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Making Democratic Political Culture

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 November 2013

Iván Zoltán Dénes
Iván Zoltán Dénes*
Affiliation:
Budapest, Beregszász út 62, H-1112, Hungary. E-mail: denes.ivan@upcmail.hu
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Abstract

The essay deals with the criterion and the distortion of making democratic political culture the basis of the democratic political community in the context of the traumatic historical experiences. The historical traumas of the communities may lead to a fluid or vacuum situation, a non-democratic consolidation, a fall back to personal power, even political hysteria if the assessment of the situation is wrong and bad aims are chosen; to a situation that could bring almost all the countries of Europe to the brink of disaster, and only those countries that could recall democratic political culture and education will be able to keep up with the rise of democratic crowd emotion. A comparative European research into the ways and means of processing collective traumas is not only an area that might shed new light on political phenomena, but a requirement of democratic functioning.

Type
Focus: Regimes of Memory
Information
European Review , Volume 21 , Issue 4 , October 2013 , pp. 553 - 563
Copyright
Copyright © Academia Europaea 2013 

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