Theoretical and methodological problems of analyzing political justice after WWII in Hungary

The statement that Hungary has not gone through the process of facing with the consequences of WWII is one of the often used statements today trying to explain the emerging popularity of far right forces in Hungary. This talk analyses one of these processes: the post WWII transitional justice process in Hungary. The talk is based on a research project funded by Rothschild (Europe) Foundation. In the course of our research we selected 500 of 22,000 files created by the People’s Court of Budapest using representative probability sampling. The quantitative approach used in this research project is a novel one, because thus innovative methodology permits both to draw conclusions regarding the Budapest People’s Tribunal as a whole, to widen the scope of such a research examining not only the perpetrators but other participants and to analyse not only one-dimensional but multidimensional relationships.