implies that the tension between "value-free" and value-biased research is essential to adaptation. Final…
Party Formation Process and the 1998 Elections in Hungary: Defeat as Promoter of Change for the HSP
The Deconsolidation of Democracy in East‐Central Europe: The New World Order and the EU’s Geopolitical Crisis
In recent decades, the most remarkable feature of East-Central European (ECE) states has been their engagement in a deconsolidation process that necessitates the reconceptualising of European Studies and the theory of democracy. In the early ’90s, during the “revolution of high expectations,” consolidation was the key term in the conceptual framework of the transitology paradigm, but this approach was questioned increasingly in the 2000s and reje…
Regionalisation as a Driving Force of EU Widening: Recovering from the EU ‘Carrot Crisis’ in the ‘East’
This article focuses on the ‘globalisation-cum-regionalisation’ process in the European Union that has led to the emergence of functional macro-regions. It provides first a classification of regionalisation, and describes the organisational and mental barriers of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP). The second part traces the shift of the ENP from the South to the East that has also activated the EU's pre-accession policy in the West Balkan r…
Processes of democratization in the East Central European and Balkan states: Sovereignty-related conflicts in the context of Europeanization
This paper discusses the Central and East European democratic transitions as parts of the global democratization process, including their both external and domestic aspects. The analysis covers six East Central European (ECE) and six Balkan states. It provides a systematic overview of these twelve states with a classification of their external and internal developments. The paper classifies these states according to the three stages of systemic c…
Changing parliamentary committees in changing east‐central Europe: Parliamentary committees as central sites of policy making
In the 1990s, the east‐central European (ECE) parliaments have developed extensive committee systems. Common to all of them are European affairs committees which are part of each nation's efforts to achieve ‘political harmonisation’ with the European Union. This institution transfer enables us to discuss the ECE committee systems in terms of west European criteria. This analysis shows a major contrast between their legal‐formal arrangements and t…
Europeanization through Privatization and Pluralization in Hungary
Analytically, privatization and pluralization may be treated as separate economic and political phenomena, but in the actual conditions of a post-Communist society they are integrally related to the development of a middle-class society that was absent due to ‘deprivatization’ in a one-party state. The creation of a society of plural interests and private enterprise represents a shift from Sovietization to Europeanization. However, the process is…
The neoliberal hybrid in East-Central Europe. The ‘treason of intellectuals’ and its current re-assessment
The Europeanised, progressive intelligentsia in East-Central Europe (ECE) made a fundamental mistake in the nineties that amounts in some ways to the ‘treason of intellectuals’ and the basic reassessment of these naïve illusions has only begun nowadays. Motivated by the radical change in the ‘miraculous year’ (1989) the progressive intellectuals uncritically accepted and supported the Europeanisation in that particular form as it entered into the…
Public Sector Reforms, Institutional Design and Strategy for Good Governance in East Central Europe
Defeat and Success as Promoters of Party Change: The Hungarian Socialist Party after Two Abrupt Changes
This paper argues that the East Central European parties have already reached an early stage of maturation as a partial consolidation of a party system. In this respect the case of the Hungarian Socialist Party (HSP) is characteristic, since this party has gone through two drastic changes, first after an electoral defeat in 1990 and second after a landslide victory in 1994. The change by defeat was easier than the change by success, but against a…
The Transition to Democracy in Central Europe: A Comparative View
The collapse of Communist regimes in Eastern Europe has also caused the collapse of old-fashioned studies of Communist systems that subscribed to a simple notion of totalitarian uniformity, or a static belief in the continuance of self-equilibrating cycles within socialist states. To understand what is happening in Central and Eastern Europe today we need to be discriminating in a choice of paradigms. European conceptions of democracy as having a…
The dual challenge and the reform of the Hungarian socialist party
This paper deals with the new contradictions facing the social-democratic parties in ECE due to the ‘Dual Challenge’. The EU candidate countries have to perform a structural accommodation at the same time as the globalization and Europeanization when they have entered the period of early consolidation with its enhanced tensions due to the polarizing party system. Overcoming the economic deficit through drastic economic crisis management, they hav…
Democratic parliamentarism in Hungary: The first parliament (1990–94) and the entry of the second parliament
The First Parliament ‐ the first democratically elected parliament in Hungary after the collapse of state socialism ‐ covered its full parliamentary cycle (1990–94). This is unique in central and eastern Europe and gives also a unique opportunity for analysis in this four‐year cycle. The new election in 1994 changed the ruling coalition but the same six parties were elected to the Second Parliament, so the political learning process of parties as…
Rethinking the historical trajectory of ECE: From the “original sin” in democratization to redemocratization
This paper treats East-Central Europe as a region and investigates its common historical trajectory in the last decades. After 30 years of systemic change and 15 years of EU membership, it is high time for the re-evaluation and reconceptualization of the Europeanization and Democratization process in ECE. It is the key to understand the false start as the original sin in democratization and the reasons of ECE divergence from mainstream EU develop…
The Bumpy Road of Civil Society in the New Member States: From State Capture to the Renewal of Civil Society
This theoretical paper discusses the controversial development of civil society in the new member states (NMS) over a quarter century of systemic change and after 10 years of EU membership. In doing so, it attempts to elaborate a new conceptual framework for the decline of top-down democracy and the return to democratisation as a bottom-up process. This study of the bumpy course of NMS civil society analyses the gap between large formal legal ins…
Evolutionary Epistemology and Human Values [and Comments and Reply]
The theory of evolution is a body of concepts and relations that applies to social and cultural phenomena as well as to biological ones. The fundamental ideas of the theory-taxonomy, developmental relations, processes of change, and directionality-are shown to apply to human society and culture. Next it is argued that an evolutionary approach implies that the tension between "value-free" and value-biased research is essential to adaptation. Final…
The Thick and the Thin: On the Interpretive Theoretical Program of Clifford Geertz [and Comments and Reply]
The promise of interpretive theory has led Clifford Geertz to call for a new and different anthropology as well as a broad "refiguration of social thought" in the social sciences and humanities. This essay examines Geertz's theoretical program, including its application to the specific cases of Balinese trance and the Balinese theatre state. Special attention is given to Geertz's claim that interpretive theory is superior to conventional social s…
The Transition to Democracy in Central Europe: A Comparative View
The collapse of Communist regimes in Eastern Europe has also caused the collapse of old-fashioned studies of Communist systems that subscribed to a simple notion of totalitarian uniformity, or a static belief in the continuance of self-equilibrating cycles within socialist states. To understand what is happening in Central and Eastern Europe today we need to be discriminating in a choice of paradigms. European conceptions of democracy as having a…
The Premature Senility of the New Democracies: The Hungarian Experience
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. As you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button
The `Comparative Revolution' and the Transition in Central and Southern Europe
The Latin American, South European and, later, the Central and East European democratic transitions have led to a `revolution' in comparative politics. Instead of the polar notions of democracy and dictatorship, different types of `transitions' have emerged and democracy has appeared also as a function of the world-system. The paper suggests that there are four scenarios for Central and East European democratic transitions in their international …
Europeanization through Privatization and Pluralization in Hungary
Analytically, privatization and pluralization may be treated as separate economic and political phenomena, but in the actual conditions of a post-Communist society they are integrally related to the development of a middle-class society that was absent due to ‘deprivatization’ in a one-party state. The creation of a society of plural interests and private enterprise represents a shift from Sovietization to Europeanization. However, the process is…
The paradoxes of transition: The external and internal overload of the transition process
The countries of former communist East‐Central Europe are experiencing an imposed set of over‐generalized and over‐simplified institutional and value systems, whose relevance is not self‐evident to the populations concerned, and whose successful implementation cannot be assumed. A range of possibilities exist, from formalist, elitist and ‘partyist’ democracy, or to tyrannical majoritarianism, authoritarianism or west European‐style democracy. In …
The Hungarian Party System and Party Theory in the Transition of Central Europe
The emerging East Central European multiparty systems share many specific features of democratic transition yet cannot be characterized or even described by the usual typologies. The rise of party systems in Southern Europe, however, suggests some parallels for an historical and theoretical approach. This paper first analyses the stages of emergence of the Hungarian party system in a Central European context and then draws some theoretical conclu…
Transformation sozialistischer Gesellschaften: Am Ende des Anfangs
In den 28 Beitragen namhafter Fachleute aus unterschiedlichen sozialwissenschaftlichen Teildisziplinen werden Schlusselbereiche der wirtschaftlichen, gesellschaftlichen, politisch-administrativen und sozio-kulturellen Transformationen in den ehemals Landern analysiert. Die Aufsatze sind darauf gerichtet, die jeweiligen Entwicklungslinien und (Zwischen-)Ergebnisse herauszuarbeiten und hierbei den historischen, vor allem den in der sozialistischen …
Partial Consolidation of the East-Central European Parties: The Case of the Hungarian Socialist Party
The Hungarian party system is stable and only moderately fragmented. The Hungarian Socialist Party, the largest party after the 1994 elections in the Hungarian parliament, shows some features that illustrate partial consolidation of the east-central European parties, since these features can also be observed in some other (Polish and Czech) parties. The Hungarian Socialist Party has a rather large national organization and disciplined membership,…
The experiences of the first democratic parliaments in East Central Europe
Parliaments have been the “central site” and parties the chief actors of the East Central European democratic transitions. The parliamentarization of political life and of its actors has taken the form of “overparliamentarization,” since the East Central European parliaments have had an overwhelmingly dominant role in politics. The parliamentarization has been both an institutional and an “educational” process for the new political elite. The ins…
Democratic parliamentarism in Hungary: The first parliament (1990–94) and the entry of the second parliament
The First Parliament ‐ the first democratically elected parliament in Hungary after the collapse of state socialism ‐ covered its full parliamentary cycle (1990–94). This is unique in central and eastern Europe and gives also a unique opportunity for analysis in this four‐year cycle. The new election in 1994 changed the ruling coalition but the same six parties were elected to the Second Parliament, so the political learning process of parties as…
Parliaments as Policy-making Bodies in East Central Europe: The Case of Hungary
The parliaments of East Central Europe (ECE) have been the central sites of systemic change and have been widely analyzed with respect to their roles and functions. It is time, however, to deepen this analysis and to deal with ECE parliaments as policy-making bodies. The period of democratic institution-building in East Central Europe is more or less over, but modernization of new institutions has just begun. This article investigates policy-maki…
Defeat and Success as Promoters of Party Change: The Hungarian Socialist Party after Two Abrupt Changes
This paper argues that the East Central European parties have already reached an early stage of maturation as a partial consolidation of a party system. In this respect the case of the Hungarian Socialist Party (HSP) is characteristic, since this party has gone through two drastic changes, first after an electoral defeat in 1990 and second after a landslide victory in 1994. The change by defeat was easier than the change by success, but against a…
The Politics of Central Europe
This book provides a thorough introduction to Central and Eastern Europe since its emergence from the Soviet bloc. It uses theories of democratization to develop a common conceptual and theoretical framework
Emerging Democracies in East Central Europe and the Balkans
This book offers a comprehensive analytical comparison of the democratization process in twelve countries of East Central Europe and the Balkans. It characterizes the types of democratization which have occurred in the region from 1989 until the end of 1997 and sets these recent changes within the framework of the political history of the countries
Changing parliamentary committees in changing east‐central Europe: Parliamentary committees as central sites of policy making
In the 1990s, the east‐central European (ECE) parliaments have developed extensive committee systems. Common to all of them are European affairs committees which are part of each nation's efforts to achieve ‘political harmonisation’ with the European Union. This institution transfer enables us to discuss the ECE committee systems in terms of west European criteria. This analysis shows a major contrast between their legal‐formal arrangements and t…
Europeanization of policy-making in East Central Europe: The Hungarian approach to EU accession
This article discusses Hungary's accession to the European Union (EU) in the East Central European (ECE) context. After the relatively well-accomplished Europeanization of their polities, the ECE countries now have to turn to policy-making, that is, from democratization to political modernization to improve the efficiency of policy-making. The Europeanization of the polity and policy process involving 'political harmonization' is a precondition f…
Processes of democratization in the East Central European and Balkan states: Sovereignty-related conflicts in the context of Europeanization
This paper discusses the Central and East European democratic transitions as parts of the global democratization process, including their both external and domestic aspects. The analysis covers six East Central European (ECE) and six Balkan states. It provides a systematic overview of these twelve states with a classification of their external and internal developments. The paper classifies these states according to the three stages of systemic c…
Party Formation Process and the 1998 Elections in Hungary: Defeat as Promoter of Change for the HSP
Public Sector Reforms, Institutional Design and Strategy for Good Governance in East Central Europe
Early consolidation and performance crisis: The Majoritarian‐consensus democracy debate in hungary
The current period of early consolidation has been a turning point in East‐Central European democratisation. It has provoked, however, a majoritarian‐consensual debate, first of all in Hungary, as is discussed in this article in a shorter theoretical and in a longer ‘empirical’ part. The introduction deals with the conceptual framework, followed by its application as a Hungarian case study in an East‐Central European context. It is argued that Hu…
The dual challenge and the reform of the Hungarian socialist party
This paper deals with the new contradictions facing the social-democratic parties in ECE due to the ‘Dual Challenge’. The EU candidate countries have to perform a structural accommodation at the same time as the globalization and Europeanization when they have entered the period of early consolidation with its enhanced tensions due to the polarizing party system. Overcoming the economic deficit through drastic economic crisis management, they hav…
Hungaryʹs EU Integration: Institution-Building in the Central Government
The article examines the ups and downs of Hungarys accession to the European Union. It considers Europeanization as a process parallel to EU accession, and uses key terms accordingly. Hungarys development in the 1990s is thus described as anticipatory Europeanization, the more concrete EU perspective taken up in 1998 as adaptive Europeanization, the years between 1998 and 2002 are labeled as derailed Europe-anization, and the years after the actu…
Regionalisation as a Driving Force of EU Widening: Recovering from the EU ‘Carrot Crisis’ in the ‘East’
This article focuses on the ‘globalisation-cum-regionalisation’ process in the European Union that has led to the emergence of functional macro-regions. It provides first a classification of regionalisation, and describes the organisational and mental barriers of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP). The second part traces the shift of the ENP from the South to the East that has also activated the EU's pre-accession policy in the West Balkan r…
Political science (34 works) · Law (29 works) · Politics (29 works) · Law (24 works) · Political economy (24 works) · Sociology (23 works) · Economics (22 works) · Democracy (21 works) · Eastern European Communism and Reforms (15 works) · European Union Policy and Governance (13 works)