A magyar demokrácia tipizálása: kísérlet egy új demokráciatipológiára
A Typology of the Hungarian Democracy: An Attempted New Democracy-Typology

Summary/Abstract: The paper attempts at typifying the most important features and characteristics of Hungarian democracy. It is preceded as its basis, however, by an outline of a typology assessing modern democracies in a specific aspect. This original typology, presented here for the first time, sets out decisively from the mentality, behaviour and activities of the political elite, and groups modern democracies in two major headings on the basis of the attitudes of the political elite. The paper relies, though not equally, on the two major trends of democracy studies so far done in the elaboration of the new typology. One trend is a legal and institutional as well as constitutional type of approach, which essentially studies the governmental systems. The second trend studies the internal operation of democracies and their functional effectiveness. The latter one studies comparatively those political institutions that offer a closer look into the contents of the operation of a given democracy, and indirectly refer to the strategies and motivations of the political elites. The author essentially takes the latter approach as his basis, with special reference to the works of Arendt Lijphart, but partly criticises them as well, and partly attempts to enrich the possibilities of typifying democracies. The author makes no secret of the fact that the new Central and East European democracies have been the primary motivations for elaborating a new typology, and he has elaborated the new and original typology in order to better understand the functioning of these new democracies, and particularly of Hungary.

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