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
András Bíró-Nagy has published an article entitled “Orbán’s political jackpot: migration and the Hungarian electorate” in Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies.
In democratic political systems, the main actors of representative democracy are party leaders, elected parliamentarians, and cabinet members. In addition to these, there are other ways of decision-making in a democratic political system such as participatory and deliberative democracy. These involve citizens and non-governmental organizations that aim to improve the social acceptance and effectiveness of political decisions. Research on democratic innovations focuses on successful practices and methods aimed at changing democratic governance and political structures to improve them. Such innovations range from direct democracy (e.g. referendums, agenda initiatives, recall) to deliberative practices (e.g. deliberative polling, consultative mini-publics, participatory budgeting etc.) in offline and online settings.
POLTEXT’s proposal for ParlaMint’s ‘Call for New Languages’ has been successful and POLTEXT will now have the opportunity to contribute parliamentary corpora to ParlaMint’s (CLARIN) collection.
Miklós Sebők and Zoltán Kacsuk have published an article entitled ’The Multiclass Classification of Newspaper Articles with Machine Learning: The Hybrid Binary Snowball Approach’ in Political Analysis.
Publication: Miklós Sebők and Sándor Kozák have published a new article entitled ‘From State Capture to “Pariah” Status? The Preference Attainment of the Hungarian Banking Association (2006–14)’ in Business and Politics.
Attila Bartha and Violetta Zentai have just published a new article entitled "Long-Term Care and Gender Equality: Fuzzy-Set Ideal Types of Care Regimes in Europe" in Social Inclusion.
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Xénia Farkas and Márton Bene have recently published an article entitled "Images, Politicians, and Social Media: Patterns and Effects of Politicians’ Image-Based Political Communication Strategies on Social Media" in the International Journal of Press/Politics.
Gergő Medve-Bálint and his colleagues have recently published an article entitled "North and South, East and West: Is It Possible to Bridge the Gap?" in Governance and Politics in the Post-Crisis European Union edited by Coman, Ramona, Amandine Crespy, és Vivien Ann Schmidt (Cambridge University Press)
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Pál Susánszky and his colleagues have recently published an article entitled "Radical-Right Political Activism on the Web and the Challenge for European Democracy: A Perspective from Eastern and Central Europe" in Democracy and Fake News Information Manipulation and PostTruth Politics edited by Serena Giusti and Elisa Piras (Routledge).
Dániel Mikecz has recently published an article entitled "Claims-making and Morality: The Case of Hungarian Solidarity Movements" in the Czech Journal of Political Science.
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.
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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.
