Abstract (may include machine translation)
This essay is the edited version of the keynote lecture at the 2008 annual meeting of the Hungarian Political Science Association. It discusses the point of an academically-oriented political science, i.e., political science as an activity modelled on the example of the sciences, which largely refrains from commenting/advising on and interpreting current political processes, and only seeks applied relevance over the somewhat longer term and mostly by indirect means. It illustrates this argument with a brief summary of the author’s own research into the political impact and the determinants of citizens’ inevitably modest level of political knowledge. According to these, citizens’ low information level does not inevitably or always influence election outcomes, but usually does so to a notable although not truly dramatic extent. The bigger this influence over the course of two-three elections, the more negative developments one can expect in the quality of governance. The size of the same influence, in turn, seems to depend partly on structural traits of the mass communication system of the given countries.
Translated title of the contribution | The Role of Political Discussion in Modern Democracies in a Comparative Perspective |
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Original language | Hungarian |
Pages (from-to) | 7-24 |
Number of pages | 18 |
Journal | Politikatudományi Szemle |
Volume | 18 |
Issue number | 2 |
State | Published - 2009 |