Our researchers at ECPR General Conference in Wrocław, Poland

Many of our researchers attended at ECPR General Conference held in Wrocław, Poland from 3 to 7 September
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.
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Many of our researchers attended at ECPR General Conference held in Wrocław, Poland from 3 to 7 September
The study of political phenomena has attracted scholars from different disciplines (such as comparative politics, political economy, political sociology and political communication), who approach intertwined questions from distinct perspectives. The resulting discourses, however, rarely engage with each other, while a comprehensive understanding of politics requires the joint application of diverse theoretical and methodological approaches, as well as syntheses of their results. This year’s instalment of our graduate conference, organised for the fifth time, aims to promote joint discourse and reflection by providing a forum for doctoral candidates and (post)graduate students engaged in political research
This weekend at APSA, Bryan Jones accepted the Lijphart/Przeworski/Verba award for best dataset on behalf of Comparative Agendas Project for its important contribution to comparative politics. The Hungarian CAP team was represented by its research director, Miklós Sebők
Populism has been widely studied by academia. Yet, studies haven’t ascertained how citizens react to populism, nor how populism affects them. Check out interview with European Citizen Action Service (ECAS) executive director Assya Kavrakova and find out how DEMOS's action research fills that gap and how it will try to detect populist fakenews.
UKIP employed a fusion-strategy, which merged their traditional critique of Europe with a critique of immigration, as a way of overcoming the low electoral salience of the EU
Populism is not always bad, but a populist political message can divide societies between “us” and “them”, explains Jennifer McCoy, a distinguished professor of political science at Georgia State University and a senior core fellow of the Institute for Advanced Study at Central European University. In a new episode of DEMOS interviews on YouTube, McCoy discusses the main features and negative consequences of populism for democracy, like a deep political polarization, and how society can detect and react to them.
The Institute for Political Science of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences intends to honour the best English or Hungarian presentation at Conference for Doctoral Students of Political Science organized by Institute for Political Science CUB.
Political scientist David M. Wineroither, DEMOS researcher at the Centre for Social Sciences of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, wrote an op-ed for the Austrian national daily Der Standard. In his piece, Wineroither summarizes the structural inability for collective leadership on behalf of British Tory Brexiteers—a feature to characterize both the political ascendancy of Boris Johnson and populists in the majority of countries on the continent
DEMOS interviews Levente Littvay, Professor of Political Science, Central European University (CEU) and member of the Team Populism on collaboration between academics and the Guardian, which has published a series of evidence-based articles on populism. Littvay also spoke about his research on populism, populist discourse, and the CEU Comparative Populism Project
Are all political discourses evoking the role of the people in democracies necessarily populists? Check out DEMOS Budapest-based researcher Gabriella Szabó's blog post on the topic and on populist communication techniques for more.
Latest posts
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.
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.