Miklós Sebők is a Senior Research Fellow of the Centre of Social Sciences, Hungarian Academy of Sciences (CSS HAS) in Budapest. He earned an M.A. degree in politics at the University of Virginia and an M.A. degree in economics at the Corvinus University of Budapest. He received his Ph.D. in Political Science from ELTE University of Budapest.

He currently serves as a senior research fellow at the Institute for Political Science at Centre for Social Sciences and the research director of the Hungarian Comparative Agendas Project and the research co-director of the Artificial Intelligence National Lab at CSS, Budapest. His research interests include political economy and public policy and the application of text mining and machine learning methods in these fields.

His work has appeared in Business and Politics, East European Politics, European Journal of Political Research, European Political Science, European Political Science Review, International Journal of Parliamentary Studies, Japanese Journal of Political Science, Intersections, Journal of Comparative Politics, Journal of the Knowledge Economy, Journal of Legislative Studies, Journal of Public Budgeting, Journal of Public Policy, Parliamentary Affairs, Plos One, Political Analysis, Socio-Economic Review and White House Studies.

His book chapters have been published with Oxford and Palgrave. He served as the editor for the first Hungarian handbook on “Quantitative Text Analysis and Text Mining in Political Science” (L’Harmattan, 2016) and on “Text Mining and Artificial Intelligence in R” (Typotex, 2021), and most recently as co-editor of Policy Agendas in Autocracy, and Hybrid Regimes: The Case of Hungary (Palgrave, 2021).

Selected Publications

2023 The Concept and Measurement of Legislative Backsliding (Co-authors: Rebeka Kiss, Ádám Kovács), Parliamentary Affairs, gsad014, doi:10.1093/pa/gsad014

2023 Introducing HUNCOURT: A New Open Legal Database Covering the Decisions of the Hungarian Constitutional Court for Between 1990 and 2021 (Co-authors: Rebeka Kiss, István Járay), Journal of Knowledge Economy, https://doi.org/10.1007/s13132-023-01395-6. 

2022 Creating an Enhanced Infrastructure of Parliamentary Archives for Better Democratic Transparency and Legislative Research – Report on the OPTED forum in the European Parliament (Brussels, Belgium, 15 June 2022) (Co-author: Rebeka Kiss), International Journal of Parliamentary Studies 2 (2): 278–84. doi:10.1163/26668912-bja10053

2022 Measuring legislative stability – A new approach with data from Hungary, (Co-authors: Bálint György Kubik, Csaba Molnár, István Járay, Anna Székely), European Political Science 21: 491–521. doi:10.1057/s41304-022-00376-8

2022 Punctuated Equilibrium and Progressive Friction in Socialist Autocracy, Democracy and Hybrid Regimes (Co-authors: Ágnes M. Balázs, Csaba Molnár), Journal of Public Policy 42 (2): 247–69. doi:10.1017/S0143814X21000143

2022 Mission adapted: the hidden role of governors in shaping central bank operating missions in Hungary (Co-authors: Kristin Makszin and Jasper Simons), East European Politics 38 (1): 101–22. doi:10.1080/21599165.2021.1907351

2021 Understanding Agenda Dynamics in Non-democracies. In Zsolt Boda, Miklós Sebők (eds.), Policy Agendas in Autocracy, and Hybrid Regimes: The Case of Hungary, 3–16. Comparative Studies of Political Agendas. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.

2021 The effect of central bank communication on sovereign bond yields: The case of Hungary (Co-authors: Ákos Máté and Tamás Barczikay), Plos One 16 (2). doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0245515

2021 Policy Agendas in Autocracy, and Hybrid Regimes: The Case of Hungary (Co-editor with Zsolt Boda), Comparative Studies of Political Agendas. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-73223-3. ISBN 978-3-030-73222-6

2021 The Data and Methods of the Hungarian Comparative Agendas Project. In Zsolt Boda, Miklós Sebők (eds.), Policy Agendas in Autocracy, and Hybrid Regimes: The Case of Hungary, 63–73. Comparative Studies of Political Agendas. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-73223-3_4

2020 From State Capture to ‘Pariah’ Status? The Preference Attainment of the Hungarian Banking Association (2006-2014) (Co-author: Sándor Kozák), Business and Politics 23 (2): 179–201. doi:10.1017/bap.2020.8

2020 The Multiclass Classification of Newspaper Articles with Machine Learning: The Hybrid Binary Snowball Approach (Co-author: Zoltán Kacsuk), Political Analysis 29 (2): 236–49. doi:10.1017/pan.2020.27

2019 The Politics of Manufactured Crisis: Political Entrepreneurship and the Fiscal Wars of the early 2010s in the U.S., Intersections: East European Journal of Society and Politics 5 (3): 73–96. doi:10.17356/ieejsp.v5i3.522

2019 The Hungarian Policy Agendas Project (Co-author: Zsolt Boda). In: Frank R Baumgartner, Christian Breunig, Emiliano Grossman (eds.) Comparative Policy Agendas: Theory, Tools, Data, 105–13. Oxford: Oxford University Press

2019 Electoral Reforms, Entry Barriers and the Structure of Political Markets: A Comparative Analysis. (Co-authors: Attila Horváth, Ágnes M. Balázs. European Journal of Political Research 58 (2): 741–68. doi:10.1111/1475-6765.12309

2018 Punctuated Equilibrium In Democracy and Autocracy: An Analysis of Hungarian Budgeting Between 1868 and 2013. (Co-author: Tamás Berki) European Political Science Review 10 (4): 589–611. doi:10.1017/S1755773918000115

2018 Institutional Entrepreneurship and the Mission Creep of the National Bank of Hungary. In: Caner Bakir, Darryl S L Jarvis (eds.) Institutional Entrepreneurship and Policy Change: Theoretical and Empirical Explorations, 243–78. Houndmills in Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-70350-3_10

2018 From Pledge-Fulfilment to Mandate-Fulfilment: An Empirical Theory (Co-author: András Körösényi). Intersections: East European Journal of Society and Politics 4 (1): 115–32. doi:10.17356/ieejsp.v4i1.130

2017 Exercising Control and Gathering Information: The Functions of Interpellations in Hungary (1990-2014). (Co-editor with Bálint Kubik, Csaba Molnár) Journal of Legislative Studies 23 (4): 465–83. doi:10.1080/13572334.2017.1394734

2017 Incrementalism and Punctuated Equilibrium in Hungarian Budgeting (1991-2013) (Co-editor with Tamás Berki) Journal of Public Budgeting, Accounting & Financial Management 29 (2): 151–80. doi:10.1108/jpbafm-29-02-2017-b001

2016 Mandate Slippage, Good and Bad. Making (Normative) Sense of Mandate-Fulfillment. Intersections: East European Journal of Society and Politics 2 (1): 123–52. doi:10.17356/ieejsp.v2i1.131

2016 Coding Policy Influence with ATLAS.ti: Methodological Notes from a Study on Hungarian Banking. In: Friese, S. – Ringmayr, T. (eds.) ATLAS.Ti User Conference 2015: Qualitative Data Analysis and Beyond, 1–15. Berlin: Universitätsverlag der Technischen Universität Berlin.

2015 Delegation and the Crisis­-Driven Political Development of Bailout Institutions: The Case of Japan Between 1992 and 2003. Japanese Journal of Political Science 16 (4): 459–88. doi:10.1017/S1468109915000262

2015 Who Decides in Times of Crisis?: A Comparative Examination of Bureaucratic Delegation in 4 EU Countries (2008-2010). Journal of Comparative Politics 2015 (2): 38–52 

2010 President Wilson and the International Origins of the Federal Reserve System – A Reappraisal. White House Studies 10 (4): 425–47 

Books in Hungarian:

2021 Szövegbányászat és mesterséges intelligencia R-ben (Text Mining and Artificial Intelligence in R) (Co-editor with Ákos Máté and Orsolya Ring). Budapest: Typotex Kiadó. ISBN 978-963-493-139-3

2020 A magyar jogalkotás minősége: Elmélet, mérés, eredmények (The Quality of Hungarian Legislation: Theory, Measurement, Empirical Results) (Co-editor with György Gajduschek and Csaba Molnár). Budapest: Gondolat. ISBN 978-963-556-001-1

2020 Empirikus jogi kutatások (Empirical Legal Studies) (Co-editor with András Jakab). Budapest: Gondolat. ISBN 978-963-276-384-2

2019 Itt van Amerika: Az amerikai politika hatása Magyarországon (America is here: The Americanisation of Hungarian Politics) (Co-editor with Balázs Böcskei). Budapest: Athenaeum. ISBN 978-963-293-978-0

2019 Paradigmák fogságában: Elitek és ideológiák a magyar pénzügyi kapitalizmusban (Captured by Paradigms: Elites and Ideologies in Hungarian Finance Capitalism). Budapest: Napvilág. ISBN 978-963-338-005-5

2018 A magyar közpolitikai napirend (The Hungarian Policy Agenda) (Co-editor with Zsolt Boda). Budapest: MTA TK PTI. ISBN 978-963-418-018-0

2016 Kvantitatív szövegelemzés és szövegbányászat a politikatudományban (Quantitative Text Analysis and Text Mining in Political Science) Editor and contributor to several chapters. Budapest: L’Harmattan. ISBN 978-963-414-229-4

2014 Hatalom szabályok nélkül – Kormány és törvényhozás viszonya a pénzügyi válság idején (Power without Rules – Executive-Legislative Relations in Times of Financial Crisis). Budapest: Új Mandátum. ISBN 978-963-287-076-2