Academic literature on the topic 'Post-communism – Hungary'

Often the feeling prevails that everything is falling apart. In a way, this is true. The former centralist, bureaucratic, and dysfunctional system of support for order cannot be self-supporting and is collapsing. The new system, in all its aspects, is being born, prepared, thought through. But it is not yet up and working. Václav Havel

The ghost of Trianon continues to haunt Central Europe. The consequences of the unmaking of the Habsburg Kingdom of Hungary still confront diplomats, even more so now in the aftermath of communism and the demise of Soviet hegemony. The plight of Hungarian minorities in Hungary's neighboring states is a constant concern to diplomats as satisfactory accommodation of ethnic minorities fails throughout post-communist Eastern Europe. Specifically, a fear of destabilization on account of a crisis related to the several Hungarian minorities scattered in half a dozen adjacent states is never far from the surface.

The “Ex-communist party” label has often been used to describe the political ideas and political behavior of the former ruling communist parties operating in post-communist political systems. Yet, the former ruling communist parties have not only followed diverse paths of organizational transformation, but also have developed very different strategic visions of their role in the politics of post-communism. By comparing the political environments faced by the former ruling organizations of East Germany and Hungary and then utilizing content analysis to identify the strategic visions of each of the two organizations, this article demonstrates how different post-communist national political settings have resulted in divergent strategic visions for successor parties in Germany and Hungary.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate vertical and horizontal mismatch between education and current occupation for graduates in four post-communist societies: Hungary, Poland, Lithuania and Slovenia. In this way it contributes to the field by exploring how mechanisms, known from previous studies on western societies, affect job mismatch in emerging market economies. Design/methodology/approach – Two dependent variables are constructed: working in a non-graduate occupation as defined by the ISCO job title depicts vertical mismatch; assessment of the job from the perspective of the fields of study describes horizontal mismatch. Since the dependent variables are dichotomous ones, binary logistic regression models are fitted to the data predicting the incidence of mismatch. Explanatory variables cover mechanisms affecting job mismatch: variation by fields of studies, accumulated work experience during studies, labour market uncertainties during early career, trade off between job safety and job mismatch, persistence of “bad” labour market entry during early career, influence of parental background on school-to-work transition. Findings – The analysis reveals significant differences for study fields in association with occupational specificity of the disciplines. Only study-related work experience seems to be advantageous to find a matching job. Labour market uncertainties increase the probability of job mismatch. Job safety is more important than a matching job. Originality/value – Mismatch in first occupation has strong and long-lasting effect on the job match even five years after the graduation. The effect of parental background on job mismatch is curvilinear.

AbstractThe problem addressed in this article is the adequacy of the recently developed quality of democracy model in analyzing post-communist democracies in the context of their recent accession into the European Union. In order to provide some clarification of this question, the conceptual framework is utilized in light of past and recent political developments in Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland and Romania. Several procedural and substantive dimensions of the model are examined, particularly participation and competition, accountability, governance, rule of law, corruption and aspects of popular legitimacy. The main conclusion is that while the model proves its ability to understand some of the specific dynamics and peculiarities of these cases, it is less successful in showing how democratic legitimacy becomes institutionalized.

This analysis compares the effects on social mobility of the political transformations in Eastern Europe which took place in the 1950s and the 1990s. The author examines absolute and relative mobility rates in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Russia and Slovakia based on data from national random samples taken in 1993 and 1994. Log-linear models are applied to mobility tables for four periods, 1948-52, 1952-63, 1983-88 and 1988-93, to determine change in the strength of association between occupational categories. Searching for the effect of the transition to communism the author compares occupational mobility between 1948 and 1952 with occupational mobility between 1952 and 1963. In order to assess the effect of the transition from communism, mobility between 1983 and 1988 is compared to mobility between 1988 and 1993. It was definitely the transition to communism in the late 1940s that released the more intensive flows between basic segments of the social structure compared to what occurred during the exit from communism in the 1990s. Using both the diagonals and the constant social fluidity models, the author finds no evidence of increasing openness in post-communist countries. Contrariwise, in the 1948-63 period some significant change occurred in relative mobility chances. The conclusion is that the “first transformation” gave rise to a turn in social fluidity on the “genotypical” level.

Ian Bremmer and Ray Taras, eds., New States, New Politics: Building the Post-Soviet Nations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 743 pp., ISBN 0–521–57101–4Bruno Coppieters, Alexei Zverev and Dmitri Trenin, eds., Commonwealth and Independence in Post-Soviet Eurasia (London: Frank Cass, 1998), 232 pp., ISBN 0–714–64480–3Leslie Holmes, Post-Communism: an Introduction (Oxford: Polity Press, 1997), 260 pp., ISBN 0–745–61311–xMichael Mandelbaum, ed., Post-Communism: Four Perspectives (US Council of Foreign Relations, 1996), 208 pp., ISBN 0–876–09186–9Ilya Prizel, National Identity and Foreign Policy: Nationalism and Leadership in Poland, Russia and Ukraine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 443 pp., ISBN 0–521–57157–xRichard Rose, William Mishler and Christian Haerpfer, Democracy and Its Alternatives: Understanding Post-Communist Societies (Oxford: Polity Press, 1998), 270 pp., ISBN 0–745–61926–6Barnett R. Rubin and Jack Snyder, Post-Soviet Political Order (London/New York: Routledge, 1998), 201 pp., ISBN 0–415–17068–0Graham Smith, Vivien Law, Andrew Wilson, Annette Bohr and Edward Allworth, Nation-Building in Post-Soviet Borderlands: The Politics of National Identities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 304 pp., ISBN 0–521–59045–0Vladimir Tismaneanu, Fantasies of Salvation: Democracy, Nationalism, and Myth in Post-Communist Europe (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), 217 pp., ISBN 0–691–04826–6Gordon Wightman, ed., Party Formation in East-Central Europe: Post-Communist Politics in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland and Bulgaria (Vermont: Edward Elgar, 1995), 270 pp., ISBN 1–858–898132–8It is now about 10 years since the communist bloc ceased to exist (1989 is the year when communism was defeated in central-eastern Europe, and in 1991 its bastion – the Soviet Union – fell). What it left behind are a couple of die-hard communist survivor-states, an urge to ‘rethink’ or ‘re-define’ many fundamental concepts of political science, and a large swathe of land that is still to be properly categorised in registers of comparative political science. ‘Post-communism’ is the most popular term to cover this territory. But does it refer to something real today, or does it just express some kind of intellectual inertia? How much do the ‘post-communist countries’ still have in common with each other and to what extent are they different from any others?

This thesis explores whether and to what extent civil society within the framework of post-communist transition, provides a bulwark against the resurgence of exclusivist nationalism, in four countries: Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania. In that respect minorities' and especially Roma's rights are extensively examined. Related to these issues is to what extent the third sector has been able to develop a democratic political culture among the populations of the respective countries. During the course of the research, the concept of political culture was perceived relatively strong, considering the short period of post-communist transition. However, it is worth looking into whether civil society has managed to develop attitudes consistent with what a democratic political culture demands. Non-governmental organisations have been selected as agents of civil society, capable of articulating the demands in the new post-communist era. Particular consideration is given to the theoretical relation between civil society, nationalism and democracy both before and after the fall of communism. The same topics are briefly presentedfo r eachc ountry individually. The empirical section examines three different methods of appraising NGOs: firstly NGOs are assessed according to basic criteria namely, founding members, financial resources, co-operation with local authorities etc. Secondly, their direct impact on legislation and institutional development is analysed. Thirdly, their impact on the development of a democratic political culture is examined. Finally, all factors are evaluated and concluding comparative remarks are made

Le thème que nous nous proposons d’aborder dans la présente thèse est celui du populisme comme idéologie avec ses manifestations dans le monde, en Europe et surtout en Roumanie, où ses amples développements ont été à notre avis insuffisamment explorés jusqu’ici. L’hypothèse que nous avançons et que nous essaierons de valider par notre étude est celle que le populisme roumain n’est pas récent ou de fraiche importation, mais qu’il est solidement enraciné dans l’histoire et que ses évolutions ont un intérêt académique certain. L’interrogation méthodique, approfondie de la bibliographie spécialisée nous a révélé l’existence d’un intérêt minimum pour les variantes roumaines du populisme. La bibliographie internationale sur le populisme roumain est restreinte (Ghiţă Ionescu, Aurel Braun, Vladimir Tismăneanu, tous d’origine roumaine, sont actuellement les références citables). En Roumanie, quelques recherches isolées, surtout des dix dernières années, ont abordé des aspects ponctuels.Notre démarche tient sur trois piliers. Un premier chapitre théorique vise à interroger et clarifier la notion de populisme. Nous sommes partis à la recherche du populisme en utilisant la méthodologie de Margaret Canovan et Guy Hermet. Nous avons donc entrepris de refaire l’histoire du concept (narodniki russes, populistes américains, agrariens est-européens de l’entre-deux guerres, populismes latino-américains et d’Europe occidentale d’après guerre. L’étude taxonomique s’est accompagnée d’un passage en revue des conditions locales ayant généré les avatars du populisme sur quatre continents. Nous avons par la suite procédé à un état de la recherche sur la notion de populisme pour aboutir à une définition propre qui intègre des éléments dus à Jaguaribe, Hermet, Albertazzi et Mc Donnel, Laclau.Forts de la définition, nous avons passé en revue les rapports entre populisme et les diverses variantes du nationalisme, en insistant sur le national-populisme théorisé en première par Gino Germani, fort présent en Europe centrale et orientale et sans doute en Roumanie. Nous avons insisté sur les spécificités et les variables (temps, existence d’un leader charismatique) du populisme dans cette région, en retraçant, à la manière de Hermet, l’histoire politique de ces pays (Bulgarie, Hongrie, Pologne, République Tchèque, Roumanie, Slovaquie) avec un accent sur les mouvements considérés (à raison ou à tort) comme populistes.Le premier chapitre constitue la trame de fond du second, qui fait un panorama des avatars du populisme roumain des origines et jusqu’au début de la seconde guerre mondiale. Nous y avons surtout utilisé des sources roumaines (monographies de courants idéologiques, biographies, études et synthèses historiques, collections de revues et journaux, documents d’archives). En Roumanie, le populisme s’est manifesté depuis les débuts de la modernité politique, au XIXe. Le problème paysan a représenté la matrice du populisme roumain et l’examen des solutions pour y répondre constitue le fil conducteur de ce chapitre. Nous en avons dressé l’inventaire :populisme d’État modernisateur à la Peron (prince Cuza), socialisme de Gherea avec la paysannerie en arrière-garde du prolétariat, radicalisme bourgeois de gauche (le poporanism de Stere), populisme romantique et passéiste (le semeurisme de Iorga), boulangisme tardif (général Averescu), paysannisme avec sa doctrine coopératiste (PNP de Maniu et Mihalache), mais aussi le fascisme déviant de la Garde de Fer, qui a ciblé elle aussi les campagnes. Tous ces projets politiques ont illustré l’échec du populisme face aux problèmes de la société roumaine en voie de modernisation.Le troisième chapitre est consacré à la récrudescence populiste après la longue parenthèse communiste. Une analyse du national-communisme de Ceauşescu nous permet d’identifier bien des facteurs ayant façonné la société roumaine de 1989. Le national-populisme a connu un important essor en Roumanie post-communiste. Nous avons mis à profit des recherches internationales (De Waele, Tismăneanu), mais aussi locales comme des discours, articles de presse, sondages, archives électroniques. Nous avons accordé une attention particulière au Parti de la Grande Roumanie de Corneliu Vadim Tudor, le cas typique auquel nous avons consacré une étude. D’autres formations (PUNR, PNG de George Becali, Parti du Peuple – Dan Diaconescu, les anémiques héritiers du Mouvement Légionnaire) ont été passées en revue, pour constater leur inconsistance doctrinaire et leur faible impact électoral. De même, nous avons conclu que le national-populisme roumain post-communiste s’inscrit dans la continuité du national-communisme et très marginalement dans celle de ‘entre-deux-guerres. S’adressant aux perdants de la transition, ces partis ont failli à laisser leur marque. Deux leaders ayant fini en prison, un autre mort, la voie populiste semble momentanément fermée, bien qu’elle ait réussi une percée récente dans le discours des partis mainstream. Notre thèse retient une fin qui saurait aussi bien s’avérer un nouveau commencement.
The theme we intend to investigate in this dissertation is populism as an ideology with its embodiments throughout the world, in Europe and most of all in Romania, where its vast developments have been in our view insufficiently explored until now. The hypothesis we submit and which we shall try to validate by our research is that Romanian populism is not recent or freshly imported, but it is deeply rooted in history and its evolutions are of undoubted academic interest. The deep, thorough examination of specialized bibliography revealed us a limited interest for the Romanian variants of populism. The international bibliography on Romanian populism is far from extensive (Ghiţă Ionescu, Aurel Braun, Vladimir Tismăneanu, all of Romanian origin, are now the quotable references). In Romania, the research is not abundant either, but over the ten last years some individual aspects of the topic have been investigated. Our approach is threefold. A first theoretical chapter aims to questioning and clarifying the notion of populism itself. We set off in search of populism making use of Margaret Canovan and Guy Hermet’s methodology. We have thus ventured to trace back the concept’s history (Russian narodniki, American populists, East-European agrarianisms in-between the world wars, Latin-American and Western European populisms after WWII. The taxonomic study was accompanied by a review of local contexts having generated the avatars of populism on four continents. We have subsequently drawn a state-of-play of the research on populism as a concept in order to come up with our own definition which integrates elements owed to Jaguaribe, Hermet, Albertazzi & Mc Donnel, Laclau.On the solid ground of the definition, we have reviewed the relationships between populism and the diverse variants of nationalism, focusing on the national-populism first theorized by Gino Germani. National-populism is to be widely encountered in Central and Eastern Europe and undoubtedly in Romania. We have insisted on the specificities and variables (time, existence of a charismatic leader) of populism in this region, by recounting in the manner of Hermet the political history of these countries (Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia) with special regard to movements rightly or wrongly considered as populist. The first chapter sets the framework of the second one, which brings about a panorama of the Romanian populist avatars from its origins to the start of WWIII. We have mostly made use of Romanian sources (monographs of ideological trends, biographies, historical studies, collections of magazines and newspapers, documents from the archives).Populism has been a constant presence in Romania, since the beginnings of the country’s political modernity in the 19th century. The peasant problem represents the matrix of Romanian populism and the review of the foreseen solutions to solve it represents the unifying thread of this chapter. We have proceeded to an inventory :modernizing state populism à la Peron (prince Cuza), Gherea’s socialism with the peasantry seen as the rearguard of the proletariat, left bourgeois radicalism (Stere and his poporanism), Romanticist & revivalist populism (Iorga and his sămănătorism), late boulangisme (General Averescu), agrarianism with the underlying cooperatist doctrine (National Peasant Party of Maniu and Mihalache), but also the Iron Guard’s deviant fascism, which targeted rural areas as well. All these political projects illustrated the failure of populism to address the problems of Romanian society on its way to modernity. The third chapter deals with the populist revival in Romania after the fall of communism in 1989. An analysis of Nicolae Ceauşescu’s national-communism enables us to identify many factors having shaped the Romanian society of 1989. National-populism enjoyed massive success in post-communist Romania. We took advantage of international (De Waele, Tismăneanu), but also local research and explored speeches, press items, polls, electronic archives.Particular attention was paid to Corneliu Vadim Tudor’s Greater Romania, the typical case which we studied. Other parties (PNUR, George Becali’s NGP, Dan Diaconescu’s People’s Party, the feeble heirs to the Legionary Movement) were reviewed, only to conclude to their doctrinal shallowness and weak electoral impact. We have come to the conclusion that Romania’s post-communist national-populism is based on the legacy of national-communism and only marginally on the heritage of Romania’s interwar populisms. Targeting the losers of transition, these parties failed to achieve major success. Two of their leaders ended up in prison, a third one is dead, so the populist path seems momentarily shut, though it has managed a recent breakthrough into the discourse of mainstream parties. Our dissertation closes on an end note which may well prove a new beginning.
Doctorat en Sciences politiques et sociales
info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

This thesis analyzes the state support of the cultural and creative industries in selected post-communist countries, now the Visegrad Group. The first part is devoted to the impact of the totalitarian regime on culture and cultural policy, economic transformation and current economic situation of individual countries with emphasis on chracteristics of the cultural and creative industries concept. The main part of the thesis deals with the issues of culture policy perspective of each state including the opportunities available under EU funds. The final section presents the summary of a comparative analysis along with pros and cons of the models in all countries.

This dissertation explores the ways in which the everyday (in)securities of people in southwestern Ukraine can illuminate our understanding of contemporary political life. Rather than using traditional units of analysis or given categories—the state, the individual, identity—the dissertation focuses on relations between people in and connected to a single village to develop a novel framework for analyzing politics and the political. The dissertation opens with an interrogation of the practical and theoretical challenges associated with current conceptualizations of security; our understanding of the political; and the role of ethnography in theorization and presents a research design meant to address those challenges. Drawing upon extensive participant-observation and other immersion-based research in a post-Soviet borderland wedged between Ukraine and Slovakia, and using an analytical tool I call “togetherness,” the thesis presents an ethnographic account of social interactions, economy, and authority in this largely Hungarian-speaking rural area. The third part of the dissertation applies the idea of an ontological shift and draws on complex systems and structuration theory (Luhmann and Giddens, respectively) to rethink the ethnographic analysis and to highlight relationships between structural and existential realms of political life. Here, the concept of security becomes central to the theorization, and the overall argument illuminates the intimate relationship between the idea of security and the political. Ultimately, this approach allows us to expand the scope of political ethnography: theorizing beyond thick description; integrating broader perspectives without losing the texture of the local; and developing an approach to research that can be replicated in other settings.

Defence date: 26 September 2005
Examining board: Prof. Peter Wagner, European University Institute (Supervisor) ; Prof. András Bozóki, Central European University ; Prof. László Bruszt, European University Institute ; Dr. Karol Jakubowicz, National Broadcasting Council of Poland and Council of Europe
First made available online 09 January 2019
Situated on the edge of mass communication studies and transition studies, this PhD thesis examines the process of media reform in countries undergoing post-communist transition. By performing three very different single country studies - a relative success story of transition (Hungary), a struggling post-Soviet society (Ukraine), and a post-conflict, international-administered province (Kosovo) - the work seeks to compile a thorough account of the problems that have plagued the region's media reform process in the last decade. The primary goal is to contribute to the discussion on media démocratisation through preparing comprehensive case studies on the basis of carefully selected empirical material. While focusing on the most important elements of the complex interaction between political and media systems, the thesis reviews the new structural and cultural organisation of the media systems. It focuses on the policy decisions that were adopted by political elites, and on the discussions which surrounded the theoretical grounding and/ or the implementation of these decisions. The work hypothesises that media systems undergoing transition can be fruitfully analysed according to four normative media models - the libertarian, social democratic, authoritarian and development assistant models. These theoretical models help to ascertain the fundamental organisational and structural principles which define a given media segment, and also help to identify the basic commonalities and differences between the various development paths. The work argues that the success of media reform ultimately depends on the political elites' commitment to implementing the above models in an appropriate balance. It concludes that a "transitional media model" might make sense for some of these countries, in which continued party political presence and political parallelism - particularly in the print segment - may be justified.

This chapter examines the pattern of Poland’s relations with the European Union during the period 1989–2011. After the fall of communism, Poland took an early decision in 1989 to place European integration at the centre of its plans for democratization and modernization. Post-accession opinion in Poland on the EU was initially divided between an increasingly Europhile public and an occasionally Eurosceptic political class. By the time of the Polish Presidency of the EU in 2011, however, Poland had largely shed its reputation for awkwardness and had achieved a few policy successes, particularly in terms of relations with its Eastern neighbours. The chapter explains how Poland came to join the EU and assesses the impact of its EU membership on domestic politics, public opinion, institutions, governance, and public policy. It concludes by comparing Poland’s experience with those of its Visegrád neighbours, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovakia.

Abstract After the fall of Communism, a general expectation prevailed that a Jewish revival was imminent in Hungary where the numerical estimates tended toward 100,000 people with Jewish parentage and ranging upwards of 150,000 for those of partial Jewish descent. Based on a comparison of data collected during the 1999 and 2016–2017 large scale Jewish population surveys, the article aims to reconsider whether Jewish group identification increased in the decades after the fall of Communism, and how developments in this respect may be related to the functioning of the Jewish institutions in Hungary. The results of the analysis demonstrate that nowadays Jews of the country perceive themselves much more frequently as members of a bounded group and are increasingly open to being identified as Jewish in interactions with their environment than earlier. Yet these changes are less the consequence of a return to traditional religious observance in the framework of the Jewish religious institutions, and more the products of enhanced ethnic consciousness and identification.