A MAGYAR PÁRTFEJLŐDÉS TÖRTÉNELMI PERSPEKTÍVÁBAN: ÚJ HIPOTÉZISEK
HUNGARIAN PARTY DEVELOPMENT IN A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE. NEW HYPOTHESES

Summary/Abstract: The author attempts to discuss the problem of parties and the party system in a new approach. First of all he presents how the Hungarian literature of political science has been concentrating on the recent past and present when it analyses the operation of parties, and subsequently he surveys the one hundred and fi fty years of traditions of Hungarian party politics joining that branch of international literature which studies a more distant past (of permanence and adaptation). The justifi cation of that hypothesis is in the focus of the paper according to which old traditions are present in current party politics not only superfi cially but decisively: in the institutional arrangement and in the in terre lationships of parties. The paper proves that institutional and mental de termi nants that had evolved in the more distant past had been vigorously present in the democratic competition of parties between 1994 and 2009, and actually it is they that give the specifi c hues of the development of Hungarian parties which often appear unintelligible due to the lack of such historical comparison and outlook. Finally, the author calls attention of the community of political scientists to the strengthening of the historical dimension of research into parties.

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