Suchergebnisse

A régiók nem csak a közelmúltban jelentek meg az európai politika színpadán, mint önálló szereplők, tevékenységüket már évtizedek óta jegyzik. Ennek középpontjában mindenekelőtt a régiók határokon átnyúló együttműködése áll, ezt egészítették ki a régiók transznacionális megállapodásaival, amelyek arra szolgáltak, hogy a nemzetállamok kormányaival valamint a nemzetközi szervezetekkel, különösképpen az Európa Tanáccsal és az Európai Közösséggel szemben érdekképviseletüket gyakorolják. Az utóbbi időben a régiók egyre energikusabban és követelőbben hívták fel magukra a figyelmet. Tevékenységük súlypontja jelenleg nyilvánvalóan az EU és az integrációs folyamatokon belül helyezkedik el. A régiók mint az EU-kontextus politikai tényezői igen sokrétű tevékenységet mutatnak fel, amelyek az "Európa régiói" megjelölésben foglalhatók össze. Az elnevezésből, mint sokszor használatos szlogenből azonban hiányzik egy egyértelmű és ugyanakkor közös megegyezéssel alapuló, elfogadott tartalom. Regions appeared as autonomous entities on the European political stage not only in recent years. The activity of regions has been recorded for decades. It focuses above all on the cross-border cooperation of regions, and was supplemented by the trans-national agreements of regions, which served to practice their representation against the governments of nation states as well as international organisations, in particular, the European Council and the European Community. Most recently, regions have drawn attention to their presence more and more and when doing so have found increasing attention. Their centre of activity is now obviously located within the EU and the integration processes. Regions as the political factors of the EU context show a wide range of activities that can be summarized under the label of 'the regions of Europe'. The name, as a frequently used slogan, is lacking a clear and at the same time jointly agreed, accepted content. Regions and regionalism are rather flourishing in Europe. But what do regionalism and the expression Europe of regions exactly mean? There are many approaches to the question, the concept of cross-border interregionality between the Member States of the European Union, or the effort to make regions the basic building blocks of European integration instead of states, and the objective to introduce a three-tier structure to the European Union which would extend the already existing tiers of the European Union and the Member States with a third one, the territorial units within nation states. The first approach has long been adopted, the second approach is rather utopian. The third one is subject to fierce debates: a three-tier European Union with European, nation state and regional levels.

This contribution offers a reminder of the state of political forces in France and the course of the health crisis, which initially took place in a context of strong political tensions, particularly as a result of the controversial pension reform decided by Macron. The COVID crisis allowed populist parties to develop 'naming' and 'blaming' strategies, initially mobilized in different proportions, to attack the President of the Republic Macron. The analysis shows that the decision to introduce a lockdown led the two leaders of the parties described as populist to harden their criticism to similar proportions but also to 'claim' rapid responses to the crisis. These speeches are also part of the medical polemics that will have been omnipresent throughout the pandemic. Finally, we observe that these strategies have not been beneficial to the populist parties, since during the municipal elections the two parties did not manage to take advantage on this health and political sequence.

One striking aspect of the coronavirus crisis was the poor response of the right-wing populist leaders to the pandemic in countries such as the US, Britain, and Brazil. Despite this fact, the continuing voter support right-wing populist leaders attract across countries with different socio-economic traits is puzzling. In this paper, we argue in favour of a cognitive anthropological view of populism scholarship. Cognitive and evolutionary anthropology shows that mental systems common to all humans shape the way we understand the world, making some ideas more plausible than others regardless of their levels of accuracy. Even though the action of 'building a wall' to keep illegal migrants away can prove ultimately unfeasible and does not address real immigration issues, due to our cognitive evolution, it makes intuitive sense as a plausible option to reducing immigration. Populist leaders exploit our cognitive intuitions by providing such intractable but oftentimes intuitively-plausible ideas in order to get elected or to promote preferred policies. Furthermore, we intuitively admire powerful individuals and tend to defer to authoritative and charismatic figures as an evolutionary strategy for acquiring valued skills and negotiating hierarchies. As a result, by committing to the intuitively-plausible policies populist leaders promote, such as 'building a wall', they give additional credence to the political beliefs that are based on our cognitive intuitions, effectively increasing their plausibility for the "common folk".

A kutatás az igazságszolgáltatásba vetett állampolgári bizalom problémájával foglalkozott. A kutatás keretében többek között készült egy reprezentatív adatfelvétel a rendőrségbe és a bíróságba vetett bizalom kérdéskörében és egy média tartalomelemzés. Válogatott magyar sajtótermékek bűncselekményekre, illetve a büntető-igazságszolgáltatás intézményeinek, elveinek médiaprezentációjára vonatkozó tartalmának numerikus és szöveges kódolása történt meg.

This working paper investigates public policies that precede the rise of populism. A mixedmethod research design is applied: on the one hand, we use data from international surveys and databanks to explore the policy–populism nexus from a comparative European perspective. On the other hand, country case studies have been prepared to understand the country-specific historical and socio-economic features of populism and its potential policy roots. Four countries were selected as national case studies: two EU member states (Greece and Hungary) because of a strong, long-term support of populist parties; one EU member state (Lithuania), where support of populist parties remain moderate, although historical and socio-economic features suggest a likely rise of populism; and one country (Turkey) that exhibits the potential hybridization tendencies of populism and the role of policies in the shift from democratic towards authoritarian regimes. We found that the content of policies were weak predictors of the rise of populism. Country-specific measures were more important predictors than policy ideas. At the same time, our results demonstrate that the lack of activation policies may be a strong predictor of welfare populist attitudes of citizens, and the exclusion of a significant proportion of young people from the labour market clearly feeds populist attitudes. Another important finding is that crisis management policies matter, but not the socio-economic crisis in itself: the management of crisis by non-elected policy experts, through technocratic governance methods, will likely trigger populism. This is particularly true in societies where political polarization is high

The EU is bound to respect the national identities of Member States. States might, at occasions, define their national identities in ways that breach inclusive constitutional values (e.g. equality) protected under TEU Article 2. The assumption behind the recognition of diverse constitutional identities is the peaceful coexistence of both, which is challenged by illiberal national developments. Instead, we see a zero-sum game between the constitutional recognition of exclusive values (e.g. dominant ethnicity or religion) and inclusive constitutional values; every gain by the proponents of emergent authoritarianism translates to a loss on the side of constitutional democracy. While exclusive norms appear in virtually every constitutional system, a critical mass of exclusive values can lead to the hollowing out of a democratic order, both on the national and on the supranational level. To try to draw the line where this shift happens, we are relying on the limits of toleration, and recognition, of exclusive norms and identity elements of minority communities in liberal theories of multiculturalism (e.g. Raz, Taylor, Kymlicka). We think that the case of illiberal minorities raise structurally similar theoretical questions, insights, and experiences than the dilemma defined above, the challenge of illiberal Member States undermining EU fundamental values.