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This collection is the most comprehensive account of the Fundamental Law and its underlying principles. The objective is to analyze this constitutional transition from the perspectives of comparative constitutional law, legal theory and political philosophy. The authors outline and analyze how the current constitutional changes are altering the basic structure of the Hungarian State. The key concepts of the theoretical inquiry are sociological and normative legitimacy, majoritarian and partnership approach to democracy, procedural and substantive elements of constitutionalism. Changes are also examined in the field of human rights, focusing on the principles of equality, dignity, and civil liberties.

This article analyses the divergent affective discourse strategies employed by Donald Trump and Kamala Harris during their 2024 US presidential campaign speeches. It explores how both candidates mobilise similar emotions – anger, fear/anxiety, pride, love, courage/fearlessness, confidence/determination and hope – but with different consistencies, targeting distinct threats and protectors of US political culture. The study draws on the theoretical framework of the sociology of emotions, employing the emotion narrative heuristic. This approach integrates critical discourse analysis and discourse analysis of emotions. The study focuses on the relationship between social objects to which emotions are discursively attached and analyses the emotional dynamics they generate. The findings indicate that Trump positions himself as a heroic saviour, one who is protecting the nation from threats such as migration and weak leadership. This narrative fosters anger and fear among the nation’s citizens towards outsiders, while instilling them with pride and hope in his leadership. In contrast, Harris focuses on justice, opportunity and collective progress. She portrays Trump as a threat to democracy, thereby evoking anger and galvanising support for democratic values. Both candidates employ the core grammar of US political culture, namely success/prosperity, US primacy and security/safety. However, a critical distinction emerges in their depiction of threats and heroes, and the influence on their understanding of institutions and procedures within liberal democracy. Trump’s myopic populist approach personalises leadership, while Harris’s universalist stance prioritises institutionalism. This study underscores the role of emotion narratives in shaping political culture, revealing how they influence voter mobilisation and the broader democratic process.

What is the legal source of legitimacy in political authority? This pressing question made a striking appearance on the South Korean scene when, since its inception in 1948, a popular backlash against a liberal democracy perceived as foreign and unjuridical erupted in the forms of terror, insurgency, mutiny, and putsch. Park Chung Hee's successful assumption of power through his 1961 coup d’état provided an implicit response, recasting the Korean concepts of legality and legitimacy. Han T'ae Yŏn was a key figure in this national dispute. Armed with Carl Schmitt's canon, Han gave a decisive verdict on how Korean liberal democracy had been eclipsed under the two spuriously liberal governments of Syngman Rhee and Chang Myŏn. His legal apology for Park's authoritarian constitutional regime echoed Schmitt's defense of the Führer by invoking the president as an incarnation of the will of the people as a whole. This article intends to revisit Schmitt's accusation of judicial positivism for its failure to deliver a genuine voice of the people in the case of a non-Western society.

This article tentatively examines the rise and impact of populism, illiberalism, and authoritarianism as alternatives to liberal democracy in Central and Eastern Europe, using data from the 10th European Social Survey. It focuses on the complex relationship between ideologies and political regimes, where citizens’ attitudes act as mediating factors. The task of categorizing anti‐liberal and non‐democratic regimes is ontologically distinct from analyzing and understanding the essence of anti‐liberal or non‐democratic ideas. Nevertheless, a comprehensive understanding of either aspect requires an appreciation of both. Former studies show no strict determinism between regime type and public ideology, though some alignment is usually present. Our findings reveal that populist and illiberal views often reduce political legitimacy, whereas authoritarian attitudes can enhance it. These findings indicate a complex interrelationship between public attitudes, political ideologies, and regimes with political legitimacy, particularly in contexts marked by democratic regression and ascendant authoritarian inclinations. This nuanced interplay suggests divergent paths in democratic evolution across Central and Eastern European regions, with some countries moving toward stable illiberal regimes, while others face contested political climates.

The Trump administration’s second term policies have created a surge in criticism from the liberal establishment claiming that the US democratic system is under attack. However, Trump, claiming a popular mandate from American voters, is using his executive power against what he calls the unelected and undemocratic deep state government bureaucracy. Nevertheless, public trust in all branches of the US government is at an all-time low. It seems that while American voters want their government to be run like a business, they are not pleased with business-as-usual. The central question I address in this paper is whether the current democratic crisis is something new, or whether the US liberal democracy has always been in crisis. While the American establishment and most of the public do not question the political system’s democratic credentials, there have always been critical voices arguing that the US liberal democracy has never reached its lofty ideals. I examine those critiques in this paper looking beyond the myths of US democracy to how it is practiced. By focusing on historical critiques and detailing the overwhelming influence of economic elites in US domestic and foreign policies, I hope to show that the US system is in fact a tyranny of the minority. I argue that the US liberal democracy has always been in crisis, if it ever existed in the first place.

Thirty years on, Fukuyama’s claim regarding the end of history serves mostly as an object of derision, not inspiration. However, contained within Fukuyama’s assertions are observations that provide valuable insight into the condition of contemporary liberal democracy worldwide. In this essay I highlight core features of liberal democracy celebrated by Fukuyama that have been marginalized owing to the imperatives of neoliberal globalization. I explore three features of Fukuyama’s “End of History” argument that can help explain the rise of populism and nationalism within liberal democratic systems. With the proliferation of materialist incentives throughout the liberal democratic world, Fukuyama’s largely unheralded observations concerning materialism, consciousness, and what I call deliberative norms, are ripe for interrogation. Usually not prominent in discussions of Fukuyama’s 1989 article are key principles of liberal democracy, central norms which I consider “orphans at the end of history.” I locate dissatisfaction with neoliberal globalization in the penetration of materialist incentives into the construction of identity, the process of higher education, and the role of societal elites. I address the degree to which the promotion of liberal deliberative norms in the debate over ideas and culture was replaced by a materialist ethos that alienates and divides, to such an extent that despite Fukuyama’s optimism, history has returned.

These are not happy times for liberal internationalists. No one can be sure how deep the crisis of liberal internationalism runs. However, in what follows, I argue that despite its troubles, liberal internationalism still has a future. The nature of the crisis is surprising. The threats to liberal internationalism were expected to come from rising non-western states seeking to undermine or overturn the postwar order. In the face of hostile, revisionist states, the United States and Europe were expected to stand shoulder to shoulder to protect the gains from 70 years of cooperation. But, in fact, liberal internationalism is more deeply threatened by developments within the West itself. The centrist and progressive coalitions that lay behind the postwar liberal order have weakened. Liberal democracy itself appears fragile and polarized, vulnerable to far right populism and backlash politics. In recent decades, the working and middle classes in advanced industrial democracies—the original constituencies and beneficiaries of an open and cooperative international order—have faced rising economic inequality and stagnation. Within the West, liberal internationalism is increasingly seen, not as a source of stability and solidarity among like-minded states, but as a global playing field for the wealthy and influential. Liberal internationalism has lost its connection to the pursuit of social and economic advancement within western countries.

This article analyses compliance of the post-Soviet Baltic States with the EU liberal-democratic standards, at both institutional and value levels. The authors prove that fulfilment of the Copenhagen criteria for EU accession did not determine an enhancement of the quality of democracy in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. This study highlights that, in recent years, the Baltic States have entered a phase of stagnation of liberal-democratic transformations and that they need a more active position of the state on institutional reforms and resocialization of citizens to strengthen adherence to the political and legal values that the EU is based on. The article emphasises how the global financial crisis of 2008, the European migration crisis (2015) and the current coronavirus pandemic have all had an impact on the quality of democracy in the Baltic States. The authors focus on the incomplete process of value reforming among the Baltic population against the EU liberal-democratic standards. The article highlights that the post-totalitarian rotation of values in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania is slow and faces rejection of European liberal-democratic values to a greater or lesser extent. It underlines the preservation of the totalitarian (Soviet) vestiges of political culture, which contradict the EU paradigm of values and prevent the Baltic States from improving the quality of democracy. It is noted that, in terms of the radicalization level in defending national interests, the Baltic countries take the intermediate position between the Nordic and the V4 countries, particularly Hungary and Poland that develop illiberal democracy patterns.

Whether religious parties' inclusion in electoral competition moderates or polarizes their positions remains an enigma as deductive accounts yield contradictory results. This analysis questions the institution-and ideology-centered approaches to party change and shows that dichotomizing religious parties as moderate or extreme and moderation as a monolithic process obscures religious parties' role in democracy. When scholars view moderation as consisting of behavioral and ideological dimensions and examine it through an inductive analysis of Israel and Turkey's religious parties, several modes of moderation emerge with different democratic outcomes. While some bolster procedural democracy, others thwart the expansion of liberal democracy.

The liberal international order, erected after the Cold War, was crumbling by 2019. It was flawed from the start and thus destined to fail. The spread of liberal democracy around the globe—essential for building that order—faced strong resistance because of nationalism, which emphasizes self-determination. Some targeted states also resisted U.S. efforts to promote liberal democracy for security-related reasons. Additionally, problems arose because a liberal order calls for states to delegate substantial decisionmaking authority to international institutions and to allow refugees and immigrants to move easily across borders. Modern nation-states privilege sovereignty and national identity, however, which guarantees trouble when institutions become powerful and borders porous. Furthermore, the hyperglobalization that is integral to the liberal order creates economic problems among the lower and middle classes within the liberal democracies, fueling a backlash against that order. Finally, the liberal order accelerated China’s rise, which helped transform the system from unipolar to multipolar. A liberal international order is possible only in unipolarity. The new multipolar world will feature three realist orders: a thin international order that facilitates cooperation, and two bounded orders—one dominated by China, the other by the United States—poised for waging security competition between them.