On March 15, 2025, Dr. István Stumpf was awarded the Széchenyi Prize. On behalf of the entire Institute, we extend our heartfelt congratulations to our retired Senior Research Fellow!
Mid-term strategic plan of the Institute for Political Science (summary)
Leading the way in domestic political science: the Institute for Political Science has achieved outstanding publication performance in international journals between 2019 and 2022
About our Institute
The primary objective of the Institute for Political Science of the Centre for Social Sciences (CSS) is to conduct basic research in political science. Researchers at the Institute conduct both theoretical and empirical research, and the results are disseminated to both the academic and general public at scientific and professional forums.
Latest news
Miklós Sebők and Jasper Simons’ new article entitled ’How Orbán won? Neoliberal disenchantment and the grand strategy of financial nationalism to reconstruct capitalism and regain autonomy’ has been published in Oxford University Press.
New publication by Veronika Patkós. Several scholars have suggested that political dividedness has harmful effects on economic performance. Interestingly, empirical tests tackling this argument are almost entirely absent.
Eszter Farkas's article entitled “Discussing immigration in an illiberal media environment: Hungarian political scientists about the migration crisis in online public discourses" has been published in European Political Science.
Márton Bene article entitled “Who reaps the benefits? A cross-country investigation of the absolute and relative normalization and equalization theses in the 2019 European Parliament elections" has been published in New Media & Society.
Márton Bene and Gabriella Szabó’s article entitled “Discovered and Undiscovered Fields of Digital Politics: Mapping Online Political Communication and Online News Media Literature in Hungary’ has been published in Intersections.
We are happy to present the winners of the Publication Scholarship Prize 2021: Ágnes Virág (Eszterházy Károly University) with the manuscript ‘Emotional Parliamentary Lions: Evaluative Metonymy Complexes in Editorial Cartoons” (supervisor: Márton Bene) and Szabolcs Hadászi (Corvinus University) on the topic ‘The relationship between voting and trust in Hungary’ (supervisor: Zsolt Boda).
Latest posts
The latest post of the pti memo blog series offers insights from a thought-provoking lecture by Murat Somer, Professor of Political Science and International Relations at Özyeğin University Istanbul and Research Affiliate at the Democracy Institute of the Central European University. Titled "Quo Vadis in Turkey and Implications for Democracy in the World", the lecture explored current political developments in Turkey and their broader implications on combating democratic backsliding. The event took place on May 8, 2025, as part of the HUN-REN CSS Institute for Political Science’s Speaker Series.
The third blog post of the pti memo series summarises the lecture of Dr. Matthew Edward Bergman, Assistant Professor at Corvinus University of Budapest, titled “Ideological Conflict, Logrolling, and Policy Reform: An Analysis of Government Declarations in Western Europe.” The event was organised as part of the HUN-REN Institute for Political Science’s Speaker Series on April 10, 2025. This research, conducted jointly with Hanna Bäck (Lund University) and Wolfgang C. Müller (Universität Wien), investigates why some governments commit to more reform measures in their government declarations.
The second pti memo post summarises the lecture by Bálint Magyar and Bálint Madlovics, researchers at the CEU Democracy Institute, titled “The Russia-Ukraine War and Its Structural Consequences.” The event was organised as part of the HUN-REN Institute for Political Science’s Speaker Series on February 6, 2025.
Hungary is often portrayed as a problem case for European integration due to frequent clashes between Viktor Orbán’s government and the EU’s institutions. Yet, as András Bíró-Nagy and Gergő Medve-Bálint explain in their post on the LSE EUROPP blog, the country’s 20 years in the EU have also seen a relatively high level of compliance with EU policies and strong support for membership among the public.
In the first pti memo post, we summarise Christian Baden’s (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) thought-provoking lecture titled “Propaganda as a Social Process.” The lecture was hosted by the HUN-REN Institute for Political Science as part of its Speaker Series event series on January 23, 2025.