Example Of Hungary Research Articles

Búskomor politics: Practising critique in the ruins of liberal democracy

How to engage with the recent crisis of liberal democracy in a politically productive manner? Using the example of Hungary, the first part of this article contrasts two empirical strategies. The first takes inspiration from Science and Technology Studies (STS) and explores the conditions of critique within the architecture and infrastructure of liberal democracy. The second empirical strategy turns to a novel by László Krasznahorkai and a film by Béla Tarr, and engages with the problem of critique through búskomorság. This common Hungarian word refers to a sad-sombre sentiment that is both collective and thoroughly political. The second part of the article focuses on an exhibition created by Béla Tarr that combined these two empirical strategies in a generative way. With the help of the exhibition and recent empirical examples, the article outlines what could be called búskomor politics – a set of critical practices that take place not so much within the architecture and the infrastructure of liberal democracy as amid its ruins.

Hungary and the EU’s rule of law protection

ABSTRACT The EU is in the process of adopting a new Rule of Law Regulation which passed Parliament in January 2019. How is this a useful addition to the existing political procedures under the Treaties? Also, in what way would a revised litigation strategy before the European Court of Justice (CJEU) add anything to the arsenal of remedies thus available? Using principally the example of Hungary, the authors argue that the newly proposed regulation is a valuable addition, but that a somewhat revised litigation strategy can also help defend EU values.

Needs of countries with longer timescale for deep geological repository implementation

Countries operating nuclear power plants have to deal with the tasks connected to spent fuel and high-level radioactive waste management. There is international consensus that, at this time, deep geological disposal represents the safest and most sustainable option as the end point of the management of high-level waste and spent fuel considered as waste. There are countries with longer timescale for deep geological repository (DGR) implementation, meaning that the planned date of commissioning of their respective DGRs is around 2060. For these countries cooperation, knowledge transfer, participation in RD&D programmes (like EURAD) and adaptation of good international practice could help in implementing their own programmes. In the paper the challenges and needs of a country with longer implementation timescale for DGR will be introduced through the example of Hungary.

FOREIGN EXPERIENCE OF THE EUROPEAN MODEL OF SPORT FUNCTIONING (ON THE EXAMPLE OF HUNGARY)

Based on the analysis of the EU legal and regulatory documents, the key components of the European policy on sports development, which constitute the basis of the European model of sport, are highlighted. Objective. To study the peculiarities of functioning of European model of sport in the EU countries (on the example of Hungary) for the identification of perspective directions of the national sports sphere reforming. Methods. Analysis, synthesis, generalization, comparison. Results.On the one hand, it has been established that applicant countries, before joining the EU, must adopt Community experience and adapt national legislation to EU law. On the other hand, in the sphere of sports, as in the sphere of health, education, culture and tourism, the EU has no right to enact laws and influence the legislation of member states. The European model of sport is based on fundamental principles (transparency and accountability of economic activity, autonomy of sports organizations, observance of rules of "fair play", preservation of competitiveness between professional clubs, recognition of a single Federation for sport, construction of the pyramidal structure of competitions, etc.). At the same time, there are recommendations that, according to the EU leadership, contribute to the development of sport in the country, but are not mandatory for execution (legalization and receiving income from lotteries and gambling, preferential taxation of sports sponsoring firms, etc.). The implementation of the EU's approaches to the sports sphere functioning is considered on the example of Hungary. The experience of Hungary can be taken into account in national practice for reforming the central executive power; introducing legislative initiatives aimed at structural changes and financial support; expanding the mechanisms of non-state financing and increasing the responsibility of sports federations for the development of their sport eventss.

Food industry in EU: testing the efficiency of business on the example of Hungary

Food industry in EU: testing the efficiency of business on the example of Hungary

Конвертаційні стратегії влади та політичної опозиції в Угорщині в 1990-их рр.

The paper clarifies the specificity of the interrelationship between the power and the political opposition in Hungary in the context of the theory of conversion of public capital. Particular attention has been paid to the power reloading stage, which logically should have led to systemic changes and deepening of modernization processes. The qualitative features, rates, and results of the modernization of Hungarian political system were mainly determined by how effectively political parties used the competitive conditions in order to accumulate and convert various forms of capital at the beginning of the transformation period. Even at the stage of the first democratic elections, they were able to quickly fill up the vacuum existing in the political field, and the chosen strategies were successful both for them and for the democratization of the political regime. Rational motives, based on access to power resources, are at the heart of the interaction between government and political opposition in Hungary. The choice of either a confrontational or cooperative engagement strategy depended on the parties’ estimated transaction costs. Limitation of democratic rights and freedoms as a result of the political activity of the pro-government parties became a barrier to healthy competition in which the opposition was primarily interested. The example of Hungary demonstrates that simulation modernization, democratization, and accelerated Europeanization trigger the political significance of the «gap» as a resource for the accumulation of political capital by pro-government parties and the creation of their own network of clientelist relations. Consequently, the country falls into an institutional trap which results in the crisis of democracy. The combination of parliamentary and non-parliamentary opposition gives us a possibility to conceptualize the «deficit of democracy» in election programs, and to «correct» the mistakes of the previous government after coming to power. That is why the alternation of parties in power ultimately leads to the consolidation of democracy.

Geopolitical Imperial Interests of Russia as the Threat to Independence and State Sovereignty of Eastern Europe’s Peoples and Countries (on the Example of Hungary and Ukraine)

The article carries out a comparative analysis of events of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, on the one hand, and the Revolution of Dignity, the annexation of the Crimea, the war of occupation being waged by the Russian Federation in the east of modern Ukraine, on the other hand. The author stresses that in both cases the imperial states, in the mid-twentieth century - USSR, in the early twenty-first century - The Russian Federation, demonstrate an example of interfering in the internal governance of the other State, with the broad involvement of secret services and military units.

Intangible investments at multinational companies? manufacturing subsidiaries: do they promote innovation-based upgrading?

Research background: Despite a widely acknowledged importance of intangible capital as the main driver of value creation, papers discussing corporate intangible investments tend to focus only on multinational companies, i.e. on headquarters (HQ). There are few papers scrutinising the specific attributes of intangible investments at manufacturing subsidiary level. This is, however, an important topic to investigate, since intangible investments can boost subsidiary upgrading. Intangible investments contribute to subsidiaries? acquiring capabilities that allow them to enhance the scope of their responsibilities and specialise in increasingly high-value activities.Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the features of intangible investment at MNCs? manufacturing subsidiaries, on the example of Hungary. Research questions addressed are as follows.a) What exactly do local manufacturing subsidiaries invest in, when they implement intangible investments?b) Is there a difference between the role of intangible investments at MNC level and at manufacturing subsidiary level?c) What is the association between subsidiary-level intangible investments and upgrading?Methodology: We analyse a sample of 44 manufacturing subsidiaries in the Hungarian automotive and electronics industries. We carry out a qualitative content analysis of sample companies? notes to their financial statements, complemented with other sources of corporate information.Findings: We find that intangible investments are aligned with subsidiaries? functional specialisation: with operations. Their main role is to contribute to subsidiaries? absorption of the headquarters? technology transfer and enhance the productivity of the local core activities. This is sharply different from their traditional, MNC-level role: support to non-price competitiveness. We find support for the argument that subsidiary-level intangible investments and subsidiary upgrading are associated in a self-reinforcing virtuous circle.

Sustainable Wine and Grape Production, the Example of Hungary

Abstract Before analysing the economic situation of winegrape production, it is practical to mention some issues concerning the industry. Grape production in Hungary suffered a severe crisis in the 1990’s regarding both production and sales. Its consequence is the decreasing area of grape production and the reducing number of grape producers. Lately, after our EU accession the grape and wine verticum has significantly improved. The situation is still grave today as the producers have to face the more and more intense competition in the market and cheap import products both on the national and international markets. Grape production is in a more disadvantaged situation than wine making and the risks are higher. We have to know the cost-profit situation of the well-discernible verticum parts to make recommendations. Despite the changes, the great fluctuation in income is typical for the industry. Grape is one of the plants where price often did not cover costs in the consecutive years. Costs of production cannot be assessed on their own. They can be judged in relation with the yield changes in real.

The Regulation of the Working Conditions as a Limit of Flexible Working – The Effects of the Green Paper through the Example of Hungary

Abstract On November 22, 2006, the European Commission presented its Green Paper: Modernising labour law to meet the challenges of the 21st century. The Paper gives a different vision of the future of European labour law, one which helps increasing flexibility combined with employment security and reduces labour market segmentation. As an effect of this, a number of member states reconsidered their regulation and started legislation to reach a better level of flexibility. In Hungary the new Labour Code came into force in 2012, modified the rules of the employer's liability for damages, namely the causes for justification and created different grounds for the rules of liability for damages in labour law. The Act also gave rise to a number of “new” legal institutions, mostly in the field of atypical types of employment that result in a considerably more flexible employment, thus providing employers with what is necessary for flexible employment. In the paper it is observed how the EU directives in the field of working conditions narrow the flexible employment through the example of Hungary. As a conclusion it can be stated, that the EU must broaden its legislative activities in order to protect the employees. In addition, extending unified labour law regulations to most legal institutes possible can be justified, as it creates a unified framework for employers and contributes to the promotion of equality within the European Union.

A Market and Spatial Perspective of Health Tourism Destinations: The Hungarian Experience

AbstractSince health tourism is one of the most popular and most dynamically developing products of modern tourism, this paper aims at studying the characteristic features of health tourism destinations from a regional and spatial perspective. Accordingly, the authors would like to introduce a new approach of spatial and product analysis of tourism where the market and spatial relations and relevance of health tourism were analysed through the example of Hungary. Although the classic medical tourism centres were established on natural medical water basis, by today, due to product diversification, continuous innovation and the involvement of medical services into health tourism, the geographical embeddedness seems to disappear, thus basically restructuring the market. The methodological novelty of the research is that exceeding the classic supply–demand algorithm, we compiled a complex viewpoint system adequate to the specialities of the given product characteristics. In our study, the authors intend to survey the special characteristics of health tourism focusing on medical destinations through Hungarian examples since the country's leading position in the global market is well recognized, including medical services. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Pan-European Grassland Mapping Using Seasonal Statistics From Multisensor Image Time Series

Grasslands cover approximately 40% of the Earth’s surface. Low-cost tools for inventory, management, and monitoring are needed because of their great expanse, diversity, and the importance for environmental processes. Remote sensing is a useful technique for providing accurate and reliable information for land use planning and large-scale grassland management. In the context of “GIO land” (Copernicus Initial Operations land program), which is currently contracted by the European Environment Agency, a high-resolution grassland layer of 39 European countries is being created with an overall classification accuracy of better than 80%. Since grassland canopy density, chlorophyll status, and ground cover (GC) are highly dynamic throughout the growing season, no unique spectral signature can be used to map grasslands. Therefore, it is necessary to use image time series to characterize the phenological dynamics of grasslands throughout the year in order to discriminate between grasslands and other vegetation with similar spectral responses. This paper describes an operational approach based on a multisensor concept that employs optical multitemporal and multiscale satellite imagery to generate the high-resolution pan- European grassland layer. The approach is based on the supervised decision tree classifier C5.0 in combination with previous image segmentation and seasonal statistics for various vegetation indices (VIs). Results from the grassland classification for Hungary are presented. The accuracy assessment for this classification was carried out using 328 independent sample points derived from a ground-based European field survey program (LUCAS) and current CORINE Land Cover data. The grassland classification approach is explained in detail on the example of Hungary where an overall accuracy of 92.2% has been reached.

The Appearance of the Clear and Present Danger Doctrine In Hungarian Hate Speech Laws and the Jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights

The restriction of hate speech is one of the thornier problems facing modern democracies today, involving as it does a contradiction between constitutionally guaranteed freedom of speech and the necessity to protect individual rights. By contrast with the American concept of the freedom of speech, the overall European approach holds that hate speech may be restricted in general, although in Europe, too, constitutional guarantees exist which protect even racist or hateful speech, and these must be observed. The dispute is perhaps even more marked in the new democracies, where the new foundations of the modern freedom of speech law had to be established in a short space of time as various social tensions that had been concealed under the previous dictatorship boiled to the surface following the transformation of the political system. In this paper I will argue that the doctrine of clear and present danger, as formulated by the US Supreme Court, is also applicable in respect of hate speech, although it has yet to become a widespread norm in European constitutional thought. In Hungary, however, the Constitutional Court attempted to introduce this doctrine during the several examinations of the constitutionality of the provision on the restriction of hate speech, and the doctrine has also appeared in the practice of the European Court of Human Rights (hereinafter: ECtHR) within certain individual judges’ opinions. This paper first reviews the major phases of the evolution of the doctrine in the US (Section II), and then describes its emergence in Europe, using the example of Hungary (Section III) and the ECtHR (Section IV).

Differing development paths of spatial income inequalities after the political transition — by the example of Hungary and its regions

The debate about trends and changes is a topical issue today regarding the current financial and eco-nomic crisis. Hungary delimited seven NUTS-2 planning-statistical regions with the less developed Northern Great Plain region and the top ranking Western Transdanubia. The study deals with the developing path of spatial income inequalities with the methods of Hoover index and the logarithmic standard deviation. The decay and the growth of inequalities were significantly higher in the case of the underdeveloped territories. Developed areas faced a moderate increase concerning their inequalities and these microregions were able to attract new investments and restructure their economy.

Analyzing the impact of human capital factors on competitivenes

There are a number of approaches to measure national competitiveness. However, in these reports human capital typically appears indirectly. The author's purpose is to uncover how human capital contributes to competitiveness of economies and to propose an approach to identify the most effective improvement opportunities for countries, illustrated on the example of Hungary. The analysis is based on the data of the Global Talent Index Report (2011) and the Global Competitiveness Report 2012-2013. The components of the Global Talent Index (GTI) and their relation to the Global Competitiveness Index (GCI) were analyzed with a linear programming based similarity analysis method, component-based object comparison for objectivity (COCO). Based on the output of the analysis it was identified how sensitive the Global Competitiveness Index is to the components of the GTI. Hungary's position was analyzed further to quantify improvement opportunities and threats based on the step function resulted by the COCO analysis. The author concludes that the human resource of a country is a pivotal element of national competitiveness. By developing human capital of the country the overall competitive position may be improved. Areas of priorities may be identified and the level of intervention may be quantified specific to a country. This could help policy makers to decide in the allocation of resource to maximize effectiveness, leading to improve (or protect) a country's overall competitive position in the global arena.

Teaching Political Science Research Methods in Hungary: Transferring Student-Centred Teaching Practices into a Subject-Focused Academic Culture

This article discusses the challenges of moving towards student-centredness in East-Central Europe through the example of Hungary’s subject-focused academic culture and the (re-)design of a political science research methods course at the University of Szeged for Spring 2012. Although countries participating in the Bologna Process undersigned the importance of student-centredness, few countries have actually yet moved in this direction. In addition, we know very little about how these instructional methods work outside the Western democratic context. I show that research into teaching is an important means to improve the process of education and that there are specific problems in transferring student-centredness into post-Communist higher education settings. Finally, I argue that knowing one’s teaching context is vital for planning student-centred courses effectively, which would be greatly fostered by experiencing other teaching contexts through early-career teacher exchanges. The European Commission has recently affirmed its commitment to staff exchanges, but such opportunities are only likely to be beneficial if they go beyond the current 6-week long exchange scheme that the Erasmus programme offers.

The Party Colonisation of the Media

Media scholars looking into the relationship between political and media systems in the former communist countries have mainly worked on the assumption that parties seek control over the media in order to suppress critical voices and to gain favourable coverage so that they can influence voting behaviour, but have barely explored political actors’ other possible motivations. Meanwhile, political scientists studying the region’s countries have often focused on parties’ relationship to the state and the resources that they extracted from state institutions such as ministries and municipalities but largely ignored the relationship between parties and the media. This article, written as part of the project Media and Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe, attempts to link these two traditions of research. Introducing the concept of the party colonisation of the media, it looks into what benefits other than suppressing criticism and gaining favourable coverage parties may gain from controlling the media. It uses the example of Hungary to illustrate how the party colonisation of the media works. It also intends to assess how different patterns of media colonisation affect media freedom.

Semi-subsistence farming situation and policy – the example of Hungary

In Hungary small farms have played very important role since collectivization (1959-61). Up to radical changes small households have received strong support from coops in the field of providing inputs on one side and, marketing their products on the other. The latter was disrupted by radical reforms and small farms started struggling with survival under market conditions. Government took measures to provide a development path for those having a chance to become competitive after five years development. Three calls (2004, 205 and 2006) were released. In Hungary SSF from three regions were more interested in getting the grant as North Great Plain, South Transdanubia and South Great Plain. All three regions are agriculture dominated ones. The policy with the call has reached a very moderate number of SSFs and, on the other side small farms, either because not meeting the criteria of the call or not wanted to take the additional costs of being registered and monitored for such a small amount of support decided not to apply. The paper ends with policy lessons.

Gambling in Western and Eastern Europe: The Example of Hungary

The history of gambling in post-socialist countries is noticeably different from that of other countries in Europe. The goal of this study was therefore twofold: Firstly, to systematically review all European epidemiological studies related to excessive gambling in the general adult population, and secondly, to provide an overview of the state of gambling in Hungary based on the first ever nationwide representative survey, setting the results against the backdrop of the earlier European studies. A systematic review was carried out of European gambling studies which focus on a representative adult general population. Hungarian data was obtained from the National Survey on Addiction Problems in Hungary general adult population survey (N = 2,710). Pathological gambling was measured by the South Oaks Gambling Screen. Lifetime prevalence of excessive gambling (problem and pathological gambling) in the general adult population of European countries varies between 1.1% (Italy and Spain) and 6.5% (Estonia). In Hungary, the prevalence of problem gambling is 1.9%, with pathological gambling at 1.4%. The socio-demographic characteristics of the results are similar to those of other European countries. Using epidemiological data from the general adult populations of two post-socialist nations, it was possible to compare the results with data from 12 other European countries. Based on the data available, the extremely rapid liberation of the gambling market in the post-socialist countries has led to a similarly swift escalation in associated gambling problems.

On correlation of maize and wheat yield with NDVI: Example of hungary (1985–1998)

The aim of the study is to quantify statistical relations between the Normalized Differential Vegetation Index (NDVI), derived from NOAA/AVHRR multi-channel irradiance, and yield of wheat and maize commonly covering 23.5% of Hungary. The 14 years period, 1985–1998 is used, reserving the later vegetation seasons for independent validation, in the future. The yield reporting units are the 19 administrative counties, characterized by 50–90 km of linear measure and diverse vegetation. Cluster analysis of the yield series is performed to identify possible outliers, but there are no qualitatively separating outliers found among the 14 years and 19 counties for the investigated plants. The same procedure is performed for the average proportion of land-use types and for the NDVI series with the aim of finding coherent groups of counties to unify them into larger, cumulative samples. However, these analyses did not yield the necessary similarities, hence, no further spatial integration was performed. The applied NDVI series are filtered against possible remained atmospheric disturbances, whereas the yield data are standardized against the, actually decreasing, linear trends. The relationships between weekly composite NDVI data are residual yield percentages are rather different for maize and wheat: wheat yield is closely related to the early spring NDVI, whereas for maize yield only the much later, near-harvest periods exhibit some informative value. Since the obtained correlations are rather similar in the neighboring weeks and the weekly NDVI series are strongly auto-correlated, themselves, a four-weekly integration of NDVI is performed before the final estimation of the yield from the NDVI. This integration is performed in four different ways, recommended by literature sources, with no real differences of the results, that promises stability of the correlation, despite the short samples. This statistical predictability of wheat yield residuals with about three months time lead, can be interpreted as follows: Mixed vegetation of the counties indicate the spring restart of wheat development, which conditions determine a substantial part of yield variability.