[Commlist] CFP - PolSci conference

(MCS scholars also welcome)

CALL FOR PAPERS
XXVI. Annual Conference of the Hungarian Political Science Association
Democratic Transition 30


28th and 29th of May 2020, SZEGED, Hungary

The last 30 years provide an adequate perspective for political science 
to evaluate the transition of 1989-1990. With three decades’ hindsight, 
we can reconsider all that seemed obvious during the transition and 
recognize what was unforeseen in the midst of the events. Re-evaluating 
the transition is not only about 1989 and 1990, the opposition 
movements, the roundtable discussions and the first free elections, but 
also about the system that was established by these events and 
processes. If the democratic transitions can be considered the basis of 
the new Central Eastern European democracies, then do they inevitably 
lead to the present or do we need to pay more attention to what happened 
after 1990. Ten years ago, we have organized a conference in Szeged with 
the title “Crisis – Election – Democracy” based on the assumption that 
“Hungarian democracy have been facing previously unseen challenges, its 
stability is decreasing, political parties emerge out of the blue and 
achieve electoral success, while others decline and disappear. The 
balance of the bipolar party system that was previously considered 
highly stable is now being upset and new dimensions of conflicts 
appeared among the political parties. Apparently, many of our 
assumptions remain relevant in 2020 and the coordinate system we used is 
still valid. Thus, the goal of the conference is not just to evaluate 
the democratic transition and the past 30 years, but also to examine how 
politics and political science changed during this time.
The transition opened the gates for the emerging political science in 
the region. What did the democratic transition contribute to political 
science? And what did political science contribute
to the transition? Did Hungarian political science seize the 
opportunities provided to it and did it correctly assume its 
responsibilities? Where was the Hungarian political science proven right
or wrong in the past three decades? What are the characteristics of 
Hungarian political science in an international context, what are its 
strengths and weaknesses? The conference is also open to the topics of 
democratic transition in other countries of the Central Eastern European 
region, and the political and ideological challenges of Euro-Atlantic 
integration.

*Language of the conference:* English and Hungarian
*Venue:* Szent-Györgyi Albert Agóra, Szeged, Kálvária sgt. 23.

*Organizer:*
University of Szeged
Faculty of Law and Political Sciences
Department of Political Science
Please direct any questions you may have to the organizers, available at
(mpttvandor2020 /at/ gmail.com) <mailto:(mpttvandor2020 /at/ gmail.com)>
For further information, visit our Hungarian or English language website:
http://www.juris.u-szeged.hu/english/conferences/political-science-conference-xxvi
http://www.juris.u-szeged.hu/kutatas-tudomany/kari-szervezesu/mptt-vandorgyules-xxvi

*Application deadline:*
Presenters can apply directly at the panel chairs no later than the 20th 
of March 2020 with an abstract of 250 words maximum. The final decision 
on the selection of abstracts will be made by
the panel chairs. Panels with more than 5 abstracts will be divided into 
two.
It is also possible to apply with a complete panel of 4 or 5 abstracts 
until the 20th of March 2020 at (mpttvandor2020 /at/ gmail.com) 
<mailto:(mpttvandor2020 /at/ gmail.com)>


Panels:
1. The impact of leadership and plebiscitary techniques on governments
Chair: Attila Gyulai
Affiliation: Centre for Social Sciences
Email: (gyulai.attila /at/ tk.mta.hu) <mailto:(gyulai.attila /at/ tk.mta.hu)>
Personalization, political leadership, and plebiscitary techniques have 
been on the top of the
agenda of political scientists for decades. Additionally, their role has 
become more and more
apparent as political leadership seems not only to supplement the 
functioning of the established
patterns of governments but contribute also to the restructuring of 
polities. Furthermore, this
trend of strengthening political leadership occurs differently across 
various political systems.
The panel aims at discussing how governments and political systems 
throughout Europe have
changed due to the activity of political leaders. Specifically, the 
panel focuses on leadership
and plebiscitary techniques that had a structural and lasting impact 
both on the institutional
setting and the ways of governing. The panel welcomes submissions that 
address the impact of
leadership and plebiscitary techniques on the political systems either 
from a theoretical or an
empirical point of view.
2. Decline of democracy in East-Central Europe
Chair: Attila Ágh
Affiliation: Corvinus University, Budapest
Email: (attila.agh /at/ chello.hu) <mailto:(attila.agh /at/ chello.hu)>
The panel deals with the main issues, first, the development of the 
East-Central European
countries in the European Union, and second, with the democracy debates 
in the last years in
the region. These two issues have closely been interwoven, still they 
need a separate treatment
as the international and domestic dimension that have a common framework 
in the emergence
of the New World Order and the reverse wave in the global democratization.
The focus of the first part of panel is on the current institutional 
change in the EU between the
Juncker and Leyen Commissions with regards to the Conference on the 
Future of Europe
starting on 9 May 2020. It offers an opportunity of the overcoming the 
Core-Periphery Divide
in the twin process of Europeanization and Democratization.
The focus is in the second part of the panel is on the backsliding of 
democracy and the recent
wave of the authoritarian system in ECE that has led to the eruption of 
debates around the
character of the new political system. The recent studies have usually 
distinguished between
democracies, hybrid systems and autocracies, this panel will discuss the 
characters of these
political systems and their recently changing borderlines in ECE.
(See e.g. :EC, European Commission (2020) Shaping the Conference on the 
Future of Europe,
22 January 2020, 
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_20_89,
IDEA (2020) The Global State of Democracy 2019,
https://www.idea.int/publications/catalogue/global-state-of-democracy-2019)

3. East Central Europe in the European Union
Chair: Krisztina Arató
Affiliation: Eötvös Lóránd University
Email: (krisarato /at/ ajk.elte.hu) <mailto:(krisarato /at/ ajk.elte.hu)>
The European Union has been the Framework for co-operation for East 
Central European
countries for the last 15 years. The panel explores how the European 
Union and the region
developed in this period. Papers on the institutionalization of EU 
membership, EU policies in
our region, developments in Europeanization and Eurocsepticism are 
expected as well as
studies on the nature and environment of the enlarged European Union.

4. Elections, electoral systems
Chair: Levente Nagy
Affiliation: University of Debrecen
Email: (nagy.levente /at/ arts.unideb.hu) <mailto:(nagy.levente /at/ arts.unideb.hu)>.
Modern (representative) democracy is in fact party democracy in which 
parties compete with
one another for parliamentary seats. Elections and electoral systems 
exist to structure this
competition by selecting the major political decision makers through 
free elections among
candidates. The operation and the political consequences of elections 
(as well as the linkage
between parties and elections) are in the focus of academic research on 
electoral studies, and
among the key components of any democratic system. The aim of this 
section is to provide a
platform for discussion for scholars, researchers, students and anyone 
in the domain of interest.
The organizers of the conference under the theme of Crisis, Elections 
and Democracy would
like to invite you to submit an abstract (250 – 300 words) on 
„Elections, electoral systems”
presenting the results of your current research.

5. Elections and Voting Behavior
Chair: Gábor Tóka
Affiliation: Central European University
Email: (tokag /at/ ceu.edu) <mailto:(tokag /at/ ceu.edu)>
This panel will accommodate the presentation of four-five English 
language papers addressing
the “Crisis – Choice – Democracy 2.0” theme as it arises in elections 
and the study of voting
behavior. Our time is rich in dramatic elections attracting a great deal 
of international attention
and a sense of crisis is palpable throughout the democratic world. 
Backwaters are no exception:
by the end of 2020, Hungary and all her seven neighbors will have seen 
national elections with
unusual drama within the last two years. However, we are not even close 
to a consensus on
what if anything is in crisis: is it just some party types or ideologies 
that are going out of use?
New lines of conflict are upsetting pre-existing equilibria? Massive 
shifts in trade, wealth and
social structures are making their presence felt via undermining the 
political status quo? The
nature of party-voter linkages is changing in ways that are hard to 
reconcile with the past
century’s understanding of representative democracy? A system of 
political communication is
crumbling to give way to a post-truth world? Democracy itself is in 
crisis? The panel invites
empirically informed papers that look at voting behavior and the 
organization of campaigns and
elections to explore such questions explicitly or indirectly with data 
from Hungary, the
surrounding region, or the rest of the world.

6. Political communication in hybrid media system
Chair: Jelena Kleut
Affiliation: University of Novi Sad
Email: (jelena.kleut /at/ gmail.com) <mailto:(jelena.kleut /at/ gmail.com)>
The panel invites theoretically and empirically informed papers on the 
complexity,
interdependance and transition emering from the various blends of older 
and newer media
logics in political communication. Using Chadwick's (2017) concept of 
hybrid media system
as the initial thinking tool, not as the exclusive framework, the panel 
seeks to examine variety
of genres, technologies, practices and actors. Which communication 
strategies emerge in these
combinations? Which logics are they guided by? Who, or even what - 
knowing the presence of
social bots, is shaping the content and distribution of political 
messages. What are the short and
long term consequences of hybridity. Although in general open to 
different avenues of political
communication, slight advantage will be given to papers focusing on 
elections, protests and
different types of contentious action.

7. Political Thinking in Hungary: Thirty Years
Chair: Zoltan Balazs
Affiliation: Corvinus University, Budapest
Emial: (zoltan.balazs /at/ uni-corvinus.hu) <mailto:(zoltan.balazs /at/ uni-corvinus.hu)>
This panel aims at taking stock with the post-regime change decades in 
terms of the history of
political ideas, ideologies, and debates. The history of Hungarian 
political thinking has been
unevenly researched. 19. century liberalism and conservatism, Völkisch, 
radical conservative
interwar thinking, and various leftist ideologies have been more or less 
thoroughly explored,
and important methodological issues been discussed, including 
contextualism, discourse
analysis, author-centrism. However, there is practically no systematic 
overview available on
the past thirty years, despite the unprecedented freedom for the 
exchange of ideas, discussions
and debates.
Hence, by organizing this panel, we invite scholars to begin with this 
work. How has post-1990
liberalism/conservatism/Völkish thinking evolved? To what extent have 
international
tendencies influenced Hungarian political thinking (the impact of 
communitarianism,
republicanism, Third Way ideologies, ecologism, feminism, altright 
movement and so on)?
Have such conceptions and theories been successfully related to 
Hungarian political traditions?
The panel is open to papers on methodology (how to write the most recent 
history of ideas),
case studies (e.g. a certain ideology, a particular author, an 
interesting debate in the focus), and
various other issues (what is political thinking in the first place, are 
there still 'ideologies' or
broad political traditions, etc.).

8. Regime change interpretations
Chair: Andrius Švarplys
Affiliation: Vytautas Magnus University, Kaunas
Email: (andrius.svarplys /at/ vdu.lt) <mailto:(andrius.svarplys /at/ vdu.lt)>
When 1989 communist empire controlled by Soviet Union collapsed, many 
hopes were raised
along with new paths of development the post-communist countries started 
to realize. One
grand idea was guiding the majority of Central Eastern European 
countries above all – the return
to Europe, which was perceived foremost as the moral and historical 
justice, as Milan Kundera

expressed in his famous essay „The Tragedy of Central Europe“ (1984). 
The political-
economical program for reforms of post-communist transition was written 
by global neoliberal

agenda, known as Washington consensus. It included privatization of 
state enterprises, trade
liberalization, to secure private property, enabling entrepreneurship. 
It was a belief that free market, a limited power of the state in 
combination with democratically working political
institutions would inevitably and naturally lead to successful 
integration into European/Western
economic-political-security system. Entering the European Union in 2004 
for majority of CEE
countries seemed to be a culmination of successful transition.
Massive scientific attempts were introduced to interpret the various 
aspects of post-communist
transformation. They reflected different historical, economic, 
political, geographical, structural
aspects of experiences from successful „shock therapy“ cases (Estonia, 
the Baltic States), or
„shock without therapy“(Poland) to no less successful incremental 
reforms cases (Slovenia,
Hungary), or political oligarchy regime formation (Russia, Azerbaijan) 
or even sultanism
(Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan). The scientific literature have enumerated 
many key-factors to
explain and evaluate these reforms in transition: the level of 
modernization within the states
before they were subjected to communist dictatorship; the type of 
political regime that evolved
in the particular state during the late communism period (Kitschelt 
1995, Kitschelt et al. 1999);
the type of economic reforms: radical shock therapy of neoliberal kind 
(Sachs 1994, Aslund
2002, 2007) or gradualist reforms with social concerns over market 
liberalization (Stiglitz
1999); the role of the political elites in the process of 
democratization (Przeworski 1991) etc.
Regime change depended on diverse conditions and decisions made by 
political elites - to
reflect those is the main goal of the panel.
Bearing in mind all the variety of different paths the post-communist 
states have chosen
providing multiple combinations of economic and political reforms that 
scientific literature
reflects, the panel focuses on the following issues:
 Theoretical interpretations on various factors, reasons and outcomes 
of political
transition in CEE countries that might explain the regime change;
 Overview of economic reforms to compare and explain the results 
different states
achieved so far;
 Evolving the post-communist political party systems: patterns and 
problems;
 The problems of democracy consolidation during three decades of 
transition;
 Studies in political culture: value change in post-communist societies 
and its political
consequences;
 Communist legacy and politics of history: remembering the past to 
construct the future.

9. Rethinking the Conditions of Local and Territorial Governance in the 
Era of State
Modernisation Reforms
Chair: Edith Somlyódyné Pfeil
Affiliation: Széchenyi István University
Email: (somlyody /at/ sze.hu) <mailto:(somlyody /at/ sze.hu)>
Since the 1990s there was a shift away from “classical” territory-based 
hierarchical structure
(government) and towards more fluid, de-territorialised, network-based, 
multi-actor structures
(governance) (Rhodes 1996; Pierre, 2000; Osborn 2010) in all over the 
World. Additionally, as
impact of the global financial crisis territorial and structural reforms 
have been on the Agenda
in the recent past. The objectives of the reforms are mainly improving 
efficiency, enhancing
transparency and accountability, reducing problems associated with the 
local and self-national
governments as well (Callanan et al. 2014). With similar aims in some 
European countries
recentralisation and the negligence of local and subnational 
self-governments can be seen. All
these reforms have firmly affected the self-governmental sector in 
scale, autonomy and financial position, which manifests itself in 
re-municipalisation and in the appearance of state-
centred approach. Notwithstanding the last feature is considered 
progressive and society oriented, which favour the participative 
democracy (Post-NPM). Considering the mentioned different trends, the 
key question of the Panel is how local and sub-national levels could be 
governed effectively and democratically concerning public policy making 
process and strategical development decisions in our days. On this basis 
the Panel seeks to understand what conditions might encourage the 
emergence of cooperation horizontally and coordination
vertically in different institutional and legal framework. It attempts 
to identify factors which
contribute or hinder voluntary collaboration. Presentations are likewise 
welcomed in the field
of best practices in local and territorial governance in different 
public policy fields; functional
space construction (de-territorialisation) via cooperation, theory of 
multi-level governance; new
technics and coordination mechanisms working among central, sub-national 
and local
governmental tiers.

10. Social Movements and Civil Society. Risk and challenge in Europe
Chair: László Kákai
Affiliation: University of Pécs
Email: (kakai.laszlo /at/ pte.hu) <mailto:(kakai.laszlo /at/ pte.hu)>
The purpose of the panel is to better understand the role of NGOs in 
governance in Europe. We are also interested in a wide range of social 
movement activity, from traditional or creative
forms of protest to service provision and legislative work.
Our definition of NGOs is broad and involves informal organisations, 
cooperatives, non-profits,
civil society organisations, and so forth. Our focus is particularly on 
those NGOs whose mission
is strongly related to the public interest and that work in the areas of 
governance, social and
health services, public policy, citizen participation, human rights, 
and/or humanitarian aid.
The panel aims to take a closer look at these phenomena and to offer 
different empirical
perspectives (based on narrative interviews, protest surveys, protest 
event analysis etc.), not
only beyond progressive and formalized movements but also to uncover 
little explored lines of
development.
The panel will focus mainly on the specificity of social movements and 
civil societies in post-communist Europe and address, among others, the 
following questions:
 What is the role of NGOs in delivering services at the national and 
local level in CEE
countries?
 What are examples of existing cooperation between NGOs and national 
and/or local
government in the region to deliver services in various policy arenas?
 How and why does civic activism differ in CEE from that in Western Europe?
 What role do social movements play for the quality of democracy in Europe?
 How do social movements mobilize people for their aims?
 What methodological challenges do we encounter in CEE?
 Social movements in the European Union; the role is enabled by the multi-
level/polycentric structure of the EU; possible emergence of a European 
civil society;
 Civil society organisation can be effective, within limits, by seeking 
to improve the
quality of the electoral and policy process without intruding into the 
substance of
politics and policy
Our panel is open to papers related to our theme regarding the role of 
NGO’s in shaping governance and on multi-sector strategies for meeting 
the public interest. The papers include a focus on the ways NGO’s have 
sought greater transparency in the public sector, have sought to refine 
democratic processes, and have mobilised for advocacy across the 
European Union as a whole.

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