Lately, I would say the most important one is probably freedom. And I say “lately” because I think the content of that concern, or at least its focus, has changed quite a bit over the past few years.
To explain that, you need to know something about me. My area of research, and more broadly my political interests, were for a long time focused on ethnic politics. That was the subject of my BA thesis, my MA thesis, my PhD thesis, and most of my publications. And this developed for a simple reason: I am a member of the Hungarian minority in Romania.
So when I speak about my political socialisation, I mean the period that came after those early memories of politics I mentioned before, that is, the time after the regime change in Romania, the 1990s and then the 2000s. I came of age politically in the late 1990s, when I was in high school. That was a period of democratisation and liberalisation, full of hope. There was a widespread sense that the country would finally develop in a good direction, that we would live in freedom, in prosperity, in a democratic system, and that the situation of Hungarians and other minorities would also be settled in a fairer way.
The late 1980s had been marked by severe repression and the curtailment of minority rights, and of course not only minority rights, but many other fundamental things as well. So I grew up in that context.
I actually ended up studying political science more or less by chance. I had not necessarily planned to become a political scientist. But then, right before Romania’s accession to the EU, I got a new impulse. At that time everything still seemed hopeful. I thought things would improve, that perhaps I could make a contribution, and that the country would become better.
But first and foremost, I was preoccupied by the situation of the Hungarian minority, because it seemed deeply unfair to me in many respects, there was discrimination and many other problems. Looking back, I can see that some of my views were quite naive. I would also say that I was more nationalistic then than I am now.
Over time, though, those concerns slowly shifted. My focus became more and more universalistic. What had started as a rather particularistic agenda, one that, as a young man, I hoped I might contribute to, gradually broadened.
That does not mean I no longer care about the situation of Hungarians in Romania. I still do. My children attend Hungarian-language schools, and it is very important to me that this can continue, that our rights are not rolled back, and that there is no backsliding in that area.
But in the meantime, the broader experience of democratic backsliding, not only in Romania, though that too, but especially in Hungary, began to push me away from a narrower minority focus and made me much more sensitive to universal issues.
That is why I say freedom. In the end, I think that is what the whole paradigm of rights, human rights, and also minority rights as a subfield, boils down to.
There is, of course, another major issue, and that is equality. You mentioned Tamas, and we often have very interesting debates about which is more important: freedom or equality. He, as a sociologist, tends to say that equality is more important. I, as a political scientist, am more inclined to say that freedom is more important. At least subjectively, for me, freedom comes first.
That said, I also agree that the structural inequalities in our country, and in other countries that I know at least a little about, are not only annoying, but deeply worrying. And I do not think they are decreasing. On the contrary, they seem to be increasing, and that is not good.