Pro Publico Bono – Public Administration

The Background to the International Success of Portuguese Education Policy

2023-09-27T13:07:22+02:00

The temporal and content parallels of the governmental educational reforms in Portugal and Hungary from the 2010s provide important points to the further developments. Among the two countries with similar conditions, Portugal’s educational performance, starting from a lower level at the turn of the millennium, not only caught up with Hungary by the time of the 2018 PISA assessment but also surpassed the OECD average. The Portugal reforms primarily implemented between 2011
and 2015 give somewhat different examples compared
to the Hungarian processes and the international policy discourse, particularly in the area of central curriculum regulation.

Plato’s Politeia as the Pathology of Polis

2023-06-20T15:04:07+02:00

In this short essay, I try to answer the question of what the main theme of Plato’s Republic is. The dialogue is the most popular text in ancient literature. The title of the dialogue is
deceptive. Republic means city state and despite the title, it is a purely political piece of writing, the dialogue contains a small section on justice and governance, but it is mostly a work of literature, an ancient novel inspired by Plato’s frustration with the restoration of democracy in Athens. After the Peloponnesian War, the restored democratic system condemned Plato’s beloved master, Socrates to death in a conceptual process. According to my hypothesis, the Republic of Plato was a philosophical memorial to Socrates and the story was a kind of an uchronia, with the philosopher king in the main role. The Republic is a kind of enchiridion that answers the question of how the city state could rebuild itself.

Classical Theories of Sovereignty in the Light of Law

2023-06-13T12:39:48+02:00

What exactly does the concept of sovereignty cover? Who is the subject of the supreme power? How have views of supreme power changed throughout history? The above questions have been of interest to social scientists for centuries, and as a result, a number of academic theories have been published on the subject. However, in order to shed light on the cause of the contradictions inherent in these theories, it is necessary to look more closely at the central issues at stake. With this in mind, I will discuss the controversial nature of the concept of sovereignty and how its content has changed over the centuries as the state and the law have evolved. The paper will thus highlight the factors that led from the concept of sovereignty without limits to the constitutional basis of state power, and scrutinizes the legal characteristics of the aforementioned analyses of sovereignty.

The Future of Civil Servants – Terminal Debility or Rebirth?

2022-11-17T12:04:31+01:00

Civil servants are a special type of employment relationship, which used to be one of the largest public service relationships covering a wide range of staff. The underlying legislation entered into force 31 years ago. It is the only civil service legislation that has not been replaced in the midst of civil service reform. Was it deliberately left out? Was it omitted? Is it simply that there is no master of this legal relationship? Instead, what is happening is a steady
emptying out, the outsourcing of individual posts. Our fundamental research question: is this the way forward for the civil service? Will there be a transformation, or is the future the death of this legal status? And if so, what life will it be after its “death”?

The Strategies of Public Safety and Crime Prevention of the Settlements are in the Focus

2023-08-30T16:20:12+02:00

A system of values, which must be defined globally, stands behind the word „safety” nowadays, which formulates the demands of protection, the method and conditions of its assurance of the micro and macro communities of the society, the country at structured levels. However, the optimal level of safety of the public, the mentioned feeling of protection should never be defined as an instant situation, but it should be the result of deliberately planned, systematically harmonized, complementary actions. High standard of the level of public security regardless the population and the structure of settlement–taking into consideration the local specialities–is common interest. Reaching this can only be achieved by plan, thus vertically and horizontally coordinated manner, one of the most important element of it is the creation and execution of crime prevention and public security strategies at settlement level. The author in this study represents the results of a research being executed at the Southern Great Plain of Hungary with the participation of local governments and police leaders, focuses on the presence, creation and execution of local strategy.

Historical Overview of Environmental Protection in Hungary from the Austro–Hungarian Compromise to the Present Day

2023-06-13T12:53:12+02:00

When examining the various levels of public administration, the question arises as to how the tasks of today’s public administration have evolved in relation to environmental protection. The present study will show how the main historical events in our country have been accompanied by the main environmental administrative acts. How the environmental administration and its institutional system have evolved, and how and in response to what societal impacts the main environmental legislation has developed. My aim was to show how administrative tasks have been affected by political, economic and historical influences and how they have evolved. In order to keep the overview within certain limits, I will look at the development of environmental protection from the time of the Compromise to the present day, as I did in an earlier article. In view of the complexity of the subject, only the institutions with specific environmental responsibilities will be described, without claiming to be exhaustive. In the course of the research, a number of contemporary legal texts, newspaper articles, historical and archival publications have been reviewed. The present study is intended as a supplement to the article entitled A Historical Overview of the Development of Water Management in Hungary from the Restoration of the Austro-Hungarian Empire to the Present Day. The article clearly shows that there is a close connection between social, economic and political phenomena and the administrative processes of the time.

Comparative Overview of International Regulatory Attempts Regarding Artificial Intelligence – Through the Lens of Human Rights

2023-08-24T14:41:02+02:00

The race to regulate artificial intelligence on the international level started in the last couple of years, when several international organizations have begun drawing up their own regulatory attempts. Among the most rapid regulators are the European Union, the OECD, the UNESCO and the Council of Europe. If there is one common aspect in the draft proposals and recommendations set forth by these organizations is an emphasis on human rights. However, human rights are not a homogenous mass, and the human rights understanding as well as the methods, means and goals of these organizations differ greatly. Therefore, the questions are raised whether there can be cooperation or competition on the international level and whether having multiple actors serves or hinders the international community.

The Role of National Minorities in Economic Cooperation across the Hungarian– Romanian Border in the County Development Programs of the Period 2007– 2020

2023-01-09T15:51:07+01:00

One of the main pillars of the European Union is the cohesion policy, which aims to enable the different regions of the Member States to converge in their development regardless of their geographical location and historical trajectory, thereby creating a true common market. Cross-border programs that have been running for more than thirty years play a prominent role in this objective. However, in order for these programs to be truly successful, it is necessary to create strategies at the local level of regional development. Therefore, the present research processes the development documents of the Romanian-Hungarian border counties between 2007 and 2020 in order to get a more accurate picture of the role of the Romanian community living in Hungary, as well as the Hungarian community living in Romania, in cross-border economic cooperation. The present research is part of a more comprehensive investigation, in which we explore in more detail the role of national minorities in economic cooperation across the Hungarian-Romanian border.

The Growing Importance of the Timeliness of Civil Litigation and its Impact on the Judiciary

2023-01-09T15:39:39+01:00

Court statistical analyses and administrative inquiries consider cases with a duration of more than two years to be protracted in first instance proceedings. In comparison, Act XCIV of 2021 on the Enforcement of Property Compensation for Delay in Civil Proceedings, which entered into force on 1
January 2022 has a general rule which says that the duration of the proceedings at first instance is considered reasonable if the duration of the proceedings at first instance does not exceed 30 months, which is not much longer than the 2 years mentioned above. However, exceeding a reasonable period of time already means that the court that has caused the fundamental rights to be infringed must pay (to the total duration of the proceedings under examination) pecuniary compensation to the injured client. Particular attention is therefore paid to the legislation, suffice it to think that at the end of last year,
there were 3676 (!) pending civil cases at first instance – based on the judicial statistical methodology – classified as protracted.