Pro Publico Bono – Public Administration

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN THE WORKPLACE: HOW SHOULD MORAL AND LEGAL ISSUES BE ADDRESSED?

2021-10-27T09:39:55+02:00

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has emerged as a new method for efficiently and cost-effectively assisting human activities as science and technology have progressed in the fourth industrial revolution. It has been argued that Artificial Intelligence works in two ways. It can both create and eliminate jobs. Based on present technological capabilities, AI has sparked speculative discussions concerning its implications for morality and law. This article argues that AI is a technological advancement that will help businesses grow in the fourth industrial revolution. The controller determines its effects hence it can be put to either good or bad use. As a result, for AI to benefit the prosperity and well-being of humanity to the greatest degree, morals must be embedded in its use, and the law must be enacted to ensure that human commitment to using AI wisely in business processes is consistent.

RELOCATION OF THE CREATIVE CLASS TO THE SMALL CITIES DUE TO COVID-19: DISCUSSION ON A NEW CITY MARKETING NICHE

2021-10-18T12:36:15+02:00

Relocation to small cities is becoming more and more widespread. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, people are trying to escape from perceived danger and as an alternative, they are considering short-term or long-term relocation to smaller cities or towns. Purpose: in this paper, the author gathers the experiences of people constituting a creative class, who relocated from capitals and metropolises to small cities during the Covid-19 pandemic and before, recording and defining certain motives for their move. Methodology: both primary and secondary sources were used for content analysis. As a primary source, ten in-depth interviews were conducted, whereas secondary sources include blogs and online published interviews. This article investigates three questions about relocation: 1. Why do people move from bigger cities to small ones? 2. What does the creative class pay attention to before choosing a settlement for permanent or temporary relocation? 3. How can the administration of the small cities reinforce their attractiveness for potential residents and tourists from the creative class?

PRIVACY LITERACY AND THE PROTECTION OF PERSONAL DATA IN THE MIND OF LAW STUDENTS

2021-09-30T14:57:38+02:00

With the advent of the fourth industrial revolution, the issue of data protection has become more important than ever before. There is no doubt that data, and especially personal data, has significant commercial value. Data protection also raises major issues for the legal profession. With the increasing significance of data protection, the question arises as to whether law students have sufficient knowledge of privacy literacy. Based on the results of empirical research, this study set out to examine the attitudes of current law students to personal data and to determine how seriously they take data protection, particularly how it works in practice, when, for example, they use various kinds of social network sites, as well as to gauge their knowledge of data protection guarantees. The aim of this study is to provide a brief insight, based on the results of in-depth interviews, into the reasons behind the specific privacy literacy gaps revealed by the findings of the preliminary quantitative research. It is anticipated, it should be emphasised, that law students will prove not to be fully aware of how much personal data they may provide about themselves on social network sites. Moreover, identifying personal data through practical examples causes difficulties for law students, such as cookie ID or data on their health. Consequently, the privacy literacy of law students needs to be improved.

EUROPEANISATION OR SIMPLY INSTITUTIONAL CHANGE? THE IMPACT OF THE EU MEMBERSHIP ON THE POLITY OF HUNGARY

2021-09-30T14:49:51+02:00

The European integration has had a major impact on the institutional systems of the Member States. The case study traces some of the characteristics of the institutional changes brought about by EU-membership through the example of Hungary. The study concludes that rather than being subject to Europeanisation, there has been an institutional adaptation in the government’s handling of European affairs in Hungary over the last 20 years. It also affirms, that close policy cooperation does not automatically lead to a single institutional model at EU level.

CHANGES TO THE CONCEPT OF SOVEREIGNTY IN POST-1989 HUNGARY

2021-11-09T14:52:43+01:00

The concept of sovereignty is a discourse element encompassing many disciplines, and is also a subject of public debate. In order to better understand the processes of Hungarian public life, the present study examines the changes in the content of discourse concerning the concept of sovereignty in Hungary between 1990 and 2021. It focuses on two fields of law, namely international law (and the theory of international relations) and constitutional law. While in the 1990s and 2000s professional and public dialogue were characterised by a discourse which followed Western patterns in seeking to transcend traditional notions of sovereignty, the early 2020s have so far been characterised by a return to the classical concept, and a diversification of positions can likewise be observed in the academic discourse on sovereignty in Hungary.

DEMOCRACY AS A PROCESS – THE APPLICABILITY OF NORBERT ELIAS’S THEORY TO POLITICAL SCIENCE

2021-09-30T14:56:37+02:00

This essay adapts Norbert Elias’s transition theory – presented in The Civilizing Process – to Hungarian politics, specifically to the period between 1989–1990, following the change of regime. The first part of the essay summarises what figurational sociology meant for Norbert Elias and outlines how the analysis will be based on these two terms. The second part explores the limits of “condition” centred political science in the period following 1990 and comes to the conclusion that there is a strong relation between the mainstream teleological approach to democracy and “condition” centred political science. In the third part, the author introduces the concept of an open-ended transition as the key element of post-regime change figurational political science and outlines a figurational approach to political science. The essay ends with a short summary which states that, following the post-transitology era, new approaches need to be applied when describing Hungarian politics.

FROM AN ACTIVE STATE-LED FINANCIAL POLICY TO AN ACTIVE STATE-LED FINANCIAL POLICY – A TAXONOMICAL OUTLINE OF HUNGARY’S PUBLIC FINANCES IN THE PAST THIRTY YEARS

2021-09-30T14:51:11+02:00

The aim of this study is to trace the three-decade-long market economy transition that has replaced the socialist planned economy in Hungary, a process which is divided into two parts by the author. He begins by outlining the harsh, neoliberal methodology of the transition, and the Hungarian fiscal practice which developed from it, built on the application of non-conventional instruments of active government regulation and fundamentally based on the Fundamental Law (Hungary’s constitution) adopted in 2011, particularly its chapter on Public Finances and the cardinal laws pertaining to public finances. The study is a journey through time, encompassing three decades, demonstrating that the Achilles heel of the transition was its dependence on the basic conditions of the socialist planned economic system, which still exert an effect today. It provides an outline of the taxonomical elements of three, significantly different yet interrelated economic eras taking place in a Central European country in less than a century, and draws a macro-economic conclusion. The purpose of the study of more than three decades is to provide a historic set and, based on this, an outlook for the future for prognosis, which is especially important now at the time of Covid-19 problems.

BOOK REVIEW: THE EUROPEAN POLIS BY GEORGE SCHÖPFLIN

2021-09-30T14:54:56+02:00

George Schöpflin’s latest monograph provides a unique understanding of the politics of contemporary Europe in two ‘interconnected essays’. The first part focuses on a comprehensive interpretation of the EU’s political community, the European polis. The author argues that political innovation has slowed considerably in the last decade, particularly after the Lisbon Treaty entered into force and the EU was gradually transformed into a punitive polis. The second part of the book focuses on the relationship between Central Europe and the European Union. Central Europe is European, but differently European. The shortcomings of the Eastern enlargement, Central Europe’s misadventure in the European Union and the unseen and unintended consequences of the 2004–2007–2011 enlargement waves all contributed to the development of a troubled relationship between the EU and its new members. The volume combines both theoretical and practical aspects, making it a relevant contribution to European Studies literature.