Search results

It was only recently, in the early 2000's, that the national councils were formed as institutions of policy making. The present paper concerns the second election of the national councils, which was held in the traditional way and not by means of electors. In 2010, the primary issue was whether and to what extent the institution is considered legitimate by majority of the Hungarians in Serbia. However, mitigating the collective social inequities of Hungarians in Serbia/Voivodina was not empha-sized. This inequity is partly due to the political deep structure of the representational form of rule. In other words, the dispute on the working of the MNT paralleled the current challenges of the Hungarian party-political system in Voivodina. The actual possibilities of minority policy making or the sensibly discussable circumstances of a given policy area were not really included. The discourse belonged to the dimension of politics rather than that of policies. Even the most skilled intellectuals were unaware of the ways how interests can be institutionalized through policy making. The debate addressed the elections of the MNT and not its procedures of functioning/competence/decision. The 2010 election facilitated the progress in the legality and legitimacy of the body but it also pointed out that, due to the short-term and tactical workings of daily political struggles, the political possibilities and articulations of minority interests will continue to be kept in the background.

The public administration, in particular to the administrative procedure follows a firm objective: to create of the customer friendly approach. Also, there is more and more emphasis recently on improving the efficiency and speed of the procedure. These are the two most important keywords of the decision planning and documentation. The aim of the research in this scientific paper is to detect and analyse the decision-making methods, concurrently being ready to incorporate them into the national administrative procedure systems. These methods are to provide lawful and effectively applicable alternative dispute settlement methods ready to use in Hungarian legal system and also to assist - apart form the aim to reach the basic aims of the administrative procedure - to create a fundament of the decisions made by the authority, having regard to circumstances in real life cases, viewpoint of customers and other parties, and the balance of the public interest. The scope of the paper also covers the theoretical and practical aspects of general mediation and mediation in administrative procedure, in view with the appearance of the topic within the renewing and current administrative procedural law regime. While examining the mediation in administrative procedure in a novel point of view, this work also analyses the role of this special type of mediation in terms of efficiency and charactesistics of the current and future legal solutions in administartive cases often involving parties with adverse interests. Conclusions and proposions in the paper may provide contribution to the spreading and correct treatment of alternative decision making methods in the administrative procedure. The publication of this scientific paper supported by the ÚNKP-16-1 New National Excellence Program of the Ministry of Human Capacities (Hungary).

This study is a continuation of the previously published paper in the Central European Publications No. 35, which presented the political controversies about the codifing of the Trianon Peace Treaty and that massive pressure exerted on Hungary by the great powers for the purpose of making it. The antecedents of the ratification process and the entry into force of the peace treaty were the result of more than one year's process. The study describes the period from 4th June 1920, the signing of the peace treaty, till 26th October 1920, the referral of the peace treaty to the National Assembly. The paper presents in details the content of the ratification bill and its justification. It analyzes the content of the letter in which the Hungarian party informed the ambassadors' commission on the submission of the bill. At the same time, asking the great powers to call on the governments of neighboring countries to respect the minority rights of millions of Hungarians, who were attached to them as a result of the peace treaty. The study describes the French Prime Minister's response to the Hungarian letter, and follows up with the further developments of the ratification of the Trianon Peace Treaty, presents the leading political opinions and the decisions of the National Assembly that determined the Hungarian political life and affected the public's everydays, until the beginning of the ratification debate of the National Assembly, from 13rd November 1920.

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".