ABSTRACT
In political analysis, the school of cultural paradigm has become very strong recently. The rise of the school may be traced back to surprising political developments in the 1990s and the first years of this millennium. In most of the works of the paradigm, we read about the same cases that obviously prompted the scholars to find a new conceptual framework for explanation. We may define two groups of the phenomena: (1) when seeing Bill Clinton play saxophone, watching Boris Yeltsin dance the twist in public, understanding from the news that Tony Blair prefers Calvin Klein underpants, or watching Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány imitating the dancing Hugh Grant from film Love Actually, one feels urged to talk about politicians turned celebrities; (2) being shocked by the fact that the voting for participants in television reality shows wakes wider interest than parliamentary elections generally do, one would draw the conclusion that participation in televised popular cultural events has become much more important for the citizens than political activity. These developments have necessarily led to the reappraisal of (popular) culture and of its influence on politics.
