Democratization and Europeanization in Hungary: The First Parliament (dedikált példány) [antikvár]

ATTILA AGH European Integration and the First Hungarian Parliament: The Europeanization Project of the Hungarian Centre for Democracy Studies The Hungarian Centre for Democracy Studies (HCDS) was established in 1990, based on the Political Science Department at the Budapest University of Economic Sciences. Its aim is to study the political preconditions and consequences of the European integration process in Hungary. The primary focus of research has been the parliamentary and party transformations of democratic transition, using an empirical and comparative approach and giving particular attention to Hungarian political developments in an East Central European (ECE) context. A relatively new development is that the research efforts of the Centre have been extended to include the comparative study of public policy and public administration. This fits well into parliamentary research because the project now covers local government and intergovernmental relations - at the same time, these aspects represent separate and very promising fields of research. The Europeanization approach has penetrated all HCDS publications and activities. The Political Yearbook of Hungary has been edited at the Centre year since 1988, and the Budapest Papers on Democratic Transitions since 1991 (at the end of 1994 this series comprised about one hundred and thirty booklets). The Centre has regularly organized conferences, hosting two annually and including ECE and Western partners; these conferences have already resulted in a book. The Emergence of East Central European Parliaments: The First Steps. The present volume is our "next step" as the summary of the First Parliament, i.e. that of the four years of the first democratically elected Hungarian pariiament (1990-94). In Hungary there has always been extended, serious parliamentary research into the forms characteristic for any given period. This "traditional" parliamentary research focused on constitutional law and other legal sciences. At the beginning of systemic change, in the late eigthies, this line of research became even more active than before but also two new foci emerged: election studies in political sociology and party (parliamentary faction) research in poUtical science proper. In the late eighties the reform plans for parliament were very important for political and scientific debate; the Transitory Pariiament between 1985 and 1990 itself played a very important - although contradictory - role in the preparation for democratic transition, and this was absolutely unique in the region. From the early nineties, parallel with the First Parliament, real parliamentary research began in a specialized way, in many fields and forms, including political and policy analyses, public opinion surveys, regular documentation and parliamentary commentaries in the press. As the