András Körösényi - Csaba Tóth - Gábor Török
Who is a political scientist? Scientist, analyst and additional roles

Among those involved with research and education in the field of political science, the state of our discipline, the issue of political science education and the present condition of our profession is always an important topic for discussion. The goal of our paper is to provide clarification concerning these issues, as well as to portray the possible roles of political scientists in terms of professions. We attempt to both analyse the distinctive features of these potential roles and to display the differences between them. We argue that while a degree in political science enables its possessor many potential roles, these roles vary greatly with regard to their characteristics and the qualifications they require. Based on how they relate to politics and political science, we distinguish five different roles: that of the political scientist, the political analyst, the political consultant, the political essayist and the politician. In addition to analysing these roles via a pre-determined set of criteria, we mention examples of these roles from the Hungarian political science community.


Ervin Csizmadia
The Nature of Political Analysis

The author makes an attempt at grasping the specific features of the theory of the genre of political analysis. He wishes to indicate by the approach itself that he defines the genre of political analysis as a discipline possessing autonomous characteristics and not as an occasional genre. First of all it is an important point of consideration what the relationship of political science is to political analysis. The author is of the view that one has to identify the genre of political analysis within the universe of political science but different from it. N ext the issue of the approach of the theory of the genre can be raised. The author argues for the introduction of this approach. The paper discusses the norms and levels of political analysis, proving that the distinction between the genres of political science and political analysis is by far not enough and further differentiation is necessary within political analysis. Finally, the paper raises the problem of the possible delineation of the genre; it typifies the various branches and levels of analysis and separates the different trends of analysis from one another.


Heino Nyyssönen
The meaning of 1956: the role of polititical analogy in the understanding of the past

The paper focuses on one of the most debated events in Cold War Europe, the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, and how its memory has influenced Hungarian political thought. We follow the discussion until the mid-1990s and study memory and analogy in politics. We examine analogy on the basis of the theory of new rhetoric and with the help of Reinhart Koselleck’s writings. In the new rhetoric, analogy is not quality of two relations but belongs to associative strategies of argumentation. These strategies add together separate elements and construct arguments, which either increase or decrease the possibility of accepting the argument. For my approach I have separated two kinds of analogies: those, which contemporary political actors have made during the great moments of history, and those analogies found afterwards by different political actors. Finally, we discuss the temporal nature of the analogy itself. Although analogies depend on audiences, weak analogies also reveal a lack of political skills. The analogy of 1848 has been the most common one in Hungary, but also other years, like 1919 and 1945, have been used in political argumentation. There is evidence, for example, of how Communists compared 1956 to 1919 to legitimize their political actions.


Dániel Mikecz
Water melon from its skin

The Hungarian system of context in movements and the relevance of the debate of left and right within the Hungarian alternative movement The main cleavage of the alternative social movements in E urope detaches the reformist and the radical wings of the movement. The Hungarian situation is characterized through the polarization of the alternative movement family along the question whether the left-right categories are still relevant to describe political standpoint, or new politics need new keywords. The “left wing” alternatives stand for the first opinion, the “greens” for the latter, which undoubtedly gives evidence of the left-right split. In order to clarify the causes of this Hungarian specialty, I analyzed the nature of the Hungarian context system. For the “green” wing of the Hungarian alternatives the left attribution is unacceptable, because before the democratization in Hungary, ecologist movements belonged to the opponents of the official leftist system. O ther difficulties in the use of the categories are the inconsistency of the left-right attribute, the apolitical nature of the Hungarian political culture, and the resource deficit of the Hungarian alternative social movement family. The issues and alliance structure of four Hungarian social movement organizations show that this division appears in the movements’ praxis as well, however it does not define alone the whole alternative movement family and mobilization.


Miklós Rónay
International and sub-state mechanisms in state - Church relations. A political science approach

The process of political dialogue or in the worst case political fighting is endemic in relations between secular power and Church. In fact the basic and appropriate way of looking at this process is the approach of political science. Its expression in legal terms and forms is only a derivation of the process. The task of the research of political science is to explain the original political nature of this discourse between the secular power and the Church. This way the legal forms of this process will be understood better as well. The relation between state and Church has two visible forms. O n the one hand it is the relationship between the different states and the Catholic Church. This relation continues on the international level, which is derived from the capacity of the international negotiations of the Catholic Church as a process of parity and political negotiations. O n the other hand, the relations between the state and the other Churches continue in the sub-state area. The result of the approach of political science is that 1) the interaction between the two systems of relations can be explained, 2) the regulating effect of the international stage to the sub-state area can be demonstrated, 3) and the nature and mechanism of this sort of regulation can be understood better.


Sándor Kurtán
Should we study James Bond? Intelligence and political science

In the 2007 /4 issue of Politikatudományi Szemle Béla Révész disapprovingly claims that political science has ignored studying the intelligence services. The current article – while accepting this remark – seeks to answer some questions raised by Révész, and surveys the results of the so-called intelligence studies research field that has been established in the U SA and the U K. First, the article reviews the debates concerning the concept of intelligence. Second, the changing relationship between intelligence and politics throughout the past century will be outlined and the significance of the intelligence process for political science as well as the politicization of intelligence will be introduced. Third, the problematic relationship between democracy and intelligence and the possible regulation and control of intelligence services will be also introduced.