Category Archives: Hungary
Eastern Europe: Parties and the mirage of technocracy
Many commentators saw the governments of non-party technocrats formed in Greece and Italy in 2011 as an ill omen for development of party-based democracy in Europe. Established parties, it is suggested, are turning to technocratic caretaker administrations as a device … Continue reading
Left with questions
I’m at conference on the Future of the Left in Central Europe in Prague co-organised by CESTA, one of the Czech Republic’s few centre-left thinktanks, and the German SPD’s Ebert Foundation, having been to an academic workshop on a similar … Continue reading
Difficult Hungarian lesson
The constitutional and institutional changes pushed through by Hungary’s ruling conservative-national Fidesz party following its emphatic election victory in April 2010 have attracted increasing coverage – and almost enirely negative - from academic and journalistic observers of Central European politic, … Continue reading
Organisation and the far right: the Art of the possible
David Art’s new book Inside the Radical Right: The Development of Anti-Immigrant Parties in Western Europe (Cambridge University Press) is one of the boldest and most interesting pieces of writing on comparative European party politics I have seen for … Continue reading
>2010: For whom the bell TOLs?
> The BBC’s annual Correspondents Look Foward programme has, characteristically, nothing to say about Central and Eastern Europe. It is now a backwater of global politics, seemingly. Even Russia barely gets a mention and the programme peters out with a … Continue reading
>Polarization in Hungary (but not in Finland…)
> Came across the interesting (if sparsely updated) PolEmics blog of Emilia Palonen, who has done a PhD on political polarization in contemporary Hungary. Although framed in terms of discourse analysis dealing with the ideological construction of polarization which is … Continue reading
>Hungary for change?
> Conversation in a café with a long-term observer of Hungarian politics about the prospects of the Hungarian right: Orbán and Fidesz are big, sprawling and militant constantly seeking to moblize against the Socialist government which they see – very … Continue reading
>Hungary: believe me, I lied.
>An intriguing story from Hungary – suave millionaire Socialist PM Ferenc Gyurcsany admits in an expletive strewn taped address to MP that his government – and, in other interpretations, the whole of Hungary’s political class and electorate – has been … Continue reading
>Hungarian politics through the eyes of a Cheshire Cat
> Beyond journalist reports, there is a dearth of English language coverage of Hungarian politics on the recent Hungarian elections, won – again narrowly – by the post-communist Socialists despite the breadth, organization and charismatic leadership of the conservative-nationalist right … Continue reading
