This recent book titled From learning the language to political participation is the result of a vast research program named ‘European Integration Modules – Exchange of Experience’ carried out by the ICCR-Budapest Foundation. The aim of this initiative was to select and explore European...

On the 26-27th of November, the Central European University’s Center for EU Enlargement Studies and the Hungarian MTA KRTK VGI co-hosted several presentations and keynote lectures at the CEU campus in Budapest. The conference proved highly attractive for our community of economic sociologists...

Representative politics is in crisis. Trust in politicians is at an all-time low.These are the initial remarks in Simon Tormey’s new book. Simon Tormey is Professor of Political Theory at the University of Sydney. His research areas are Contemporary Political Theory and Global Politics,...

The paper compares the political leadership of Silvio Berlusconi and Viktor Orbán from the beginning of their political careers to 2014, Besides giving a descriptive comparison of the Italian and Hungarian political leaders, the paper focuses on two questions: (1) the nature of their populism;...

Recent literature on Hungary seems to be conclusive about the fact that elite consensus has collapsed and democracy is backsliding towards autocracy because of the elites’ norm-breaking behavior (Lengyel 2014; Bozóki 2015; Kristóf 2015). It is also recognized that the governmental elite has been...

The paper considers the effects of economic globalization on the relationship between national economic and political elites. It is contended that high levels of globalization lead to the de-coupling of economic elites from national political elites and that economic globalization also...

After a short theoretical overview about the interplay between institutions and elites, the paper analyses the economic performance operationalized by the GDP and the quality of governance in Hungary in comparative perspective, considering two milestones, namely, the impact of the Great...

Undeniably, the economic crisis of 2008 was a critical juncture and a stress test for the EU and the Europeanness of its populations and elites. The crisis therefore offers an appropriate research setting for addressing two major research questions. In the following paragraphs, we first question...

In this paper I analyze to what extent the Eurozone crisis has affected the representativeness of parties’ positions with respect to the issue of European integration. Public opinion data and many analyses have provided evidence that, since 2010, public support for the European Union (EU) has...