Democracy in Universities

– in the Light of the Election of the Senate

Abstract

The relationship between universities and democracy is a multidimensional issue. In addition to the democratic structure of the social system, the internal democracy of universities can develop under specific conditions. The bodies that participate in community decision-making at the university can be the custodians of internal democracy, and so the community rightly claims appropriate participation rights in the composition of their membership. This paper explores the issue of internal democracy, with particular reference to the membership of the Senate and its electoral rules. An important question of organisational autonomy is how the state approaches this, how much discretion it gives to the university’s own regulations in determining its organisational and electoral arrangements. The internal institutional documents of the dozen universities we studied regulate the composition of the senate and the material and procedural rules for the creation of elected membership in more or less detail. It is therefore worth examining the extent to which these electoral rules comply with the principles of democratic suffrage and the electoral institutions that are customary in the political system. The change in the university model in Hungary, which (also) offers private universities greater scope for organisational autonomy than public universities, makes our analysis highly relevant.