For the very first time in EU history, the 2014 EP elections provided citizens with the opportunity to influence the nomination of the Commission President by casting a vote for the main Europarties' 'lead candidates'. By subjecting the position of the Commission President to an open political contest, many experts have formulated the expectation that heightened political competition would strengthen the weak electoral connection between EU citizens and EU legislators, which some consider a root cause for the EU's lack of public support. In particular, this contest was on display in the so-called 'Eurovision Debate', a televised debate between the main contenders for the Commission President broadcasted live across Europe. Drawing on a quasi-experimental study conducted in 24 EU countries, we find that debate exposure led to increased cognitive and political involvement and EU support among young citizens. Unfortunately, the debate has only reached a very small audience.

Extant literature concludes that corruption may have a devastating effect on economic growth and institutional trust in transitional democracies, but scholars remain divided on how malfeasance influences political behavior. In this article, we explore the likelihood of a mobilization effect of corruption in a post-communist setting. We argue that the indicators used in previous scholarship on corruption vary in important ways and may affect citizen incentives for participation differently. In particular, we hypothesize and then assess whether actual experience with bribery, perceptions of widespread corruption, and concerns about increase of corruption in the future encourage individuals to engage in different sets of activities. Original data from a 2014 post-election survey in Hungary are used for empirical tests of several regression models. Our findings suggest that the type of corruption assessment is important for the specific political activity in which a citizen would engage.

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In this article, we define a schema for the class structure of Hungary, in which we consider a case for an Eastern-European capitalist system emerging from post-communist societies. Our schema is based on the findings of the Hungarian Class Survey, 2014. Using six measures of Bourdieusian economic, cultural, and social capital and applying the methodology of latent class analysis (LCa), we have constructed a model of eight LCa-based classes: upper class, cultural middle class, affluent middle class, young urban consumers, network-embedded rural workers, young drifters, middle-aged deprived, and the precariat. Hungarian society seems to be quite hierarchical but is also fragmented within the upper and lower strata. Status inconsistency in terms of possessing economic, cultural, and social capital is strongly present even for the middle XXX10.1177/0888325417739954East European Politics and SocietiesAlbert et al. / Mapping the Post-communist Class Structure research-article2017 2 East European Politics and Societies and Cultures classes. There is a clear divide in our class model between the upper four and the lower four classes, in terms of vertical and nonvertical aspects of social stratification. We also compare our new multidimensional class typology to the traditional occupation-based one and demonstrate its added value for class analysis in Hungary.

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AbsztraktA kapcsolathálózat szerepe a társadalmi integrációban sokféle lehet. Segíthet a státuszelérésben, a tár-sas támogatáson keresztül megakadályozhatja az emberek társadalomból való kiilleszkedését, vagy a külön-féle, egymástól távol lévő csoportok összekötésével biztosíthatja a társadalom makroszintű integrációját is.Tanulmányunkban azt vizsgáljuk, hogy a kapcsolathálózat különböző dimenziói (és az ezek mérésére alkalmas módszerek) hogyan kapcsolódnak össze az integráció mikro és makro momentumaival. A névgenerátorra, a pozíciógenerátorra és az összegző módszerre támaszkodva hat kapcsolathálózati indikátort definiálunk, melyekből egy hételemű network miliő-tipológiát építünk fel. A miliő-tipológia és a státuszelérés, a társas támogatás, valamint a makroszintű integráció közti összefüggést regressziós modellek segítségével vizsgáljuk. Az eredmé-nyeink két irányba mutatnak. Egyfelől a kapcsolathálózati dimenziók vertikális momentumai általánosságban felülírják a horizontális tagolódás fontosságát. Másfelől a közeli magkapcsolatok minden szempontból kiemelt fontosságúnak mutatkoztak. Utóbbi eredmény megerősíti, hogy a jelenkori Magyarországon az integráció egyik legfontosabb feltétele az erős magkapcsolati hálózat.Kulcsszavak: kapcsolathálózat, névgenerátor, összegző módszer, pozíciógenerátor, státuszelérés, társas támogatás, társadalmi törésvonal Status attainment, social support, social cleavages the integrational aspects of social networks AbstractThe role of social networks in social integration can be diverse. They can help the attainment of different statuses; prevent someone from social exclusion through social support; or help the macro integration of the society through the bounding of different and distant groups. In this paper, we examine how the different network aspects (and the methods that measure these dimensions) correlate with the integration on microand macro level. Based on the name-generator, position-generator and summation method, six network indicators were defined. Based on these indicators, we created a network milieu typology that contained seven groups. Correlations of status attainment, social support and macro-level integration with the milieu typology were analysed via regression models. Our results have two main implications. On the one hand, the vertical aspects of the network dimensions seem more important than the horizontal ones. On the other hand, core ties seem to be the most relevant parts of the networks in all measured dimensions. These results strengthen our point, as the most important aspect of integration in present Hungarian society is the strong core network.

AbsztraktA kapcsolathálózati megközelítés kétségkívül nagy divatját éli a mai szociológiában. Erre reflektálva egymással párhuzamosan több olyan kutatási módszer is kialakult, ami a kapcsolathálózatok mérésére koncentrál.Ezek a módszerek azonban elsősorban nem egymás alternatívái, sokkal inkább speciális kutatási célok elérését lehetővé tevő koncepciók. Tanulmányunkban a négy leginkább elterjedt ego-network mérési technikát járjuk körbe -névgenerátor, pozíciógenerátor, erőforrás-generátor, méretgenerátor -arra koncentrálva, hogy milyen kutatási célokra használhatók az egyes módszerek, illetve milyen indikátorok nyerhetők ki belőlük. Külön kitérünk arra is, hogy a hálózatkutatással összefüggő kulcsfogalmak -társadalmi tőke, gyenge és erős kötések, homofília és heterofília, stb. -hogyan illeszkednek ezen mérési módszerekhez. Mivel a méretgenerátor mód-szer a legkevésbé elterjedt az európai mérési tradícióban, valamivel részletesebben mutatjuk be az ebben rejlő lehetőségeket.Kulcsszavak: kapcsolathálózat, névgenerátor, pozíciógenerátor, erőforrás-generátor, méretgenerátorMeasuring social networks -theoretical and practical dilemmas and possibilities AbstractNetwork approach is undoubtedly fashionable in today's sociology. Reflecting on this trend, a number of research methods have evolved side by side that concentrate on the measurement of social networks.However, these methods are not primarily the alternatives of each other, they are more conceptions that make the attainment of special research goals possible. In our paper, we describe the four most widespread egonetwork measuring techniques -namely the name generator, the position generator, the resource generator and the size generator -concentrating on the different research goals they can be used for and the kinds of indicators that can be obtained from them. We also address to how keywords connected to network research -such as social capital, weak and strong ties, homophily and heterophily, etc. -fit into these measurement methods. As size generator is the least common method in the European measurement tradition, more details are shown about its possibilities.

Question order effect refers to the phenomenon that previous questions may affect the cognitive response process and respondents’ answers. Previous questions generate a context or frame in which questions are interpreted. At the same time, in online surveys, the visual design may also shift responses. Past empirical research has yielded considerable evidence supporting the impact of question order on measurement, but few studies have investigated how question order effects vary with the visual design. Our main research question was whether question order effects are different on item-by-item formats compared to grid formats. The study uses data from an online survey experiment conducted on a non-probability-based online panel in Hungary, in 2019. We used the welfare-related questions of the 8’th wave of ESS. We manipulated the questionnaire by changing the position of a question that calls forth negative stereotypes about such social benefits and services. We further varied the visual design by presenting the questions in separate pages (item-by-item) or one grid. The results show that placing the priming questions right before the target item significantly changed respondents’ attitudes in a negative way, but the effect was significant only when questions were presented on separate pages. A possible reason behind this finding may be that respondents engage in a deeper cognition when questions are presented separately. On the other hand, the grid format was robust against question order, in addition, we found little evidence of stronger satisficing on grids. The findings highlight that mixing item-by-item and grids formats in online surveys may introduce measurement inequivalence, especially when question order effects are expected.