Political Center Research Articles

Street protest in the first decade of illiberal Hungary: the case of Budapest

ABSTRACT The paper focuses on the anti-governmental protest movements in Budapest in a 10-year long period of the Orbán regime. A quantitative analysis of media reports reveals that the number of street protests remained significant, though with a decreasing intensity in the second half of the period. Empirical evidence on the fragmented and diverse protests suggests that (1) democracy remains of high importance, which is the main issue of dissent in authoritarian regimes; (2) national issues dominate the protests in Budapest due to the centralization of politics, and (3) western-type post-materialist issues are visible elements of the protest culture.

Finland: Political Developments and Data in 2023

AbstractParliamentary elections in 2023 brought in a discourse on debt. Power was passed from the Marin I to the Orpo I government. This was historically the most right‐wing government to date in Finland, whose formation also took historically long but finally united both the populist‐nativist right with the liberal right in the same coalition. The ministerial appointments raised questions among the opposition, and the issue of racism was discussed in connection to the coalition partners. The government's austerity policies sought to limit the power of trade unions, which in turn generated strong reactions. Proposals to limit strike action were faced with opposition. As the three largest parties shifted around, the political centre chose to remain in the opposition and also took issue with the underfunding of social services. The parliamentary polarisation formed a stark contrast to the consensual way in which Finland had approached North Atlantic Treaty Organisation membership, for which a compatible institutional setting was built.

Decoding the impact of political uncertainty on IPO underpricing in China

PurposePolitical factors play a crucial role in China's initial public offering (IPO) market due to its distinctive institutional context (i.e. “economic decentralization” and “political centralization”). Given the significant level of IPO underpricing in China, we examine the impact of local political uncertainty (measured by prefecture-level city official turnover rate) on IPO underpricing.Design/methodology/approachUsing 2,259 IPOs of A-share listed companies from 2001 to 2019, we employ a structural equation model (SEM) to examine the channel (voluntarily lower the issuance price vs aftermarket trading) through which political uncertainty affects IPO underpricing. We check the robustness of the results using bootstrap tests, adopting alternative proxies for political uncertainty and IPO underpricing and employing subsample analysis.FindingsLocal official turnover-induced political uncertainty increases IPO underpricing by IPO firms voluntarily reducing the issuance price rather than by affecting investor sentiment in aftermarket trading. These relations are stronger in firms with pre-IPO political connections. The effect of political uncertainty on IPO underpricing is also contingent upon the industry and the growth phase of an IPO firm, more pronounced in politically sensitive industries and firms listed on the growth enterprise market board.Originality/valueLocal government officials in China usually have a short tenure and Chinese firms witness significantly severe IPO underpricing. By introducing the SEM model in studying China IPO underpricing, this study identifies the channel through which local government official turnover to political uncertainty on IPO underpricing.

The 2024 European parliament elections in Ireland

ABSTRACT On the eve of the 2024 European elections in Ireland, predictions suggested a potential seismic shift in the political landscape. Sinn Féin, the leading opposition party, was expected to make significant gains at the expense of the coalition government. However, when the dust settled, it became clear that a Sinn Féin surge did not materialise; Ireland maintained its political centre. Fine Gael held firm, losing only one seat, while Fianna Fáil doubled its seat count. The Green Party suffered the most, losing both its seats. Opposition parties fared worse than expected with Sinn Féin managing to gain only one additional seat, and Labour securing its first win since 2009. Independent candidates performed well overall, maintaining their seat count, but with their composition altered. This report offers a detailed review of the election, highlighting key issues and results, and examining the electoral context, main candidates, campaign trail, and opinion polls. Domestic issues dominated the discussions, with European matters barely mentioned. Immigration, housing, and agriculture took precedence, while climate change, and the wars in Ukraine and Middle East were largely overlooked. This reinforces the argument that European elections often resemble as second-order elections, albeit with some differences.

The obscure object of desire: The role of political reflections, strategic calculations and informal networks in the development of national social dialogue across time in Spain over five decades

This article provides an in-depth analysis of the dynamics of social dialogue in Spain and highlights that to understand the relations between organised labour and the state a greater degree of historical sensibility in the way risks and calculations are developed in terms of exchanges and expectations is required. It goes beyond traditional institutionalist analysis to further understand how social dialogue at the state level occurs across different and complex trade-offs within political networks, even in weaker state contexts such as that of Spain. The article uses interviews with union leaders from the main Spanish unions involved in different historical moments to understand a range of uneven or opaque activities, the features of which can only be understood by expanding what we mean by the notion of political exchange, as well as the deliberate or conscious calculations and longer-term risks of such exchanges during different points in time.

Toward effective protection of victims of human trafficking in mixed migration flows: referral mechanisms shaped on individual need. The Italian experience and the European perspective

An overview of emerging trends on trafficking of human beings in Italy shows not only an extremely heterogeneous phenomenon but also a complex overlapping of experiences and need of protection of every single victim. In the context of mixed migration flows, persons reaching Italy through the Central Mediterranean and the Balkan routes have often experienced or are at risk of trafficking, and they also apply for international protection upon arrival. Legal categories such as “victims,” “asylum seekers,” and “refugees” are increasingly interconnected and not exhaustive in describing individual experiences and multifaceted vulnerabilities. Against this background, ensuring early identification and assistance for victims of trafficking among asylum seekers is extremely relevant. In Italy, this has led to the development of good practices aimed at implementing the coordination between the asylum and the anti-trafficking systems. In particular, specific Guidelines for Asylum authorities have been adopted to preliminarily identify potential victims of trafficking within the asylum procedure and enable their effective access to protection measures. To comply with specific provisions of the European Trafficking Directive and its transposition into the Italian legal framework, the Guidelines have created a referral mechanism among the asylum authorities and the anti-trafficking system that is unique in the European context. For this reason, the present contribution aims at describing this good practice, its implementation and effects—also at the juridical level—and its limits. Indeed, after the adoption of the instrument, a higher recognition rate of international protection for victims of trafficking has been registered in Italy, both at the administrative and judicial levels; asylum seekers and refugees have also increased their access to the specific protection program for trafficking survivors. In general, the system has strengthened its capacity to fulfill the legal obligation of identifying victims through a multi-agency approach. On the other hand, the ability to conduct screening and preliminary identification of victims of trafficking among asylum seekers is still limited to the “victim model” in terms of gender (women) and form of exploitation (sexual), and to certain stages of the asylum procedure (the first instance before the asylum authorities). With reference to this latter, a comprehensive protection response at the borders is missing despite the political debate on sea and land arrivals to Italy and the recent introduction of border procedures for the assessment of asylum applications. Given the geographical and political centrality of the south-Mediterranean situation in the current migration agenda, the goal of this paper is to analyze the Italian experience on referral mechanisms among trafficking and asylum as an experience that would help to shape future European prospects. The ongoing evolution of mixed migration flows—with particular reference to secondary movement across European countries—and the revised European Directive on trafficking in persons impose the promotion of a reflection on referral mechanisms with a transnational perspective enabling effective protection and the meeting of specific human rights.

ХЭЛФОРД МАККИНДЕРИ ГЕОГРАФИЧЕСКОЕ ОФОРМЛЕНИЕ ПОЛИТИКИ В НАЧАЛЕ ХХ В.

The article attempts to analyze the process of intellectual design of geopolitical thought, which in the early twentieth century, when on the eve of the Great War an attempt was made to form a geographical certainty of foreign policy strategy. The study is based on the understanding of the geographical axis of history, carried out by the British geographer H. Mackinder, who was one of the founders of British geopolitics. His approach involved identifying key geographical regions of the world that influenced the vectors of European politics in the late 19th – early 20th centuries. At this stage, H. Mackinder's understanding of the definition of the Heartland as the center of world politics of European states is studied. The geographical approach of the British thinker to identifying patterns of political development of foreign policy fit into the desire to formulate laws of foreign policy, which were undertaken in the early twentieth century and subsequently formed the basis of geopolitical science. In the practical sphere, within the framework of the development of a post-war model of world development in 1919 during the Paris Peace Conference, the Heartland concept was expressed in the Versailles Peace Treaty concluded in 1919 in the form of the creation of a buffer zone between Germany and Soviet Russia.

Fiscal legibility and state development: Theory and evidence from colonial Mexico

AbstractWe examine how fiscal legibility, the ability of central authorities to observe local conditions for the purposes of taxation, shapes political centralization and state development. When rulers lack information about the periphery, they may benefit from ceding autonomy to tax‐collecting intermediaries to encourage fiscal performance. As information quality improves, rulers become better able to monitor and sanction local officials, allowing them to tighten control over taxation and establish more direct state presence. Centralization, in turn, encourages investment in improving fiscal legibility, leading to long‐term divergence in state development. We study the consequences of a technological innovation that dramatically improved the Spanish Crown's fiscal legibility in colonial Mexico: the discovery of the patio process to refine silver. We show that political centralization differentially accelerated in affected districts and that these areas subsequently saw disproportionate state investment in informational capacity, altering the trajectory of state development.

Exploring the Polarization of American Elites Based on the Analyses of Candidates’ Statements During the 2020 Presidential Election

ABSTRACT The article consists of three parts. The first contains a theoretical analysis of the phenomenon of US political polarization and discusses the main approaches to its explanation, primarily through the prism of the influence of political elites. The authors note a logical contradiction in the existing concepts, which postulate the existence of an “asymmetry” in the influence of elites on polarization in the United States, arguing that the contribution of the Republicans is more destructive than the contribution of representatives of the Democratic Party. The authors find the growth of political polarization, regardless of party preferences (while noting the importance of elite behavior as one of the central factors of political polarization). The second part examines the phenomenon of affective (or emotional polarization), based on the socio-psychological rejection of representatives of an alien political camp. Based on the results of a network analysis of a two-modal network consisting of pre-election messages and topics selected by the authors themselves, the author notes that all candidates, without exception, are prone to emotional affect as part of their election campaign. The third part is devoted to the study of positional (or ideological) polarization, in which the author, on the basis of Latent Dirichlet Allocation analysis, divides the corpus of campaign messages of candidates into separate topics and, through a comparative analysis, finds a significant distance from “bipartisan” topics (i.e. from the political center) among all candidates.

DARI PENGUNGSIAN KE KEJAYAAN: DISKURSUS DINASTI UMAYYAH II DAN DAMPAK TRANSFORMASINYA DI ANDALUSIA PADA ABAD PERTENGAHAN

This article examines the journey of the Umayyad Dynasty II from exile in the Middle East to achieving glory in Andalusia, as well as the transformational impact they had on the region. The Umayyad II dynasty, led by Abd al-Rahman I, succeeded in turning Andalusia into an advanced center of political, economic and cultural power in medieval Europe. Through theoretical and historical analysis, this article explores the factors that supported the progress of Andalusia under the leadership of Umayyah II, using historical methods consisting of heuristics, criticism, interpretation and historiography. The results of this study can be seen, including visionary leadership, religious tolerance, cross-cultural cooperation, infrastructure development, scientific development, and investment in arts and education. The Umayyad II Dynasty's contribution to Andalusia included political, social and cultural transformation. They succeeded in creating an inclusive environment where Muslims, Christians and Jews could live side by side peacefully, and enriched the intellectual and cultural life of the region. This discourse also provides theoretical insight into political adaptation, social inclusiveness, and cultural investment in creating significant changes in the history of discourse of the Umayyad Dynasty II in Andalusia.

Mitigating the Political Cost of Financial Crisis with Blame Avoidance Discourse: The Case of Turkey

How do centralized governments mitigate the political cost of severe financial crises? The economic voting scholarship has established that the clarity of responsibility, i.e., government accountability for economic conditions to the mass public, is a necessity for electoral reward or punishment for economic performance. On the one hand, political centralization, which reduces the number of veto players, may increase the visibility of the role of the executive in policy success or failure. On the other hand, it allows an uncontested blame avoidance discourse, especially when accompanied with democratic backsliding. Furthermore, the recent backlash against globalization has enabled blame shifting to international actors in many countries. Against this theoretical framework, we comparatively analyze the responsibility attribution discourses for the 1994, 2001, and 2018-2022 financial crises in the statements of incumbent presidents, ministers, and parliament members of Turkey. We find that while blame avoidance discursive strategies have been attempted in all three cases, the responsibility attribution for the 1994 and 2001 crises mostly targeted the executive. In contrast, for the ongoing crisis, the responsibility discourse is dominated with blaming international political economy factors, creating ambiguity, and targeting domestic non-governmental actors.

Spatiotemporal heterogeneity of the association between socioeconomic development and health policy attention: a geographically and temporally weighted regression modeling study in China.

Health policy attention (HPA) refers to the extent of attention given by governments to health issues in public policy and is generally influenced by socioeconomic development. This study aimed to examine the spatiotemporal heterogeneity and clustering of the associations between socioeconomic factors and HPA. Longitudinal study. This study examined the spatiotemporal heterogeneity of the association between public and provincial government attention, economic development, and demographic transition and HPA by using geographically and temporally weighted regression (GTWR). Word2Vec machine learning technology was utilized to calculate HPA data in 323 cities and independent variable data was collected in each city in China over the period of 2018-2021. The results showed that there is a substantial overall rise in HPA levels throughout China following the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, the GTWR results revealed significant spatiotemporal heterogeneity in the associations between HPA and public and provincial government attention, economic development, and demographic transition, particularly in the context of COVID-19. The impact of provincial government attention on HPA decreased from the capital of the political center outward, while the impact of public financial investment decreased in less developed cities during the pandemic. It was only cities with high levels of aging are more likely to receive greater HPA. The finding highlighted the remarkable spatial and temporal variations in the associations between the variables and HPA across different regions in China, emphasizing the need for region-specific policies to strengthen the focus on health by municipal governments.

How State Takeovers of School Districts Affect Education Finance, 1990 to 2019

Abstract State takeovers of school districts—a form of political centralization that shifts decision-making power from locally elected leaders to the state—have increased over time, often with the purported goal of improving district financial condition. Takeover has affected millions of students since the first takeover in 1988 and has been more common in districts serving marginalized communities. We investigate whether 104 takeovers from 1990 to 2019 affect financial outcomes using event study methods. We find that takeovers increase annual school spending by roughly $2,000 per pupil after five years, leading to improvements in some aspects of financial condition (budgetary and long-run solvency), on average. New funds primarily come from state revenues and mostly cover districts' legacy costs (debt and employee benefits). These effects are larger when takeovers are motivated by academic and/or other, non-fiscal reasons. However, takeovers are experienced unequally, with Black students less likely to experience the takeover-induced increases to expenditures and improvements in fiscal condition. This suggests political centralization can promote fiscal health but with potentially concerning equity implications.

A Comparative Study of the Divorce Systems of the Tang Dynasty and Japan at the same Era

The system of divorce, which is a very important part of the marriage system, also formed a complete system and developed to its peak in the feudal era of the Tang Dynasty. In the process of economic, cultural and political exchanges between the Tang Dynasty and other countries, the divorce system of the late Asuka Period, the Nara Period and the early Heian Period in Japan, which corresponded to the Tang Dynasty, had a certain influence. This paper mainly combines the historical material "Tang Laws and Regulations" and Japanese "Pension Laws", "Household Marriage Laws" and other laws to carry out theoretical research, literature research method, and comparative research method. In the process of transplantation of Chinese law, it also reflects the different social ideologies of two different countries for the divorce system, and it produces a certain difference for the maintenance of harmonious family relations, social stability, and the sense of well-being of the divorce system to different.

The Importance and Limitation of Epistemic Norms in Political Theory

One recent debate in political theory centers on the question of whether there is a distinctively political normativity. According to an influential view, there is a distinctive set of norms that applies specifically to political actions and decisions, which are not grounded in moral normativity. On one version of this non-moral view, political theory is grounded in epistemic normativity (and thus epistemic norms). Theorists identifying as “radical realists” insist that political theorists do not need any moral normativity (and thus moral norms), because epistemic normativity may provide action-guidance for political theory. In this article, we take our point of departure in a critical analysis of this epistemic version of the non-moral view, with the overall aim of analyzing the importance and limitation of epistemic norms in political theory. We argue that epistemic norms are necessary—since a political theory should not rely on empirical falsities—but not sufficient for a successful account in the political domain. Two claims are made: moral norms are essential in the process of political theorizing, both in the form of pre-epistemic norms and in the form of post-epistemic norms. More specifically, we contend, first, that we need moral norms to identify and justify which practices to study when conducting political theorizing, and second, that we need moral norms to tell us how to act in light of our investigation of warranted and unwarranted beliefs.

Contentious public finance: how entanglement shapes the costs of resisting elitist budgetary preferences

Entangled political economy views societal phenomena as featuring substantial interaction between economic and political entities, but questions have been raised about the conceptual properties of entanglement. The political economist Randall Holcombe has raised questions concerning the economic influences affecting uneven patterns of entanglement between entities. Drawing upon his own transaction costs-based framework of political stratification, Holcombe suggests that political elites incur relatively low transaction costs associated with bargaining over policies, whereas non-elites incur relatively high costs. This suggests that elites actively participate in policy design and implementation and can outmaneuver the non-elite public to externalize the costs of political decisions, yielding noticeable clustering effects within entangled network structures. This article seeks to build upon Holcombe’s insights, as well as the transaction cost politics of Charlotte Twight, illustrating how groups engaging in political processes attempt to manipulate transaction costs to secure favorable outcomes. Transaction cost manipulation by elites to secure advantages is commonly studied, but less so is how non-elitists succeed in adjusting the transaction costs of political exchanges to help prevent fiscal exploitation by elitists. The public finance case of Colorado’s Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights is used to illustrate how dynamic entanglements between elites and non-elites delivered institutional change better aligning with non-elite fiscal preferences.

Urban land subsidence monitoring and risk assessment using the point target based SBAS-InSAR method: a case study of Changsha City

ABSTRACT Changsha City is the political, economic and cultural centre of Hunan Province. In recent years, because of large-scale urban construction and special geological structure, land subsidence has become one of the main geological disasters in Changsha City, which seriously threatens the health of buildings and infrastructure. To solve this problem, this paper monitored the land subsidence in Changsha City from 2015 to 2021 using the Point Target (PT) based Small Baseline Subset InSAR (SBAS-InSAR), revealed the spatial distribution characteristics of land subsidence in the study area, studied the causes of subsidence, and carried out geological disaster risk assessment. The results show that the overall stability of Changsha City is dominated by uneven subsidence. The subsidence areas are mainly distributed in the north of Kaifu District, Moon Island, Malan Mountain Chuangzhi Park and the periphery of the main urban area. The maximum settlement rate is about 87 mm/year, and the cumulative settlement reaches 250 mm. The settlement monitoring results are basically consistent with the actual situation at the same time, which is mainly caused by engineering construction.

Chapter 4. Locating field systems in the southern Peruvian Andes

AbstractIn this paper, we review current understandings of anthropogenic field systems, focusing on trends and variations in the chronology of field construction, use, and in some cases, abandonment, as well as labor organization of agrarian production across the Lake Titicaca Basin. These trends indicate that agricultural intensification increased both during the political centralization of the Tiwanaku state and during periods of political fragmentation. In contrast to prior work on fields in the region, we argue that there was no single cultural, environmental, or historical impetus that ignited the construction of any particular field type. Additionally, we present the results of pedestrian survey of terraces carried out in 2018 in the northern Lake Titicaca Basin. While there were regional commonalities across survey areas in the masonry design of terrace risers, presence of pathways and radiating walls separating vertical tracts of terraces, and a general absence of irrigation, we found deviations from each of these trends in individual terrace complexes. While preliminary evidence indicates that more terraces were built or cultivated during the Late Intermediate period (1100–1450 CE) than in other time periods in the northern Titicaca basin, some terraces were likely built earlier. Our findings point to the multiplicity of strategies that ancient farmers employed in the varied ecological settings of the Lake Titicaca basin under diverse sociopolitical programs. This contrasts with previous research on agrarian field systems, which is mostly single‐sited and tends to emphasize individual strategies over the quiver of agrarian options available to Andean farmers.

Spatial Pathology of Earthquake Management in Salas Babajani County, Kermanshah, Iran

Background and objective Human settlements are formed and developed in a specific natural environment. Social, political, cultural, and economic systems that govern the societies can affect residential spaces. Therefore, the special natural and human habitats cause the formation of special spaces, which require their own management system. After the earthquake on November 12, 2017, in Salas Babajani County, Kermanshah, Iran, whose epicenter was Ezgeleh district, the presence of natural areas in the county caused the crisis management in this region to face special problems. In addition, the sectoral and centralized management structure governing the country and thus the Salas Babajani County added to the complexity of these problems and caused the residents of this region to suffer a deep crisis. The aim of the current study is a spatial pathology of earthquake management in urban and rural settlements of Salas Babajani County. Method This is a descriptive-analytical study. Data were collected using the documentary method and a researcher-made questionnaire. Participants were the residents of Salas Babajani County. Results The findings showed that the earthquake management in the County has a high compliance with the centralized and sectoral management model. In addition, it was found that the crisis management in the four stages (prevention, preparedness, response, and recovery) was in an unfavorable situation. the highest weakness was in the prevention stage and the lowest weakness was related to the preparedness stage. Conclusion Overall, the results showed that crisis management has worsened by moving away from the center towards the outskirts, especially towards the southwestern borders. In other words, by moving away from the political center of the County (Tazeh Abad district), the crisis management became very unfavorable. Also, it was found that the crisis management was greatly influenced by the spatial factors of elevation, land slope, transportation network, distribution of human settlements, and population density.

The City as an Object of Legal Science: Problems and Prospects of Legal Regulation

One of the modern trends in the development of society and the State is total urbanization, which is embodied in the withering away of the rural way of life and the concentration of population and capital in megacities and surrounding agglomerations. The paper examines the historical patterns of urbanization, investigates the place of the city in the system of humanitarian knowledge, and explains the emergence of a new interdisciplinary field of urban research, namely, legal urbanology, the subject of which is the legal space of a modern city. Historically, cities have been centers of politics, trade, and education, and the spread of urban life has become one of the integral features of the capitalist mode of production that is the dominant economic system of production and distribution at the present stage. Nevertheless, the legal regulation of urban relations is associated with a number of problems that require resolution both at the theoretical level and at the legislative level. In this regard, the paper analyzes current Russian legislation, as well as subordinate and departmental rulemaking for compliance with the requirements of the time and evaluation of the effectiveness of regulating the foundations of the legal space of the city. To resolve the identified problems, it is proposed to adopt a systematic program act, the preparation of which can take into account the experience of foreign regulation of the sphere of urban relations.