Skip to main content

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Polit. Sci.
Sec. Comparative Governance
Volume 7 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpos.2025.1545816
This article is part of the Research Topic The Politics of Crises - The Crisis of Politics in Central and Eastern Europe View all articles

Crisis and Constitutional Politics in Central Europe

Provisionally accepted
  • Széchenyi István University, Gyor, Hungary

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    This paper aims to examine the impact of significant crisis situations on the constitutional framework over the past decade, including financial crisis, migration, pandemics and war. The paper focuses on the Visegrad countries, especially Hungary, and analyses the constitutional amendments adopted and the relevant constitutional court decisions. By examining the justifications for the amendments and decisions, it is possible to observe the efforts of legislators and governing parties to overcome difficult governance situations in crisis management. The study aims to interpret the relationship between constitutional responses to social crises and crises of democratic political systems, and argues that the inherent feature of constitutional changes triggered by crises is that they remain part of the political system in the longer term. In turn, their impact determines not only the resilience of states and societies, but also the direction in which democratic systems evolve.

    Keywords: Constitutional politics, Crisis, COVID, Migration, State debt, Constitutional Court, Hungary

    Received: 15 Dec 2024; Accepted: 15 Jan 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Smuk. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Peter Smuk, Széchenyi István University, Gyor, Hungary

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.