Petőcz Kálmán (szerk.): National Populism and Slovak - Hungarian Relations in Slovakia 2006-2009 (Somorja, 2009)
Zsolt Gál: Argentina on the Danube - Populist Economic Policy as the Biggest Enemy of Sustainable Economic Growth
ZSOLT GÁL: Argentína on tIhe Danidé - PopulisT Economíc Policy as tIhe BiqqEST Enemy of SustaínaEIe Economíc GrowtIh1 “I think, then, that the species of oppression by which democratic nations are menaced is unlike anything that ever before existed in the world ... I seek to trace the novel features under which despotism may appear in the world. The first thing that strikes the observation is an innumerable multitude of men, all equal and alike, incessantly endeavouring to procure the petty and paltry pleasures with which they glut their lives ... Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications and to watch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. For their happiness such a government willingly labours, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances: what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living? Thus it every day renders the exercise of the free agency of man less useful and less frequent; it circumscribes the will within a narrower range and gradually robs a man of all the uses of himself " Alexis de Tocqueville: Democracy in America, Volume II, 1840.2 Since the dawn of First modern democracies, great thinkers were aware that the rule of the people was not a perfect political system and could degenerate into tyranny of the majority. The founding fathers of the United States of America feared a situation in which - in the words of James Madison who would later become the Secretary of State and the fourth President of the United States - “the public good is eclipsed by disputes between antagonized parties” and “measures are too often adopted not according to principles of justice or with respect to the rights of the mino-181
