Legal Scholarship at the Threshold of a New Millennium

Scholarship has already warned us to soundness in relation to modernisationist legal reforms. For it consistently (1) emphasised the framework-creating nature of the otherwise prevailing social normativity, and its primordial role in determining social processes, (2) put the possibility and demand of organicity with every step in the limelight, (3) did not consider the effectiveness of initiating elitist actions to influence overall social movements plannable for the long run and with lasting effects. Therefore, it regarded any regulatory legal intervention as the primarily symbolic confirmation with sanctioning of the direction otherwise ongoing movements were taking, (4) warned to the damages caused by any adventurer policy in as much as they not only fail, but discredit even the thought of change itself. Therefore, it (5) gave voice to the advantage of a systematically planned, consistent, convincing, pragmatic, and all-comprehensive social programme, as opposed to the occasional temptations of worldcuring intentions, exposed to the alternate danger of sudden forwarding and quick tiring, supported solely by intellectual arguments.     

Exercising control and gathering information: the functions of interpellations in Hungary (1990–2014)

The article investigates the factors shaping the number and content of interpellations, a form of parliamentary questions by members of parliament (MPs) in post-regime change Hungary. Four theoretical propositions regarding the functions of interpellations are examined in this context: political control; policy-oriented information seeking; parliamentary group leadership; and constituency service. A new database of 4096 observations for the period between 1990 and 2014 is compiled in order to analyse these hypotheses. Computer-assisted content analysis techniques and count data regressions are used to describe the text of interpellations in terms of their geographical and policy content. Results show that opposition MPs interpellate more, whereas representatives of single-member districts and regional lists interpellate less than their peers. Representatives from single-member districts and regional lists make more reference to local issues in general, but not to their own district or county. Finally, policy specialisation increases the likelihood of submitting pertinent parliamentary questions.     

Reviews

Nigel Swain, Hungary—The Rise and Fall of Feasible Socialism. London and New York: Verso, 1992, vii + 264 pp., £13.95 p/b.

Ágnes Horváth & Árpád Szakolczai, The Dissolution of Communist Power: The Case of Hungary. London and New York: Routledge, 1992, xviii + 254 pp., £40.00.

Lewis H. Siegelbaum, Soviet State and Society between Revolutions, 1918–1929. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992, xiii + 284 pp., £40.00 h/b, £13.95 p/b.

Gerald Segal‐ et al., Openness and Foreign Policy Reform in Communist Slates. London and New York: Routledge for The Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1992, x + 248 pp., £40.00.

Joan Barth Urban, ed., Moscow and the Global Left in the Gorbachev Era. New York: Cornell University Press, 1992, xii + 204 pp., $32.95 h/b, $14.25 p/b.

Donald Filtzer, Soviet Workers and De‐Stalinization: The Consolidation of the Modern System of Soviet Production Relations, 1953–1964. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992, xv+ 318 pp.

Stefan Hedlund, Private Agriculture in the Soviet Union, London: Routledge, 1990, xiv + 208, pp. £30.00.

Bruno Dallago. The Irregular Economy, Aldershot: Dartmouth Publishing Company, 1991, xxi + 202 pp., £29.50

Marie Lavigne, L'Europe de l'est: du plan au marché. Paris: Editions Libris, 1992, 191 pp., 89 francs.

Paul Calloway, Soviet and Western Psychiatry—a Comparative Study. Keighley, The Moor Press, 1992, xv + 266 pp., £22.95 h/b, £9.95 p/b.

David Wedgwood Benn, From Glasnost to Freedom of Speech. London: Pinter Publishers, 1992, vi + 106 pp., £22.50 h/b, £8.95 p/b.

Gail W. Lapidus & Victor Zaslavsky, eds, From Union to Commonwealth: Nationalism and Separatism in the Soviet Republics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992, vii + 127 pp., £25.00 h/b, £9.95 p/b.

Robert F. Miller, ed., The Development of Civil Society in Communist Systems. Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1982, iv+ 188 pp., £10.95.

Geoffrey A. Hosking, ed., Church, Nation and State in Russia and Ukraine. London: Macmillan/School of Slavonic and East European Studies, 1991, xv + 357 pp., £45.00.

Richard Taylor & Ian Christie, eds, Inside the Film Factory: New Approaches to Russian and Soviet Cinema. London and New York: Routledge, 1991, xvii + 256 pp., £40.00.

Linda Edmundson, ed.. Women and Society in Russia and the Soviet Union, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992, ix + 233 pp., 35.00 h/b.

Chris Corrin, ed., Superwomen and the Double Burden. Women's Experience of Change in Central and Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union. London: Scarlet Press, 1992, 297 pp., no price.

Mary. Buckley, ed., Perestroika and Soviet Women. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992, xiii+ 183 pp., £30.00 h/b, £10.95 p/b.

Rajendra K. Jain, Germany, the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, 1949–1991. London: Sangam Books Limited, 1993, xv + 368 pp., £25.95.

Philip J. Bryson & Manfred Melzer, The End of the East German Economy: From Honecker to Reunification. London: Macmillan, 1991, xiii+ 148 pp. £40.00.

Liliana Saiu. The Great Powers and Rumania 1944–1946. A Study of the Early Cold War Era. East European Monographs, Boulder, CO: 1992, xiii + 290 pp., $42.00.