Miklós Sebők

Institutional Entrepreneurship and the Mission Creep of the National Bank of Hungary

The chapter investigates a hitherto unexamined case of central bank mission creep: that of the National Bank of Hungary (MNB) under the leadership of Gyorgy Matolcsy after 2013. Based on the core ideas of the literature on institutional entrepreneurship and institutional change, a qualitative case study relying on elite interviews and document analysis is presented. This shows how and why the mission creep could stretch the Hungarian central bank’s policy portfolio beyond recognition in, inter alia, assuming development banking functions, buying commercial banks, purchasing real estate, creating research foundations and even university departments. These self-proclaimed ‘unorthodox’ measures reflected the long-held positions and institutional entrepreneurship of Matolcsy, a former minister for the economy. The case study offers new insights into the impact of institutional entrepreneurship on the medium-term evolution of economic policy institutions.

Electoral reforms, entry barriers and the structure of political markets: A comparative analysis: ELECTORAL REFORMS, ENTRY BARRIERS AND THE STRUCTURE OF POLITICAL MARKETS

This article investigates the impact of electoral reforms on entry barriers in political markets. The discussion starts by delineating the theoretical boundaries of various political markets, such as those for participation, parties and government. By taking a cue from industrial organisation theory, the article offers an analysis of entry barriers, both hard and soft, along with their operationalisation for empirical research. Based on this theoretical framework, a single hypothesis is investigated. It posits that the modification of the entry barriers in the market for parties leads to changes in the concentration of the popular vote for party lists. An observable implication of this relationship would be if an electoral reform that raises entry barriers led to subsequent increases in the Herfindahl index (a measure of market concentration), and vice versa. This proposition is empirically tested by a comparative analysis of a new database covering Czechia, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia. The analysis offers support for the following proposition: in most cases the changes in the entry barriers led to a corresponding change of concentration in the market for parties.

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

ABSTRACT 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.