BÉLA POKOL
MARKETIZATION AND GLOBALE RULING

In the study the effects of the marketization on power relations
is outlined. It is argued that the marketization has double
dimensions and beyond the functional dimension in which this
phenomenon has positive effects there is the ruling dimension
of the society and in this dimension the marketization enhances
the power of the groups which have controll over the
mechanisms of the banking sphere and over the money. On the
theory of Karl Polányi the study makes a difference and from
the substantial meaning of economy he emphasizes the
meaning of the formal economy which means the mechanisms
of the market and the banking sphere. Although the market
mechanisms emerged in the productive sphere (industrie and
agriculture) in the last decades these mechanisms begann to
organize the functioning of a lot of subsystems of the society:
the education, the health care, the army, the police, the prisons
etc. In this way the marketization enhances the power of the
groups which controll of the banking mechanisnms not only in
the substantive econony but in the whole society.


GÁBOR SZABÓ
THE NOTION OF DECENTRALISED WORLD ORDER, AND
THE REALITIES OF GLOBAL GOVERNANCE

The territory as the usual basis for organization of human
communities has lost its privileged position in recent times.
Most of the states have less and less capacity to perform their
traditional functions in a world where breaking away from the
territory or „extra-territoriality” result in many advantages
and raise conteptually new moral and political reference points.
It makes necessary to rethink the concept of community and to
redraw the boundaries of our moral commitments. The
development of law and the theories of international relations
should take into consideration all these tendencies. The concept
of the irreversible polycentric world politics, the theory based
on common risk bearing, and the the theories which are
emphasising the growing influence the global economicfinancial
organizations are all have opposite point of wiew than
the traditional realist theories of the international relations.
The new centres of power of economic-financial world are able
to centralize the decision-making and to shrink the possibilities
of control. In the decentralization of decision making process
and rendering it more transparent, the transnational nongovernmental
organizations may play a crucial role, in
particular the ones that deal with the protection of the
environment, the human rights, or try to improve the situation
of the Third World. In adittion they offer a chance for feedback
to the local level, to complement the decisions made centrally,
both in terms of responsibility, community involvement and
participation. Thus the idea of the decentralized world is
complementary to the realities of global governance. Indeed,
the concept of decentralized world is based upon
acknowledging the potential of a global moral community, as a
source of origin for individual rights and individual
responsibility. In fact, the conclusions of the realistic model
secure absolute grounds for the principle of the selfishness of
the states. Effective responses to the global problems may only
be rendered through the application of the principle of
responsibility, rather than the selfishness of the individuals or
the states.


LÁSZLÓ ANDOR
TWO VARIATIONS ON INTERVENTION. OIL AS A
STRATEGIC FACTOR IN US POLICY TOWARDS IRAQ AND
VENEZUELA

The need for a continuous and increasing oil supply has been a
determining factor in the foreign and security policy of the
United States in the recent years. The focus of the executive
power on energy has apparently sharpened since the Bush
administration entered office in early 2001. The paper
investigates the role of oil in US policy vis a vis two countries,
Iraq and Venezuela. For different reasons, both can be seen as
countries of high importance for Washington. The differing
reasons and pre-history, however, explains the different ways
and means of intervention in the two countries, and in the two
countries. Both examples show, nevertheless, that American
policy is by no means so omnipotent as some theoreticians of
the unipolar world order would suggest.


MIKLÓS LOSONCZ
THE OIL-RELATED POLICY OF THE HUNGARIAN
GOVERNMENTS IN THE DECADE OF THE 1990S AND AT
THE BEGINNING OF THE THIRD MILLENNIUM

The objective of the paper is to analyse the oil policy of the
subsequent Hungarian governments following the transition to
the market economy. The first part focuses on the demand of
energy in general and crude oil in particular by discussing the
major issues of structural changes having taken place in
Hungary after 1990 and their impact on oil consumption. The
second part is a critical overview on the energy policies
including oil. The subject of the third part is the regulation of
the energy market and privatisation. The fourth part covers the
external economic policy towards Russia centred around oil.
The last part includes the conclusions. One of the main
conclusion of the study is that there was a high degree of
continuity in the energy and oil policy of the subsequent
Hungarian governments particularly as regards the main
principles and objectives. The energy policy cannot be
classified either conservative or liberal, its eclectic nature
reflects the specific features of the Hungarian economy.
Differences were more pronounced in issues related to
privatisation, price regulation in non-liberalised segments as
well as external economic policy. The other conclusion is that
with deepening globalisation and Hungary’s membership in the
EU, market conform measures are gaining in importance in
strengthening the security of the supply of energy in general
and crude oil in particular. This requirement will certainly
constrain the room of manoeuvring of energy policy.


ZSOLT ENYEDI
PARTY POLITICS IN THE POST-COMMUNIST WORLD AND
IN WESTERN EUROPE

The article contrasts the structural properties of Western and
Eastern European party systems and analyzes the converging
and diverging trends in the two regions. The process of
European unification highlights the differences between new
and old democracies, especially given the resistance of party
systems to Europeanization. The article shows that many
specificities of recent Western patterns, particularly the
weakening social functions of political parties, are more
pronounced in Post-Communist countries than in the West. At
the same time the cited data prove that in some areas (e. g., the
institutionalized role of parties in government) the most
consequential divide is not between the old and the new
democracies, but within the post-Communist region. The
consolidation of the party systems in Post-Communist countries
is well underway, but there are notable exceptions, and some
aspects of it (e.g., stability of parties) seems to be related more
to certain institutional factors and to the level of polarization,
than to the general level of democratic development.


ANDRÁS KÖRÖSÉNYI
DEMOCRACY-DEFICIT, FEDERALISM, SOVEREIGNTY
THE EUROPEAN UNION FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF
POLITICAL THEORY

The article analyses three problems of the EU from the
perspective of political theory.
The first one is the question of democracy-deficit in the EU.
It is a consequence of the fact, that political leadership and
governance of the Union are institutionally and procedurally
not connected to and independent from the democratic
elections of the European Parliament. Neither the European
Council nor the Commission depends on the political
composition of the EP. The author argues, that this democratic
deficit of the Union is connected to a substantial weakness of
the European unification, namely to the lack of a European
demos, the European political community. There is neither a
European public opinion, nor a European party-system. The
latter is clearly visible in the electoral competition for the seats
in the EP, which is taken place separately in national political
arenas.
Secondly, the author analyses the question, whether the
notion of federalism is suitable to characterise the political
structure of the European Union. He argues, that although the
EU is not a state, it can be regarded a quasi-federation, a
federal political system.
Thirdly the article focuses on the highly debated issue of
sovereignty. The author differentiates between two concepts of
sovereignty. While accepting a quantitative concept of
sovereignty, the transfer of more and more public-policy
functions from the member states to the Union means at the
same time a gradual transfer of sovereignty to the European
Union. Sovereignty in this sense is a synonym for the
aggregation of the state functions, and therefore it is divisible
between the members states and the Union, according to the
various policy-areas. But there is a narrower, a qualitative
concept of sovereignty, based on the theory of Carl Schmitt,
where sovereignty means the final political authority, a final
decision power, like waging war, announce a state of
emergency, adopting a constitution, define the public enemy or
choosing allies. Sovereignty in this sense is not very much
visible in normal circumstances, it appears and prevails only in
crises or extraordinary situations. Taking this qualitative
notion of sovereignty, sovereignty stays at the member states of
the European Union.


ISTVÁN HEGEDÛS
HUNGARIAN PARTIES AND EUROPEAN ELECTIONS

The task of ‘defending national interests’ was stressed
intensively by most of the Hungarian political parties during
their European election campaigns of 2004 instead of using this
opportunity for political debates on European issues and
for analysing the results of Hungary’s fresh membership inside
the EU. The public could not receive necessary information in
order to make the difference between supranational and
intergovernmental institutions, or to understand the basic
decision-making processes on the European level. In general,
the Hungarian media was not able to set the agenda
independently from the PR messages of top politicians and
could not change the traditional and polarised domestic political
characteristics of the contest. However, as the role and
influence of the European Parliament has been continuously
growing in the last two decades as well as Hungary’s
accommodation to the norms and methods embedded in the
enlarged EU-25 might be soon completed, it could even happen
that there would be much more Europe in the next party
competition for European mandates in 5 five years in this fast
developing, middle-sized member state.


LÁSZLÓ KÁKAI–BALÁZS VETÕ
THE ACCURACY OF THE FORECASTS OF MANDATES
BEFORE THE ELECTIONS FOR THE EUROPEAN
PARLIAMENT

After the first round of parliamentary elections in 2002 the
belief in the validity of polls concerning to election
participation made by poll establishments in Hungary
collapsed. Comparing the results of that time’s polls and the
valid election data has marched into memory as the Black
Sunday of Poll Researchers.
In our study the inquiry focused on the closeness of forecast
of poll researcher establishments on the occasion of the
European Parliament election in June 2004. It has been
prooved on the EP election as well that could be presumed after
the Parliamentary elections in 2002: the political poll reseaches
or rather the related different analyses and forecasts in
Hungary came to a head since they could retrace reality only
with little effectiveness. However, miscalculation is not that
spectacular as it was in 2002 because analysts indicated with
relative uniformness the probable winner of the election.
Nevertheless the probable participation, the forecast of the
order of power among political parties and the forecast of
mandates counted on these grounds was significantly different
from reality.
The issue is whether the questioning techniques of poll
researches are obsolete for now and surveys concerning
politics ought to be measured by new instruments?


CSILLA NAGY–VERONIKA TAMÁS
LOCAL REFERENDUMS IN HUNGARY

In our essay we made an attempt to define the role of the local
referendum in the political system. We analised its function, its
place in resolving of the conflict, and the participation of civilan
population and the different organisations.
We used our research in which we collected the data of three
years (1999-2001) from newspapers.
As a conclusion we found that the local referenda can be
divided for four categories. We can distinguish: „settlement
organisation”, „investment”, „environmental protection”, and
„social” cases.
The referenda represents different functions for political
actors. Those referenda – initiaied by the civilan population and
the different organisations – usually has protesting function,
while the referenda – initiated by the local government – has
the function of legitimising the decisions. We also found from
our research that the civilan population and the local
government usually were opponents.
As a final conclusion we can claim that the local referendum
is the additional part of the representative democracy and
works as its correctional mechanism.


GÁBOR SOÓS–ZSOLT BÁRTFAI
LOCAL DEMOCRACY IN CITIES OF COUNTY RIGHTS

The pilot research reported in this paper aimed to raise public
awareness about the quality of local democracy about by
evaluating and ranking 21 larger cities (the so-called ‘cities
with county rights’) in Hungary. Without prior experience, the
research could not be more than a pilot; therefore, the results
must be treated with caution.
As in most democracy audits, this one also conceptualizes
democracy though two fundamental principles: (a) the popular
control of political decision making, and (b) the political
equality of the citizens in implementing this popular control.
Based on this conceptualization, six dimensions of local
democracy were identified through which the two fundamental
principles are realized and which can serve as evaluative
criteria for assessing local democracy: (1) rule of law, (2)
transparency, (3) responsiveness, (4) representation, (5)
participation, and (6) public sphere. The local democracy
dimensions were operationalized in six complex indices, each
of them composed of 2-5 indicators. Cities were ranked along
the six indices as well as three combined indices: the
democratic performance of local governments was assessed by
merging the first three dimensions, the democracy of local
society was evaluated by the combined index of the second
three indices, and a ‘super-index’ was formed from all the six
indices.
The data needed for the research were drawn from various
sources, such as public (local and national) databases, the
official websites of the local governments, and two surveys that
were constructed specifically for the purposes of this research.
One survey was to be completed by local government officials,
while the other by editors of the local media outlets
(newspapers, radio and tv stations, internet-based
newsportals).


GERGELY EGEDY
ARISTOCRACY OR DEMOCRACY?
THE CONCEPTION OF DEMOCRACY IN CONSERVATIVE
THINKING IN LATE-VICTORIAN BRITAIN

Though nobody can accuse the present-day Conservative
parties and movements of being the sworn enemies of
democracy, it is an indisputable fact that Conservative
thinking, following the traditions of Burke, had for a long time
serious reservations concerning political democracy. As a
matter of fact, Conservatives are even today less enthusiastic
about the democratic form of government than their rivals, the
liberals or the socialists. This study makes an attempt to give a
picture of how the most prominent late-Victorian Conservative
thinkers evaluated the process of democratization and its social
consequences. The paper is concerned primarily with the views
of three scholars: the author of „Liberty, Equality, Fraternity”,
James Fitzjames Stephen, the famous historian of law, H.S.
Maine, who expressed his sceptical views on democracy in
„Popular Government”, and another noted historian,
W.H.Lecky, whose „Democracy and Freedom” presented a
crushing opinion on the prospects of democracy. It is
interesting to note that although in the second part of the
twentieth century it has become almost a commonplace in
political theory that democracy and liberty are inseparable, this
was far from being the case even in late-Victoran Britain.