Hungary: the Politics of Transition (Postcommunist States & Nations)

Hungary: The Politics of Transition edited by TERRY COX and ANDY FURLONG FRANK CASS • LONDON First published 1995 i...

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Hungary: The Politics of Transition edited by

TERRY COX and ANDY FURLONG

FRANK CASS • LONDON

First published 1995 in Great Britain by FRANK CASS AND COMPANY LIMITED Newbury House, 900 Eastern Avenue, London IG2 7HH, England This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” and in the United States of America by FRANK CASS c/o ISBS 5804 N.E. Hassalo Street Portland, Oregon 97213–3644 Copyright © 1995 Frank Cass & Co. Ltd British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN0-203-98869-8 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-7146-4167-7 (paperback) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hungary, the politics of transition/edited by Terry Cox and Andy Furlong. p. cm. ‘This group of studies first appeared in a Special Issue…of The journal of communist studies and transition politics. Vol. 10, no. 3’. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 0-7146-4167-7 (pbk.: alk. paper) 1. Hungary—Politics and government—1989. 2. Post-communism— Hungary. 3. Democracy—Hungary. 4. Representative government and representation—Hungary. I. Cox, Terry. II. Furlong, Andy. III. Journal of communist studies and transition politics. Vol. 10, no. 3 (Special Issue) JN2067.H865 1995 320.9439’09’049–dc20 95–6650 CIP This group of studies first appeared in a Special Issue: ‘Hungary: The Politics of Transition’ of The Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics, Vol. 10, No. 3 published by Frank Cass & Co. Ltd. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Frank Cass and Company Limited,

Contents

Political Transition in Hungary: An Overview Terry Cox and Andy Furlong

1

The Paradoxes of Transition: The External and Internal Overload of the Transition Process Attila Ágh

15

Party Formation and Constitutional Change in Hungary András Bozóki

35

Political and Social Conflicts Arising from the Transformation of Property Relations in Hungary Erzsébet Szalai

57

Obstacles to the Development of Democratic Politics Bill Lomax

81

Leading Democracy: The Emergence of Party Leaders and Their Roles in the Hungarian Parties Malcolm Punnett and Gabriella Ilonszki

101

Parties and Party Factions in the Hungarian Parliament László Szarvas

119

Representational Roles in the Hungarian Parliament Gabriella Ilonszki and David Judge

137

Civil Society and Interest Representation in Hungarian Political Development Terry Cox and László Vass

153

PART I

PART II

iv

The Rise and Fall of the Hungarian Greens Éva Hajba

181

Index

193

Political Transition In Hungary: An Overview TERRY COX and ANDY FURLONG

Hungary appears to have enjoyed relative success so far in the transition from communist rule to democracy and the market. Multi-party elections and a parliamentary system are established, with a clear division of political functions; foreign investment is flowing in, and a private sector is developing. To some extent the success builds on the reform experience of the communist era. Further progress depends in part on the international environment, and also on the success with which new governments tackle problems of property ownership, popular consultation and information management. The aim of this collection of articles is to review various aspects of the process of democratic transition in Hungary over the period of its first postcommunist, freely elected parliament between 1990 and 1994. Since the collapse of communist party rule there have been attempts in most of the countries of central and eastern Europe to develop more market-oriented economies and more democratic, multi-party political structures. The precise forms and degrees of success of these changes have varied widely, and all the successor regimes have faced serious problems, but on most counts Hungary has emerged as one of the most stable and successful transformations so far. Building on its distinctive experience under communist rule, with a gradual limitation of the degree of direct state management of the economy since the 1970s, and limited moves towards greater political pluralism in the late 1980s, Hungary has achieved a peaceful and orderly political transition since 1990. Although its political institutions have come under some strain, and constitutional issues are the subject of debate between the parties, Hungary has successfully established multi-party elections and a parliamentary system, a relatively clearly defined division of responsibilities between parliament, president and constitutional court, and significant freedom of expression in the media. While economic and social changes have been slower and the subject of much controversy, Hungary has attracted far more foreign

2 HUNGARY: THE POLITICS OF TRANSITION

investment than any other country in eastern Europe and has begun to develop a private sector. Hungary therefore, seems a very suitable case for detailed study. On the one hand it offers an example of the problems of political change common to much of eastern Europe, while on the other hand it offers a specific example of what has so far been a relatively successful transformation. The contributions to this volume offer discussion both of the general problems that Hungary has shared with its neighbours and of the particular conditions that shaped the specific features of Hungary’s experience. Furthermore, they offer detailed examination of key institutions and groups in Hungarian politics and highlight the problems that Hungary has experienced in the course of its changes so far. In 1994, after the results of the second multi-party general election were announced, the British press were announcing ‘the return of the communists’ to power after four years of conservative rule. From the headlines it seemed that Hungary had reached another political watershed and was about to embark on a series of dramatic changes that would sharply distinguish the next few years from the previous four years of its first post-communist parliament. Meanwhile more considered opinion cautioned against interpreting current developments in such apocalyptic terms and argued for a greater degree of continuity. First with regard to policy issues, as with the Polish and Lithuanian former communists who had also returned to power in the previous year, the Hungarian socialists’ proposed policies promised a continuation of privatization, measures to support the development of the market economy, and the undertaking to operate within the constitution and the rules of a parliamentary democracy. Secondly, as soon became clear, the socialists opted to form a coalition government with the second largest party in the new parliament, the liberal Alliance of Free Democrats. While this required them to modify some of their policies, it promised the advantage of securing a wider range of support in the country for a government that would have to take tough economic measures during its term of office. Also as the figures below indicate, a socialist-liberal coalition would have a two thirds majority in the new parliament which would be sufficient to pass changes to the constitution which both parties had been calling for while they were in opposition. Thirdly, in terms of the wider contours of the post-communist multi-party system, the 1994 elections showed signs of a stabilization of the new structure with the new parliament consisting of the same six parties that made up the last parliament (see Table 1).

Terry Cox and Andy Furlong are Senior Lecturers in Sociology in the Department of Government, University of Strathclyde.

POLITICAL TRANSITION IN HUNGARY: AN OVERVIEW 3

TABLE 1 THE COMPOSITION OF THE NEW HUNGARIAN PARLIAMENT ELECTED IN MAY 1994

Nevertheless, compared with the previous four years of the coalition government led by the Hungarian Democratic Forum, some significant changes seemed likely, for example in policies on social welfare and employment, local government, policy towards the media, and in the details of privatization measures. Much will depend however on external factors such as the wider economic environment and relations with various supranational bodies including the IMF, the European Union and NATO. Taken together the articles collected here offer an attempt to weigh up the developments of the four year period of the first postcommunist parliament and to put them into the context of longer term trends in Hungarian politics. While the origins of the changes can be traced back to the 1960s, the particular shape of the new post-communist political structure was influenced by the coming together of a number of different developments in the late 1980s. Ever since the late 1960s Hungary had pioneered a series of reforms of the Soviet-type centrally managed command economy, increasingly allowing some devolution of decision making to workplace managers in the state owned economy, and removing some regulations from small scale private and cooperative enterprises. For some time there was reason to believe the Hungarian reforms had provided a means of at least stabilising the problems of poor economic performance and the inadequacy of consumer provision that all the Soviet-type economies were increasingly prone to. However, by the late 1980s it became clear that Hungary’s relatively high standard of living and political quiescence were maintained at the expense of longer working hours as people combined jobs in the state sector and the ‘second economy’. The consequences of long working hours for people’s health became


increasingly apparent alongside other growing problems such as a serious housing shortage and declining real wages. Among the intelligentsia and professional groups there was a growing concern that Hungarian society was in crisis and pressure began to grow for political change. Then, at the same time as it was becoming clear that the Gorbachev government’s foreign policy no longer threatened Soviet intervention in the affairs of its East European neighbours, reform communists favouring political pluralism became increasingly influential within the Hungarian ruling party. Unlike the communist rulers of neighbouring countries, where no change took place until it had been prompted by popular demonstrations, the Hungarian leadership took the unprecedented step of entering into roundtable negotiations with representatives of opposition forces. The result was the new constitutional arrangements that allowed the establishment of a wide range of competing political parties, who then went on to contest the parliamentary elections of 1990. These resulted in the defeat of the reformed communists (who had shed the hardliners and transformed into the Hungarian Socialist Party) and the victory of the more conservative and traditionalist parties, the Hungarian Democratic Forum, the Christian Democrats and the Smallholders’ Party, who joined together to form a coalition government. The popularity of the new government was very brief. Within six months they performed badly in new local elections around the country and from then on their ratings in opinion polls steadily declined. Their satisfaction level fell from 33 per cent in October 1991 to only 25 per cent in June 1993. Frustration seemed to grow in response to the government’s increasingly traditionalist authoritarian stance. They attracted controversy over many issues, but perhaps most significantly over (1) their privatization policy, which sought to halt ‘spontaneous privatization’ by workplace managements and to bring the whole process back under strict state control, thus attracting accusations of effecting a ‘renationalization’ of property; (2) their reluctance to engage in consultation with interest representation organizations including trades unions and employers associations, either separately or through the Interest Representation Council, resisting completely for the first few months until forced into discussions by street demonstrations by transport drivers, and then taking most of the remaining term of the parliament before its consultation mechanism was fully in operation; (3) their intervention in the management of the mass media, including the sacking of the heads of the state radio and television organizations, and more recently in 1994, the dismissal of over a


hundred radio and television journalists ‘at a stroke’, prompting large street demonstrations. During the life of the first parliament, after an initial period of economic stabilization, the economic situation steadily worsened. For example, people’s earnings from their main jobs declined as a percentage of total earnings from 48.7 per cent in 1990 to 36.1 per cent in 1993. Meanwhile the unemployment rate rose from 1.7 per cent in 1990 to 13 per cent in 1993. While the significance of the private sector has increased, accounting for 55 per cent of GDP by 1993, the privatization of state owned enterprises continued to take place very slowly. Overall economic performance gave cause for concern with GDP declining each year since 1990, and the budget deficit growing to reach 200 billion Forint by 1993.1 In the context of such problems the governing coalition saw its majority in parliament decline from 60 per cent of all seats in 1990 to 51 per cent in 1994, mainly as a result of defections from its ranks. In the context of a parliament in which individual members from all parties changed their alleigances,2 two of the coalition parties, the Democratic Forum and the Smallholders’ were confronted by serious splits. The Forum suffered from a particularly damaging split with its right wing nationalist wing led by Istvan Csurka, its former vice-president, but only after the party leadership had sought to move the party as a whole to the right in an attempt to contain its right wing. The trends and developments summarized above have all been the subject of much debate in Hungary, with various interpretations offered concerning their meaning for the character of the new Hungarian political system. Some of the range of views is reflected in the articles published in this issue, and between them the articles collected here offer analysis of various aspects of the new political system in formation and explore a range of issues relevant to interpretations of its democratic character. In the second contribution Attila Ágh discusses the wider context, both historical and geographical, in which Hungarian political developments are taking place. Drawing on the work of Samuel Huntington, he locates the current transition to parliamentary democracy in Hungary and the rest of East-Central Europe as part of the ‘third wave’ of democratizations, following the first wave earlier in the twentieth century, for example in Britain and the USA, and the second wave as part of the post-1945 settlement in Germany, Italy and Japan. Furthermore, Ágh argues, like the second wave democratizations, the third wave should also be understood as ‘forced democratizations’. In other words their parliamentary systems and constitutional arrangements do not develop freely and ‘organically’, out of the social group relations of their own societies, but are imposed on them from outside. They are shaped in


terms of requirements laid down either by the victors of a war, in the case of the second wave, or at least by the dominant economic powers from whom the newly democratizing countries seek some closer association in the case of the third wave. More specifically, as with the countries of southern Europe, Greece, Portugal and Spain before them, Hungary and its neighbours are required to adopt certain forms of political arrangements if they are to be considered acceptable trading partners and eventual members of the European Union. Of course, as Ágh points out, none of these types of process necessarily results in full democratization. For each ‘wave’ of democratization there can be a ‘reverse’, or for certain historical periods countries may be left in a more complex hybrid situation where they have acquired a ‘shell’ of democratic institutions, but with little content in terms of the way political relations are actually conducted. Sufficient conditions for securing democratization include both external and internal relations. In exploring a range of variables and different possible outcomes, Ágh identifies the particular factors that threaten to impede the process of democratization in Hungary and the rest of East-Central Europe. In terms of external relations he points particularly to the lack of clear intervention or provision of resources by the dominant powers in the current attempts at transition in East-Central Europe, creating a quite different situation from that for example of Germany or Italy in the late 1940s. Within Hungarian society Ágh discusses the continuing influence of traditionalist authoritarianism which was reviving under the last government led by the Hungarian Democratic Forum, and which was in conflict with the more ‘westernizing’ tendencies of the liberal and reformed socialist parties. In conclusion however, while recognizing the strength of the barriers to democratization in Hungary, Ágh argues that the rise of neo-traditionalism should be seen as a temporary phenomenon which can and should be overcome in future years. In the third analysis, András Bozóki provides a different aspect of the context to the current political transition in Hungary in the form of a detailed focus on the immediate historical background to the emergence of the new political system. He identifies three main stages of political change in Hungary between 1987 and 1990. The first stage (from 1987 to March 1989) he sees as characterized by the ‘revitalization of civil society’. During this period Hungarian citizens became increasingly active in single issue pressure groups which, in order to survive, needed to define their aims as non-political. From the 1960s onwards, political participation was only available to the majority of citizens through these informal pressure groups which gradually became umbrella organizations for various groups who were unable to express their political aims directly. Bozóki examines some political aspects of transformations during this period and follows the changing attitudes towards


constitutional change on the part of the ruling communist party as it strove to control the nature of the changes and maintain a framework of ‘socialist pluralism’. Realizing that changes tend not to take place simply on the political level, Bozóki also looks at the changes on the ideological and economic levels. On the economic level, he argues that within the Kádár era, the state was increasingly forced to accommodate the interests of a growing petty bourgeoisie. On the ideological level, he points to the emergence and growth of avante garde literary and art groups and alternative way-of-life movements. The ‘divide and rule’ strategy used by the ruling communists to try and weaken the opposition groups, together with attempts to shore-up the regime with liberalizing reforms, at first helped to prevent the development of a cohesive and unified opposition. However, the communists ultimately lost control of the reform process and the second phase of the transition, referred to by Bozóki as the period of negotiation, began. This second phase (which lasted from March to October 1989) has been referred to as the ‘negotiated revolution’ and in this period the principle of a multiparty system came to be accepted by the communists who realized that they would no longer be able to play a leading role in Hungarian political life. The opposition roundtable played a particularly significant role in the negotiations, and Bozóki provides an insight on the progress of these important talks. The last phase in the transition (from October 1989 to the elections in March 1990) was characterized by the involvement of the broader public who were able to take part in discussions, a referendum, and, eventually elected a non-communist government led by Antall. Significantly, public involvement at this stage led to the breakdown of the political cooperation between the moderates and the reformers and helped to shape the development of the parties. Focusing in more detail on the economic context mentioned by Bozóki, in the fourth study Erzsébet Szalai examines the conflicts of interests between different social groups over the transformation of property relations which underlies the current political transition. Beginning in the 1980s, she traces the emerging competition for control over state owned property between three groups: the bureaucracy of the state and ruling communist party, the managers of large state enterprises, and the managers of smaller sub-units of the large state operations. Noting a shift of power to the managers in the late 1980s, she then shows how the competition broadened at the end of the decade and into the 1990s as groups of industrial workers, and then the new political parties of the post communist period, also entered the scene with their own ideas and aspirations concerning the transfer of state property to new owners. Apart from the wealth of detail she provides on the politics of privati sation in Hungary, and the general context this provides for an


understanding of how the new political system developed, Szalai’s article is particularly interesting for two reasons. First, she sheds light on the much neglected issue of the working class as an actor in the Hungarian political transition. As Tökés has noted,3 in the membership of the roundtable negotiations and in the shape of the new political parties, no provision was made for direct working class representation in the Hungarian political transition. However, as Szalai shows, through attempts to revive the workers’ council movement of 1956, workers in some enterprises did try to exert their own influence on debates over property change, even though ultimately their attempt was unsuccessful in the face of opposition from other interests and the takeover of their movement by traditionalist conservatives close to the ruling Democratic Forum. Secondly, Szalai’s account of events shows in detail how the traditionalist conservative outlook of the government, and their attitudes to particular social groups, affected both the style and content of economic policy-making. While subject to some internal divisions and fluctuations of policy, the general line of the government was to limit the possibilities for what they saw as ‘nomenklatura privatization’ by the managers of the state enterprises, and to exclude various interest representation groups from participation in policy discussions. This has brought about a partial renationalization of property and very slow process of transformation of property relations overall, which, Szalai argues, could lead in the long run to further economic stagnation and the emergence of new and more polarized political conflicts in the future. Having provided various aspects of the context to political transition in the first three articles, the remaining contributions all focus in one way or another on aspects of the new political system as it has emerged during the life of the 1990–94 parliament. In the fifth contribution, Bill Lomax looks at the many problems faced by political parties in the first democratically elected Parliament and at the outcomes of numerous personality clashes and policy disputes. Lomax expresses concern and doubts about the future of democracy in Hungary as a result of what he regards as the fragmentation of political parties, and argues that the political orientations of the parties are becoming more confused while the political system seems to be ‘falling apart’. According to Lomax, one of the reasons for the lack of stability among the parties stems from a lack of commitment to pluralist values which is a legacy of the communist regime. Political behaviour in Hungary is seen as led by non-negotiable values, while democratic politics rests on compromises and the recognition of the legitimacy of the opposition. Lomax describes this lack of a political culture as part of the ‘remains of the Berlin Wall’ and argues that the future of democracy in Hungary is dependent on the development of pluralist forms of behaviour.


Lomax’s argument about the extent and political consequences of nondemocratic values in Hungarian politics is subject to some debate. During the life of the first Parliament, politicians underwent a period of rapid socialization, some decided that they were unsuited to professional politics, others re-considered their political allegiances. But these changes and arguments should perhaps not necessarily be seen as representing an inevitable breakdown in Hungarian politics since the electoral system is structured in such a way that compromise will ultimately be necessary for the political survival of the parties and for the furtherance of their own parliamentary careers. Under a multi-party system, it can be argued that power is as much a consequence of successful negotiations as it is of convincing the electorate of the unity and competence of a particular party. Some of these political compromises are also highlighted in the study by Punnett and Ilonszki as they examine the ways in which the new parties came to deal with the issue of selecting a party leader. Each of the main parties started with a collective leadership but faced a number of pressures which eventually led them to adopt the more traditional style of a single party leader. While the initial commitment to a collective leadership can be seen as a reaction to authoritarian communism, Punnett and Ilonszki argue that democratic politics provide parties with a number of incentives to agree on a single leader. It is common for an electorate to see politics in terms of personalities, and in Hungarian politics personalities tend to be particularly important as the policies of some of the parties seeking election at the 1990 elections lacked refinement and consistency. Consequently, there were advantages in providing the party with a recognized ‘face’ and presenting the electorate with a figure who symbolized party values to the public. The transition to democracy has led to the main parties adopting similar procedures for the selection of a party leader and this has involved a move towards management by the party elite and the development of strategies of avoiding the need for public leadership contests which may highlight divisions within parties. Thus, through their different approaches, both Lomax and Punnett and Ilonszki explore questions of the stability or fragility of the new political institutions, factors affecting their development, and the relation between the newly emerging political forms and the tensions between authoritarianism and democratization in Hungarian political life. These issues are examined further, in relation to the organization of parties and their interrelations within Parliament, by László Szarvas in the seventh contribution. On the one hand he shows elements of stability, for example in describing how the new parliament quickly established regulations and procedures enabling orderly relations between the parliamentary parties, and how for the most part the parties maintained


consistent ideological orientations and discipline in their voting. He also demonstrates a degree of regularity in the way the parties lined up on various issues in parliament, indicating a significant stability in the lines of division between parties. On the other hand, he points to continuing instability in the membership of the party factions in parliament, including splits within parties and factions breaking away to form new parties, and also several cases of individual changes of allegiance by MPs, either between parties or from membership of a party faction to independent status. In conclusion, Szarvas describes the 1990–94 parliament as a ‘learning parliament’ in the process of democratic development which, despite the instability of party membership, was already conforming to general patterns similar to those of parliamentary systems of longer standing elsewhere in Europe. A further important aspect of the secure establishment of a parliamentary democracy concerns the attitudes and activities of MPs, the extent to which these are oriented to the idea of representing their voters and the ways in which the idea of representation is understood. Results from the first study of these questions in Hungary are reported in the contribution by Gabriella Ilonszki and David Judge. Drawing on the extensive western literature on this issue, they sought to assess the degree to which the orientation of Hungarian MPs had changed as a result of the move from the communist approach based on the ‘representativeness’ of broad demographic categories, through the ‘quasi-representation’ of the move to constituency based MPs in the last years of the communist period, to the current system based on competitive elections from a combination of constituencies and party lists. While raising some general criticisms of the way the question of representation has been conceptualized in western political science literature, they offer evidence of a significant convergence of the orientations of Hungarian and western MPs in the sense of a similar range of approaches being evident in each case. In Hungary they note that although most voting was along party lines (as shown in more detail by Szarvas), MPs showed clear signs of adopting a ‘trustee’ approach to questions of representing their constituents and saw their own conscience as a major determinant of the way they voted on various issues. In part, Ilonszki and Judge suggests, this indicates the weak development of party organization so far, but on the other hand it may be that personal convictions related closely to party policy for most Hungarian MPs. Pursuing further the theme introduced by Ilonszki and Judge of links between formal institutions and the population more widely, Cox and Vass, in the ninth contribution, attempt to address the question of links between civil society and formal politics through interest representation organizations and civil associations. Tracing developments since the 1980s, and offering an assessment of the available


evidence, they cast doubt on some of the more pessimistic views of the weakness of Hungarian civil society and suggest the key question lies in the weakness so far of links between civil society and formal politics. This results partly from structural features in Hungarian society, but also from more contingent factors such as the distraction of the energies of people into party politics during the first parliament, and the negative attitude of the coalition government to institutions of interest representation. In may be therefore that the period of the second parliament and the attitudes of its Socialist Party majority will be crucial for determining further developments in this field. Continuing the theme of interest representation, in the final chapter, Éva Hajba focuses on the changing fortunes of environmental groups both in the Kádár era and during the life of the first democratically elected Parliament. The history of the Hungarian greens is interesting in a number of respects. First, the green movement was one of the most prominent of the organized single issue interest groups which existed during the 1980s. At a time when political opposition was not tolerated by the ruling communist party, environmental groups gained public support and were successful in challenging a number of government proposals which would have had negative environmental consequences. Second, a number of people who were active in the green movement prior to 1989 went on to hold influential positions in the first democratically elected Parliament. Yet despite a strong recent tradition in environmental protest and the influence of former green activists in the new regime, political change in Hungary has resulted in the peripheralization of environmental politics. The Hungarian Green Party secured less than one per cent of the vote in the 1990 elections and an environmental Bill drafted by the ruling HDF coalition failed to win support. In other words, although former green activists were represented in most of the main political parties, they failed to have any real impact and problems associated with poor environmental conditions seemed to deteriorate. Hajba tries to explain the reasons for their failure. One of the main reasons cited for the marginalization of green interests in Hungary is economic: with rising unemployment and serious problems controlling inflation, the Government simply had other, more pressing, priorities and a very heavy legislative programme. Indeed, one of the problems with democratic political systems is that it is to the advantage of ruling parties to concentrate on legislation which will have a noticeable impact in the short-term. Many of the benefits of environmental protection can only be appreciated in the long-term and therefore may do little to boost the Government’s electoral prospects. Furthermore, as the newly democratized countries of eastern Europe compete to attract multinational firms to boost their weak economies, they may find that strict environmental legislation provides a


disincentive to companies who hope to reduce operating costs through bypassing the more stringent standards which operate in western Europe. Hajba argues that the failure of the first Parliament to enact environmental legislation has led to something of a crisis of confidence on the part of the many environmental interest groups who made representations to the Government when policies were being formulated. As a result of this failure we may find a resurgence of green interest groups outside of Parliament. While all the articles published here share a common concern with the general theme of the democratic transition in Hungary, they also reflect shared concerns at a more personal level. The majority of the articles are the result of common discussions and in some cases collaborative work between colleagues at the Department of Government, University of Strathclyde, and at the Department of Political Sciences, Budapest University of Economic Sciences. Our joint work began as part of a teaching and training link funded by the British Council under the Hungarian Academic Links Programme and our thanks are due to the British Council for their help and encouragement in establishing and developing this link. A sign of its success is reflected in this volume, since on the basis of our co-operation in teaching and training we have begun to develop joint research interests, part of which are reflected in the contents of these articles. In the course of our co-operation we also came into increasing contact with other scholars of Hungarian politics, both in Britain and Hungary, learned much from them, and found some of their research interests to be complementary with ours. For this reason we are pleased to also include the contributions of András Bozóki, Bill Lomax and Erszébet Szalai. The editors would like to thank all our colleagues in Britain and Hungary for their help and advice in putting this collection together. NOTES 1. For further details see A.Ágh, ‘After Four Years: The General Situation in Hungary in 1994’, Budapest Papers on Democratic Transition, No. 88 (1994). 2. See the article by László Szarvas in this volume. 3. R.Tökés, ‘Hungary’s New Political Elites’, in G.Szoboszlai (ed.), Democracy and Political Transformation: Theories of East Central European Realities (Budapest: HPSA, 1991), p. 254.

Part I The Political Transition in Context

14

The Paradoxes of Transition: The External and Internal Overload of the Transition Process ATTILA ÁGH

The countries of former communist East-Central Europe are experiencing an imposed set of over-generalized and oversimplified institutional and value systems, whose relevance is not self-evident to the populations concerned, and whose successful implementation cannot be assumed. A range of possibilities exist, from formalist, elitist and ‘partyist’ democracy, or to tyrannical majoritarianism, authoritarianism or west European-style democracy. In the current world-wide wave of authoritarian renewal, overcoming the authoritarian history of the region is an added dimension of the struggle for democracy. Forced Democracies in East-Central Europe The revolutions of 1989 in the countries of East-Central Europe were events of global importance. In the first place these countries (Poland, the Czech lands, Slovakia, Hungary and, possibly, Slovenia and Croatia) made great efforts to liberate themselves from the captivity of the Soviet empire, and their resistance weakened the whole empire fatally. The events of 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet empire have made all the contradictions of old world order outdated and have created a great number of new domestic and international contradictions. Yet basically these relatively small countries were, and still are, over-dependent on external factors; they have remained captives of the international system and over-sensitive to all external changes. Thus, despite all of their efforts and contributions, their democratic transition was a direct result not of their own action but of the disintegration of the bipolar world system. Paradoxically, although countries such as Poland and Hungary mostly ‘liberated’ themselves, their liberation from the Soviet empire was, at the same time, a ‘defeat’ for them. Because of their structural and conjunctural weakness, they have had to accept the model of Western


democracy that has been the fundamental precondition for their acceptence in the international system. We can therefore consider these emerging new democracies as ‘forced’ or ‘imposed’ ones. They were, in fact, ‘forced to be free’. Of course, forced democratization is not a new situation in political history. The same happened to some countries (Germany, Italy and Japan) in the early post-war period when this term was used first for the model of ‘democratization through defeat’.1 Samuel Huntington has identified three European waves of global democratization in all. After the first wave of the Anglo-Saxon countries and the second, post-war wave of democratizations (Germany, Italy and Japan), the recent ones in Southern Europe, Latin America and the eastern half of Europe have been classified as ‘The Third Wave’ (as the title of Huntington’s book suggests). Between these waves of democratization there were two ‘reverse periods’ and Huntington also sees the possibility of ‘The Third Reverse’ (perhaps the title of his next book, five years hence). There is no doubt for him that the waves of democratization have been functions of the world system as such and not only the result of internal developments. This is why and how the countries of the second and third waves have been forced to be free. In this context, inside the third wave, the East-Central European democratizations represent the third generation after the South European and Latin American ones. The East European case is completely different, however, in that it may be either the fourth generation or the next reverse wave.2 The forced democratizations in the early post-war period took place in the emerging bipolar world system, in the old world order. The United States then had a very strong vested interest in supporting the new democracies through the Marshall Plan for a simultaneous transformation of economy and polity, or in other words for the creation of both a market economy and democracy. The 1989 revolutions, in turn, meant not only the collapse of the external Soviet empire but of the whole bipolar world and the emergence of the new world order. However, the forced democratization of the East-Central European countries has been more paradoxical. The first paradox is that, although the Western powers were very much interested in the defeat of state socialism, because they did not have an enemy image of the East-Central European countries, they have not shown any particular engagement in supporting their new democracies. To begin with, these countries tried to be free on their own, then they were forced to be free, and now they have been abandoned. This leads us to the second paradox: the East-Central European countries

Attila Ágh is Professor of Political Sciences at the University of Economic Sciences, Budapest.

THE PARADOXES OF TRANSITION 17

have been forced to play a role expected from outside which has not been the optimal way of democratization from the inside. The paradoxes of democratic transition had already appeared in the second wave but they were solved in the circumstances of the cold war confrontations by massive US political and economic assistance. Claus Offe clearly formulates this paradox as the principle of the necessity of simultaneous transition in politics and the economy: The only circumstance under which the market economy and democracy can be simultaneously implanted and prosper is that one in which both are forced upon a society from outside and guaranteed by international relations of dependency and supervision for a long period of time. This, at least, is arguably the lesson offered by the war ruined post-war democracies of Japan, and, with qualification, of the Federal Republic of Germany. Therefore Offe is very pessimistic about the fate of the East-Central European developments, since ‘there is no obvious “patron power” that would be a natural candidate for the task of supervising and enforcing the peaceful nature of the transition process’.3 In my opinion, however, the failure of the East-Central European democratizations has not been predetermined at all, although the paradoxical nature of transition appears in a much more marked way. This forced democratization has been negative for the East-Central European developments in many respects, by imposing alien standards upon them which are based on the over-generalizations and over-simplifications of international organizations. At the same time it has been positive in creating a ‘forced-course development’ for democratization which has provided protection against anti-democratic forces and influences coming from inside. This positive aspect of forced democratization has been dominating so far, but with so many disturbing ‘side effects’ that it remains an open question whether the East-Central European countries will follow the success story of the South European forced democratizations or whether they have to face a period of reversal, that is, the breakdown of democracy, after this current short period of redemocratization. History shows that the process is not predetermined either way. Even the United States failed in the post-war period in most cases of forced democratization throughout the world, and in Europe above all in Greece and Turkey. The special compromise, the façade or formal democracy, which developed there has a relevance also for the recent developments in the eastern half of Europe. Where the internal political and economic circumstances for substantial democratization were not present, the forced democratizations were derailed and produced a minimum


democracy consisting of the constitutional formalities as a façade for what was actually an authoritarian regime. This was clearly the Greek case in its ‘ally phase’ when the United States accepted Greece as an ally in the bipolar European security order and did not impose democracy as a model upon it. The turning-point for Greek democratization came in the mid- 1970s. The ‘transition trigger’ resulted from the combined effect of external and internal linkages, including both the global and the domestic economic crisis. In this respect the Greek transformation is the closest to the EastCentral European developments, except for the main thing: the engagement of the EC countries in the democratization process, which was extremely strong in Greece and surprisingly weak in East-Central Europe. In the mid-1970s the Greek political elite suffered defeat from outside (the Cyprus conflict) as well as from inside (the crisis of the colonels’ regime), and it was simply forced to change its political system dramatically by a radical adjustment to West European standards. In other words, it had to give up the formal or façade democracy and change it into one of substance. The forced or imposed character of systemic change was not new at all in Greek political history and the crisis was solved by a shift from US dependency (‘ally’) status to the EC ‘model’ of substantial democracy. The forced democratization in Greece was the first EC ‘promotion of democracy’ in the third wave, followed by Spain and Portugal, but it has remained the most difficult one. Greece was a very special case of ‘democratization through defeat’. This time, however, the EC forced its Greek partner to be democratic not mainly by military but by economic means. The ‘capitulation’ of Greece to forced democratization by the European Community was mostly based on the Greeks perception of, and accommodation with, their own ‘penetrated society’ and external dependence: The Greeks themselves, however, take for granted an explicit connection between the political regime and its external links…it often seems as if a considerable proportion of the population views the polity as an only partially autonomous sub-unit of its broader international environment. Long before political scientists recognized the importance of linkages between national and international systems, the Greeks believed that the nature of their regime was largely determined by the ‘foreign factor’.4 The experiences and perceptions of the East-Central European populations have been historically very similar, yet the present situation is fundamentally different. Many alien and artificial elements were imposed upon the countries that underwent forced democratization, but


after some time these ‘inorganic’ elements became mostly ‘organic’ and they produced or triggered a real democratization effect. However, the forced democratization by the EC in East-Central Europe at present lacks both the means and the resources to trigger a successful democratization. Thus the East-Central European countries are left in the middle of nowhere, and the East European countries, in turn, have only a façade of democratization. This contrast of high expectations and lack of support gives rise to an external overload for the East-Central European democratizations, while the crisis of the East European ‘façade’ democracies means a special burden for them, in addition to this external overload. Forced democratization can be successful only if either the external pressure (as in Japan) or the internal social potential (as in Germany) is great enough to trigger a positive spiral of simultaneous changes, so that the changes in the political and economic systems are able to reinforce each other in democratization and marketization. In the East-Central European region both have been missing so far, and if both factors are insufficient in the long run, then the slide back to a façade democracy would seem to be unavoidable. As we know from post-war history, façade democracies can result either from the failures of forced democracies or from situations where the external patron, or ‘victor’, accepts a pseudo- or superficial democratization with an external façade which looks ‘democratic’ from outside. This is the case with East European countries today and this situation is a great danger for the East-Central European semidemocracies. It is very important to emphasize the fundamental differences between forced and façade democracies, but at the same time also those between façade democracies and authoritarian regimes, because even limited and formalistic human rights matter a lot compared to conditions under authoritarian regimes. Still, our main concern here is to point out that façade democracies represent a blind alley in the democratization process. Therefore the divergence between the forced but substantial democratization (Italy) and superficial façade democratization (Greece before the mid-1970s) is absolutely vital for our argument. The later type of ‘promotion of democracy’ meant its ‘third-worldization’ by the United States, and this is what we are witnessing today in the East European countries. The Western powers have offered an easy compromise for the East European region. If they build up a thin democratic façade and provide some domestic political stability, then they are considered democratic countries and eligible for Western assistance. In this case the crucial issue is whether these façade democracies can be consolidated in their deep economic crisis and with minimal Western assistance, or whether the breakdown of democracy is unavoidable, as it has been so in


many countries of the same kind in the post-war period. The international organizations treat the East European countries in the way they usually treat underdeveloped countries, but this treatment may not be sufficient for their stabilization. Actually these countries now embody the biggest danger both for the new European order and for their neighbours, the whole East-Central European region. Yugoslavia and Russia alike represent the failure of the EC crisis management, although in different ways, and Yugoslavia may indicate the future of the former Soviet Union, since the Serbian and the Russian empires had a lot in common.5 The East European countries, in deep crisis even now, can explode at any time and disturb the build-up of the new European ‘post-war order’, unless they are more effectively ‘forced’ at least to take formal democratization seriously. Obviously some East European countries, such as Serbia, Romania and Russia, have not been able to build a credible façade of democracy. They are not stable domestically at all, they are politically delegitimized, and their political elites seek a solution in aggressive and militant emotional nationalism in order to create some legitimacy for themselves. In this drive for stability by aggressive nationalism they need external enemies in the neigbourhood as well as at home, and also a myth of global conspiracy against their countries. The unstable East European façade democracies have been the worst possible environment for the democratic transition of the East-Central European countries. Yet, in the Central European region the democratization process in some fundamental features has become irreversible. The real question here is whether this process can be accomplished or must remain a half-democratization. In the East European region, however, this point of no return has not been reached yet, and the former state socialist regimes have only been transformed to a new kind of ‘national communism’ with the old paternalistic étatism. The East European region, of course, is not homogeneous. Yugoslavia (or Serbia) may represent the worst, Bulgaria the best case, but the whole East European region is still in the period of the ‘original crisis’ and has not yet begun the real democratic transition. If we change the comparative focus, the difference between Southern Europe and East-Central Europe is as great as that between East-Central Europe and Eastern Europe. It is not so much the internal points of departure but rather, above all, the external conditions that are different between South-East and East-Central Europe. As discussed above, in the South European case the EC adopted a ‘model’ approach (the mandatory acceptance of the EC model of democracy and market economy) but this is more doubtful in the Central European case. More importantly, however, the South European democratic transition took place in a stable region and in the balanced international system of the old world


order while the Central European transition is attempting to stabilize itself in the troubled waters of the not yet emerging new world order.6 The external conditions in the neighbouring regions are even more detrimental. Altogether, from a narrow economic point of view, the following difficulties stand in the way of the East-Central European democratic transition: (1) the inertia of the former system with its tremendous debt burden, dead industries and passive economic mentality; (2) the price of opening up the closed economy which has devalued its products and production units on the world market; (3) the transition costs of economic system change, the destruction of the old and construction of the new economic structure and employment; (4) the collapse of the international trade and monetary network, and the trade diversion towards new markets and partners; and (5) the economic loss produced from the series of international crises globally (the Gulf crisis with high oil prices and the collapse of Soviet market with a debt never really repaid) and regionally (the Yugoslav war with its disastrous effects on trade, travel and transport). Paradoxically enough, although for the most part unwittingly, the EC produces also much trouble for the East-Central European countries. On the one hand there is an expectation on the part of the EC that the EastCentral European countries will overcome the economic crisis, provide regular debt servicing and expand exports, but on the other hand the EC is sophisticated enough to discover non-tariff measures to protect its markets from successful East-Central European export industries such as meat or steel. The EC has not been too eager to include the East-Central European countries in its East European assistance programmes, it has not created an East-Central European regional clearing system for solving the currency issues, and, in general, it has been too preoccupied with its own birth-pangs in the post-Maastricht Europe. While the new vision of East-Central European integration has not yet emerged, smallmindedness and ‘short-termism’ still prevail. In 1992 total East-Central European exports made up only 1.6 per cent of EC imports, while Austrian exports alone made up 1.9 per cent. Indeed, the economic recovery of the East-Central European countries would not threaten the EC markets because of the relatively small size of their economies. The whole question of East-Central European integration into the EC still awaits a political decision.7 I see four possible scenarios for East-Central European development:


(1) Germanization as the partial integration of East-Central European into the EC through a semi-formalized German sphere of influence. This partial integration can be established as part of an intensive economic relationship of currency, trade and investment issues, bordering on dependency. The EC passivity towards the East-Central European countries invigorates their efforts to join the dynamic German economy, and Germany may take this opportunity to seriously extend its activity to this region after having fully absorbed its eastern provinces. This back-door entrance to the EC economic system, however, also has some negative consequences in terms of relationships with other EC countries, and, as a unilateral economic connection, it leaves open the questions of the political and military integration of this turbulent region into the EC. However, this scenario can be helpful to economic stabilization and could lead to a genuine democratic transition in the event of a more marked German effort in favour of East-Central European forced democratization. (2) Turkization means just the opposite option: the formal integration into Western military organizations (NATO, WEU or both) which can provide military security for the EC against the permanent East European crisis zone on its borders, but all the other issues of integration would remain unresolved. The Turkish case shows, in fact, that some countries can be kept in this half-way situation for decades and they are not eligible for the other aspects of integration, although they may even have an association treaty with the EC. The East-Central European countries are in many ways different from Turkey, most evidently in their geographical proximity to the EC, but this could be a major reason to turn them into a fortress, a buffer zone between the island of calmness and the sea of turbulence. This scenario in the long run would reduce the East-Central European democracies to the East European type of façade democracies with some formal rules of democratic behaviour such as ‘electoralism’. (3) Yugoslavization is obviously the worst-case scenario for the EastCentral European region. It is very unlikely but it cannot be excluded. This low-probability scenario presupposes the complete abandonment of the East-Central European region by the EC and the intensification of low-intensity conflicts by Serbia into high-intensity ones within the whole region. This escalation of regional conflict threatens everywhere in the Western part of the former Soviet Union from Moldova to the Baltic States, and above all, in Russia itself where fragmentation as ‘bantustanization’ can turn into a desperate effort of re-centralization by which Russia may attempt to reconquer its previous sphere of influence. In the rimlands of the East-Central European region there have been so many unpredictable events that this ‘absurd’ scenario cannot be excluded, and the EC has not fared at


all well in its role of crisis management in the East European region. This collapse would also mean the breakdown of democracy in the East-Central European countries with little hope that in the next redemocratization wave the EC would have better prepared neighbourhood policies. (4) Europeanization is the optimal scenario for the East-Central European region, in which all the aspects of European integration would be treated in a coherent way. This would presuppose a strategic vision or ‘grand design’ on the EC side and a concentrated effort of the EastCentral European countries to overcome the ‘post-communist’ crisis. The victory over short-termism and narrow-mindedness on both sides could lead to the full accomplishment of the forced democratization in the coming ten to fifteen years. This is a mediumprobability scenario because the Europeanization process has already begun in many fields, but very controversially on both sides and with many setbacks.8 There are two major requirements for this positive turn in the EastCentral European region: first, the elaboration of the ‘grand design’ of the East-Central European integration by the EC and, second, the emergence in the East-Central European countries of a new professional political elite with a firm commitment to Europeanization. After having discussed the external overload, we have to turn now to the internal overload of the democratic transition. The Internal Paradoxes of Democratic Transition The East-Central European countries have also created some obstacles to democratic transition for themselves. Even the word ‘transition’ has become doubtful since it seems to imply a prediction of progress to full democratization. Today, with the crisis of ‘transitology’, most analysts use the terms of the transformation and change interchangeably with transition, or they abandon the word ‘transition’ completely. In my view, it is too early to adopt that pessimistic conclusion about the future developments of East-Central Europe. The positive outcome—the consolidation of the young democracies—is still very likely, but we now see the whole democratization process with more scepticism and sophistication than some years ago. From the very beginning, however, there have been some conceptual uncertainties and observers have used competing notions to discuss the East-Central European developments, for example in terms of revolution, transition, transformation and restoration. These new doubts on ‘transition’ have emerged before the conceptual framework of system change could be ‘consolidated’.9 I suggest that this intellectual tradition could and should be retained for East-Central Europe, although the questioning of the term ‘transition’


does reflect a new crisis. This new crisis is not a prolongation of the previous one; it is not the deepening and widening of that crisis which led to the collapse of the state socialist systems, but it is absolutely new as a crisis of crisis management, a failure in the reaction to the former crisis. I would call this ‘post-communist’ crisis the ‘crisis of neo-traditionalism’, of the re-awakened past, a late ninteenth-century response to the late twentieth-century challenge. In some ways the new paternalistic étatism is not new but represents very strong continuity with state socialism. Since the mid-nineteenth century all the political courses or regimes in East-Central Europe have represented a changing mixture of halfdemocratic and half-authoritarian systems in which the democratic features have been reduced to constitutional formalities. At most they have existed only for the elites, but the ‘overweight’ role of state has remained intact. On the question of the recent ‘post-communist’ authoritarian renewal, Adam Michnik argues that ‘our fight against the totalitarian communism has ended. But our fight for freedom has just begun.’10 We realize more and more that after the collapse of state socialism only a formalist, elite democracy has emerged, in which the democratic features have been overshadowed by our authoritarian heritage. The authoritarian renewal has threatened the democratization process by offering a blind alley of neo-traditionalism and anti-European provincialism. Therefore the real fight for democracy has only now begun, but this time against the newly emerging neo-traditionalist regimes. The traditional ‘political class’ with its anti-democratic political culture has returned to power in East-Central Europe. It makes a claim to have a monopoly of power and to have a historical vision and a mission to rule. The authoritarian character of politics is presented as the most valuable part of the national tradition. This traditionalist elite has returned to power with all the paraphernalia of symbols, slogans, mental and ideological simplicities, claiming that it can save the nation in the present ‘moral’ crisis. The paradoxes of transition in the East-Central European countries have appeared in the following major ways and forms: (1) The inside of the political system as a contradiction between the democratic form and anti-democratic content, between the elite democracy and the alienation of people from politics, between the democratization of macro-political institutions and clientelism as an anti-democratic fusion of economics and politics. (2) The structural contradiction between westernized macro-politics and the weak dependent economy with a sluggish privatization and reinvigorated state sector, re-nationalized by the new political elite in order to extend its political power.


(3) The increasing battle between politics and society, the growing gap again between ‘us’ and ‘them’, state and nation, macro-politics and other spheres of socio-political life, between the demobilizing efforts of the new ruling elite and civil remobilization against the new regimes.11 Obviously, there is no coordination between the three major aspects of systemic change—the economic, political and social dimensions. Instead, politics has been running amok, and as a result it has produced a new crisis, in which: (i) the priorities of the new ruling elite have been fundamentally different from those of society, therefore economic crisis management as a priority has been mostly abandoned; (ii) the new elite has not been ready to accept society and its representatives as partners, so all-round social warfare has broken out between state and society; (ii i) finally, the political system has underperformed; it has worked with very low efficiency, and the effectiveness of political system change has been tragically defective and faulty. Political culture as the ‘software’ has actually played a more important role in the East-Central European transformations than have the legal institutions as the ‘hardware’. The subjective factor can change the institutions very quickly, but itself changes very slowly. This is why it is so difficult to cope with the authoritarian heritage. But democrats are the results and not the preconditions of the democratic transition. The mass emergence of democrats can be observed only after a long process of democratization when the democratic culture permeates all walks of life. This is the fundamental turning-point in the establishment of the selfsustaining democracy—what has been called in Spain ‘the invention of democratic tradition’. The dynamic model of democratization attributes a great role to the subjective factor in both elite and mass transformations: first ‘there must be a conscious adaptation of democratic rules’ and then ‘both politicians and electorate must be habituated to these rules’. Consequently, as Dankwart Rustow argues, ‘Circumstances may force, trick, lure or cajole non-democrats into democratic behavior’.12 No doubt the Latin American and Southern European political elites had the same authoritarian heritage to overcome for democratization to occur, but they also had more possibilities to manoeuvre during the democratic transition than did the East-Central European elites in the conditions of benign neglect. After the capitulation of state socialist regimes it was ‘pre-determined’ that the new political system had to be acceptable to the Western governments, and compatible with their own


patterns of elite behaviour. Also, since the populations of the EastCentral European countries were attracted by the demonstration effect of Western democracies, they set up expectations to which the new political elite had to conform. In this situation a double paradox has emerged with positive and negative effects: on one side the new elites could not avoid some kind of westernization, but this has remained on the surface, since they neither know western political culture properly, nor accept it completely. On the other side the West has also imposed upon them certain rules that have been alien and detrimental to their national development. As a result, the new elites have become double-faced, and all the contradictions and limitations of the democratic transition have been concentrated in their actions and patterns of behaviour. Of course, the new elites have been very fragmented in many ways, but they have acted towards the masses in their elite roles as almost one unitary actor. They have underperformed in their modernizing and democratizing roles, since they have been unable to produce a programme of modernization and they have not been ready to mobilize the masses for democratization. Nancy Bermeo may in general be correct when she argues that ‘democracy is always the fruit of popular struggle, and this must be never forgotten, but the design of formal democratic institutions is, of necessity, the work of a political elite’. However, the East-Central European new elites, in particular, have not yet prepared either the design of the new democracy or the mobilization plan to accomplish it.13 The new elites so far have been hostages to the old political system, the state socialism in their mentality and their drive for full power. As such, they have become the major obstacle to the further progress of the democratic transition. This is the reason why in the East-Central European countries a new tension has emerged between the elite and the masses, rather similar to that in the former system. If we overcome the simplistic view of elite-mass linkages, according to which the East-Central European transformations as negotiated transitions have only been elite games without mass movements, then we cannot fail to notice that a turning-point occurred after the change-over of elites or power transfer: there were very active mass movements everywhere in East-Central European countries before the collapse of state socialism, and they pushed forward the elite negotiations and legitimized them in advance, but the new elites coming to power then tried to stop and demobilize them. Unlike in the South European countries, the East-Central European elites have not yet concluded social pacts because they have refused to accept other social actors as partners representing the interests of the articulated and organized civil society in the democratization process.14 In the first phase of democratic transition, inside the fragmented political elite, the group that has dominated so far has been the one representing authoritarian renewal as the intellectual and political


heritage of the traditional political class. Their intellectual-moralist opposition, with its historical roots in the former hard opposition to the state socialism, has been unable until now to elaborate a viable and widely supported political alternative to this traditional conservatism and paternalist étatism. Their weak abstract-doctrinaire presentation of the ideas of westernization and Europeanization has been pushed into the background by the neo-traditionalist new rulers who are believers in the strong state and tough power politics. This ‘new-old’ political class has no real idea about late twentieth century Europe, which is, at the same time, alien to their ‘archaic’ mentality. They would like to return to a ‘Christian Europe’ of the kind the West no longer knows, and to a Golden Age of the National History that Never Was.15 The danger of this detour from real democratization has been present since the end of the pre-transition crisis, but we have not noticed it properly until now. This means that while the left-right political spectrum is still valid in East-Central Europe, for a full analysis it has to be complemented by a spectrum ranging from Europeanization to traditionalization. The major political actors, above all the political parties, can be characterized by using only these two axes, which result in four types of parties: Traditionalist Right, Traditionalist Left, European Right and European Left—a typology which has been quite common in Poland with its ‘multi-party system’. The dominant political forces belong to the neo-traditionalist Right while the centre-right Europeanizing parties are still too weak to govern and to formulate the grand design for democratization. Thus, in contrast to the common wisdom, it is the Right which has been in deeper crisis, since it has not been able to produce a real and strong European type of centre-right party. The Left has also been similarly split between the traditionalists and modernists (if the Stalinist conservatives can be called Left at all). Therefore the political fight has been going on not only between Left and Right, but also between Traditionalizers and Europeanizers, although the first cleavage still dominates over the second. In the East European region the leftist and rightist traditionalist conservatives, the friends of paternalistic étatism, have already found their common denominator in national communism. This danger of an unholy alliance between different forces of the authoritarian renewal is present also in the East-Central European countries, but the modernizing political parties are not yet ready on both the left and right sides of the political spectrum to form an alliance with each other in order to defeat the authoritarians and to clear the ground for normal competition within a modern political system of the European type. Summing up, there are four types of degeneration or distortion of democracy which threaten the democractic transition in the countries of East-Central Europe as semi- or pseudo-democracies:


(1) Formalist democracy in which there is no actual counter-elite as an organized and institutionalized opposition which could offer a radically different political alternative. Therefore the electorate ‘freely’ re-elects the same political class—organized in a hegemonic party system in Sartori’s terms—with a rather large degree of popular participation (for example, Mexico). (2) Elitist democracy in which there are some competitive elites— organized in a party system, with many competitive parties, but where one of them is predominant—sharing the whole political scenery among themselves and excluding any meaningful popular participation from policy-making in general (the early British polity or the recent Indian system). (3) Partyist democracy (partitocrazia in Italian) in which there are real competitive parties but they are the only political actors and they try to exclude all the other social and political actors—above all, organized interests—from the decision-making process, so that politics becomes a ‘chamber drama’ of the party oligarchies, interwoven with their ‘clienturas’ in the economy (Italy, Japan). (4) Tyrannical majorities which are the distortions of majoritarian democracies, excluding all consensual measures for political, ethnic and cultural minorities—found in young democracies where the first random majorities make an effort to monopolize all powers and, as new governments, refuse all compromises with the new oppositions. In East-Central European we have a tradition of formalist democracies with a hegemonic party system in which the political class almost completely merges with the public administration, and in the new wave of democratization we have experienced all four types of distortions listed above. The ‘old-new’ political classes have tried to build up a formalist democracy with a very active tyrannical majority, above all in Hungary, but, so far, ‘checks and balances’ have constrained these tendencies to some extent. In order to overcome the present deadlock in democratization, we need a social pact to open up politics for meaningful popular participation and the co-option of social and political actors. In this situation our four scenarios for East-Central European reappear from inside as two modernization-Europeanization and two retraditionalization-‘provincialization’ scenarios with markedly different elite-mass linkages: (1) ‘Germanization’ as a semi-modernization scenario, in which the economic mobilization of the large parts of the population can go ahead but under the leadership of the ‘comprador’ bourgeoisie emerging from joint ventures and foreign enterprises, and also organizing a political pressure group. The national bourgeosie


remains weak, the middle classes develop in a controversial way, but still relatively large masses are involved in the modernization process. Some national independence parties would emerge as a political opposition to balance the unilateral dependence on the German giant. It would be necessary to look for more coherent and wider integration strategies to keep open the option of real Europeanization. (2) The Turkization scenario would mean a political takeover by a narrow modernizing elite (‘reform-dictatorship’) in the spirit of a strong state, as the best agent of modernization, to suppress popular discontent with the tacit approval of the Western powers. This modernizing elite has been present in its technocratic forms but it has not yet received political support. The economists demanding shock therapy have not yet found their counterparts in uniforms, although in the ‘creative chaos’ of the democratic transition some intellectuals and enterpreneurs have already called for a strong man. This scenario of ‘first market, then democracy’ seems feasible if the economic crisis continues to deepen drastically and populism from below as a form of popular pressure threatens law and order. This scenario is, in my understanding, an anti-modernization scenario, because it would lead not only to the breakdown of democracy but also to the breakdown of a genuine developed market economy. In the European environment an oppressed population cannot develop a full-scale market economy either.16 (3) The ‘Yugoslavization’ scenario can enter into force if the confrontation with the neigbouring East European countries turns from low- to high-intensity conflicts. It can also be the result of domestic developments if the extreme Right, in the form of ‘populism from above’, takes over and creates a regime similar to national communism. If we visualize the political spectrum as a horseshoe model, the extreme Right and the extreme Left are not so far apart and not so different from each other. The extreme nationalistpopulist part of the present East-Central European political elites has produced similar declarations to those in power in the East European countries and they need each other as enemies for their own domestic support. This clearly anti-modernization scenario is very unlikely: although the extreme nationalist-populist Right has been present in East-Central European political life, it is very weak compared to the aggressive and powerful East European nationalist elites, and it has not received any international support either. (4) The ‘Europeanization’ scenario is, at the same time, the real democratization scenario, entailing an emerging professional political elite and an articulated civil society organized into legitimate social organizations and actors. A coherent European integration


process would produce rather broad middle classes, a broader modernizing elite and a balanced political system with dominating centre-left and centre-right parties. This full modernization scenario can be accomplished, of course, only in the long run and not necessarily in its ideal form, but the crucial issue is whether, in the second phase of democratic transition, the present neo-traditionalism can be overcome by an unambiguous Europeanizing orientation. So far, the different East-Central European countries have had different combinations of the above scenarios. Further differences can easily be predicted but it is also clear that the whole region has to engage in a more or less common action in favour of Europeanization in the form of some kind of regional integration. Again, for the diversity of the East-Central European democratic transition, experience has shown so far that the different types of transition lead to markedly different kinds of democracy. The emerging young democracies may be more ‘corporatist’, ‘populist’, ‘consociational’ or ‘electoralist’, but in order to be sustainable or consolidated they have to be based on a broad social transformation and political participation.17 We can characterize the particular Hungarian developments in the framework of the general East-Central European framework through a series of paradoxes. (1) Hungary was the first among the East-Central European countries to embark upon socioeconomic reforms and significant results were achieved even before 1989 in economic legislation for marketization and privatization. Yet it was the first freely elected Hungarian government that then most neglected economic crisis-management and ignored the fundamental necessities of the economic and social system change as opposed to the political transformation. In other words, it was a situation of ‘politics running amok’. (2) Hungary had an early multiparty system, emerging already in 1988– 89, and has had the least fragmented party system so far in the EastCentral European region. Nevertheless it has witnessed the most sustained attempt to have a new ruling party—a state-party with a party-state—through the Hungarian Democratic Forum as an umbrella organization. Although this ruling party fell apart, the danger of the rise of a new conservative ‘successor’ party still exists. This can be described as the ‘state-party syndrome’. (3) In the 1980s a new, non-ideological technocratic elite came on to the scene and a large intelligentsia was born in Hungary. Nevertheless, the comeback of the traditional political class was the most marked phenomenon here, with its late nineteenth-century ideas on conservative ‘national liberalism’ and ‘Christian Europe’. At the same


time, as a contrast to the ‘Return to the Past’ syndrome in EastCentral Europe, we can see here the strongest modernizerEuropeanizer liberal parties (the Alliance of Free Democrats as a social-liberal party and the Alliance of Young Democrats as a selfproclaimed conservative liberal party) and the earliest radically reformed ‘successor’ party (the Hungarian Socialist Party) with a clear social democratic profile. This can be described as an ‘ideologically polarized multiparty system’. (4) The national-ethnic minority issues are most relevant for Hungary in the East-Central European region because of the three to four million Hungarians living in the neigbouring countries, with their minority rights largely unsettled in the countries concerned. These circumstances gave rise to the strongest form of extreme right-wing nationalist populism which remained inside the governing coalition for three years. But the marginalization of this political force has also occurred first and foremost in Hungary. There has been no real danger that it could become a significant political factor in that country, where most people are immune to militant nationalism. (5) The conflict of values between Europeanizers and traditionalizers broke out first in Hungary, has been the most vehemently there, and has also been first solved there, in the basic terms of a ‘Europeanization cum democratization’. In a drive to acquire full powers on behalf of the ‘national interest’, the first ruling coalition accepted the principles, but refused the practice, of separation of powers and the inclusion of organized interests into the policymaking process. Still, the first Spanish-type social pacts have been concluded here, transforming the multiparty system into a ‘multiactor’ system step by step. That is, following the establishment of a political dialogue, the social dialogue has now become one of the fundamental processes of Europeanization. In other words, there has been a new opening from macro-politics to meso-politics. There is today a new international wave of authoritarian renewal, first of all in Latin America and perhaps in Eastern Europe as well.18 The real fight for democracy has just begun, not only in Hungary, but also in the other East-Central European countries. The major task is not simply to defeat the first neo-traditionalist regimes, but to overcome the whole ‘history’ of our own region with its deeply embedded authoritarian traditions. At the same time, it is necessary to reinvigorate the existing democratic heritage in order to be able to invent a new democratic tradition of the East-Central European civil societies. The idea and the normative features of ‘transition’ can be and should be kept, since the new crisis, in the form of the emergence of neo-traditionalism, is only a


temporary phenomenon, although the struggle against its aftermath may last for many years to come. NOTES 1. I have dealt with the problems of the post-war forced democratization in much more detail in my paper ‘The New World Order and the Young East European Democracies’, Budapest Papers on Democratic Transition, No. 48 (1993). I should indicate here that it is not about the ‘dependency’ of small states in the world system in general, but about a development model in particular which can be discussed, in the terms of J.Rosenau, as ‘linkage politics’ and ‘penetrated societies’. 2. Samuel P.Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman, OK, and London: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991). Huntington has been the best-known representative of the theory of forced democratization, using the very term ‘forced to be free’. 3. Claus Offe, ‘Capitalism by Democratic Design? Democratic Theory Facing the Triple Transition in East Central Europe’, Social Research, Vol. 58, No. 4 (1991), pp. 874, 889. 4. Susannah Verney, ‘To be or not to be within the European Community’, in Geoffrey Pridham (ed.), Securing Democracy: Political Parties and Democratic Consolidation in Southern Europe (London: Routledge, 1990), p. 205. See also Susannah Verney and Theodore Couloumbis, ‘State-International Systems Interaction and the Greek Transition to Democracy in the mid-1970s’, in Geoffrey Pridham (ed.), Encouraging Democracy: The International Context of Regime Transition in Southern Europe (London: Leicester University Press, 1991). 5. See Bogdan Szajkowski, ‘Will Russia Disintegrate into Bantustans?’, The World Today, Vol. 49, Nos. 8–9 (Aug.-Sept. 1993). 6. I have tried to make a point about the similar starting conditions between South-East and East-Central Europe in my paper, ‘The “Comparative Revolution” and the Transition in Central and Southern Europe’, Journal of Theoretical Politics, Vol. 5, No. 2 (April 1993). I have discussed the problems of East-Central Europe’s attempt at European integration in my chapter, ‘Difficulties and Obstacles for the Construction of Europe: Observations from the Central European Countries’, in Mario Telo (ed.), Towards a New Europe? (Brussels: Editions de l’Université de Bruxelles, 1992). 7. The EC has always reacted to the East-Central European problems very slowly, with a long delay and lack of empathy. In spring 1990 there were some efforts to create a strategy for the whole eastern part of Europe (Dublin summit, 28 April 1990), but they returned to this issue seriously only three years later (Copenhagen summit), and the real results of any new decisions cannot yet be seen. 8. For a Hungarian contribution to mutual understanding, see Ferenc Gazdag, ‘Does the West Understand Central and Eastern Europe?’, NATO Review, Dec. 1992. The major problems of the East European crisis zone are


9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

summarized in Konrad J.Huber’s paper, ‘The CSCE and Ethnic Conflict in the East’, RFE/RL Research Report, Vol. 2, No. 31 (30 July 1993). The framework was first suggested by Dankwart Rustow as the three stages of initial crisis, democratic transition and consolidation. This was further elaborated by the authors of Transitions from Authoritarian Rule (1986) and completed by the analysts of the East-Central European countries. Andrzej Tymovski, in his paper, ‘The Unwanted Social Revolution: Poland in 1989’, East European Politics and Societies, Vol. 7, No. 2 (1993), has summarized this conceptual controversy. Adam Michnik, ‘Zwei Visionen eines posttotalitaeren Europas’, in R.Deppe et al. (eds.), Demokratischer Umbruch in Osteuropa (Frankfurt am Main: Edition Surkamp, 1991), p. 350. See also Jadwiga Staniszkis, ‘Dilemmata der Demokratie in Osteuropa’, in the same volume. It is not by chance that the Poles discovered the new crisis first, because they have been the frontrunners of the political transformation in East-Central Europe. I have described these three contradictions of the new political system and the new ruling elite in my papers, ‘The Premature Senility of the Young Democracies: The Central European Experience’, and ‘From Nomenclatura to Clientura: The Emergence of New Political Elites in East-Central Europe’, Budapest Papers on Democratic Transition, Nos. 68 and 69 (1993). D.Rustow, ‘Transition to Democracy’, Comparative Politics (April 1970), pp. 344–5 and 361. See also my paper, ‘The Invention of Democratic Tradition in Hungary’, Budapest Papers on Democratic Transition, No. 65 (1993). Nancy Bermeo, ‘Democracy and Lessons of Dictatorship’, Comparative Politics (April 1992), p. 276. See also Timur Kuran, ‘Now out of Never: The Element of Surprise in the East European Revolution of 1989’, in Nancy Bermeo (ed.), Liberalization and Democratization (Baltimore, MD, and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992). Kuran emphasizes with justification that these new elites were taken by surprise and were not prepared for the takeover. The major worry is, however, that they are not prepared after four years, either. Tymowski, op. cit., pp. 184–98, describes this sharp turn to demobilization in Poland very well, including the moment when economic changes were forced upon the society against the former programme of Solidarity and following the dictates of Western powers. Marcin Król in his paper, ‘Marginalisierung der Politik’, Neue Gesellschaft-Frankfurter Hefte (March 1992), gives a similar analysis of the post-Solidarity crisis. See also Gert Weisskirchen, ‘Paradoxien in Transit’, Neue Gesellschaft-Frankfurter Hefte (May 1992). For example, J.Antall, prime minister of Hungary (1990–93), declared in a speech on the national holiday (20 August, Saint Stephen’s Day) that there has been a very strong historical continuity between the ancient Hungarian kingdom and the present parliamentary republic, since the former was not a tyrannical power, but a constitutional, democratic state in terms of its particular historical period: see Népszabadság, 21 Aug. 1993. In the last year there have been widespread debates on whether the EastCentral European countries would follow the Latin American path of the breakdown of democracy: see, for example, ‘Is Latin America the future of


Eastern Europe? A Symposium’, Problems of Communism, May-June 1992; Dirk Messner and Jörg Meyer-Stamer, ‘Lateinamerikanische Schwellenlaender: Vorbild für Osteuropa?’, Viertelijahres Berichte, Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, Sept. 1992. 17. Philippe C.Schmitter and Terry Karl, ‘The Types of Democracy Emerging in Southern and Eastern Europe and South and Central America’, in Peter Volten (ed.), Bound to Change: Consolidating Democracy in East-Central Europe (New York and Prague: Institute for East-West Studies, Westview Press, 1992). 18. There is also a ‘new wave’ of international conferences on the authoritarian renewal: see, for example, the paper by Steve C.Ropp (University of Wyoming), ‘New Authoritarian Tendencies in Latin America: Their Dyanmics and Implications’ (presented to the 34th Annual Convention of the International Studies Association, Acapulco, Mexico, 23–27 March 1993).

Party Formation and Constitutional Change in Hungary ANDRÁS BOZÓKI

After 1956, attempts to control through mobilization were effectively abandoned, and this allowed the steady development of interests and groups under Kádár’s soft dictatorship, leading to an incipient civil society. The Hungarian Democratic Forum emerged from this movement to lead the country following the 1990 elections. Other parties and groups arose, basing themselves on somewhat different values or appealing to specific segments of Hungarian society, but they were brought together in the opposition round table. Key elements in the confrontation between the communists and the opposition round table included the timing of elections and the mechanism for selecting the state president, and tripartite negotiations set the country on a new course. Subsequently, a plethora of parties has emerged, as further institution-building continues the process of transition. In this study I identify the main stages of political change in Hungary between 1987 and 1990, focusing on party formation and the process sometimes referred to as the ‘negotiated revolution’. The process of political transition in Hungary can be characterized by three different stages. The first stage was the revitalization of civil society; in this stage social movements started to emerge outside of the communist party and independent initiatives developed within the party. The second phase was characterized by negotiations between the old and new political elites in an attempt to bring about a peaceful transition. It was during the second phase that the civil society was transformed into a political society. Finally, in the third phase, individual citizens were able to take part in the transition process. They participated in a referendum, were subject to electoral campaigns and finally took part in free parliamentary elections. Under the previous regime, Hungary’s constitution could be described as being in the Soviet tradition. The constitution, which was passed in


1949, was modelled on the 1936 Stalinist constitution of the Soviet Union. Although the Hungarian constitution had been modified slightly in 1971 during the reform years of the former communist leadership, it remained a legal obstacle to democratic change. It upheld the leading role of communism within Hungarian society and asserted the superiority of collective (state-owned) property over private property. Thus the democratic transition from communist rule was dependent on prior legal and constitutional change. In Hungary, the process of political change began in 1987 when reform communists and the moderate opposition (who later became the Hungarian Democratic Forum) agreed to formulate a declaration in support of the democratization of Hungarian society at a meeting in Lakitelek.1 While the declaration signified a political commitment to change, which was subsequently underpinned by constitutional reform and free elections, the restructuring of Hungarian society on the economic level was much more difficult to achieve. Social scientists have yet to agree on a theoretical explanation of postcommunist transitions, although many have been looking at ways of adapting models which attempt to explain the transformation of totalitarian systems in a more general sense. Existing explanations of transitions from authoritarian to democratic rule in Southern Europe and Latin America have tended to emphasize the importance of the actions of elite groups, particularly splits within regimes, as a key to explaining both the origins of democratic transitions and their future development.2 The process of political change in eastern Europe tends to support the view that the actions of elites play an important role in shaping transitions. Furthermore, existing explanations of transitions also clearly illustrate the importance of pressure from the international political and economic environments on the process of democratization. However, the East-Central European transitions have not followed a single pattern and we can identify important distinctive features in almost every country. In Poland, for example, a relatively uniform opposition (‘Solidarity’) faced a relatively uniform authority, and the political struggle took place largely at round-table conferences which resulted in a pact allowing for restricted elections. In Czechoslovakia and in East Germany the pressure from ordinary citizens effectively led to the collapse of the communist system. Thus the political system fell before

András Bozóki is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. The research on which this study is based was funded by the Hungarian National Scientific Research Council (OTKA). He is also grateful to the fellows of the Institute for Advanced Study, Berlin, where he completed the study.

PARTY FORMATION AND CONSTITUTIONAL CHANGE 37

any modifications were made to the legal framework. In Romania, the revolution was much more violent, and power was transferred on the overthrow of the totalitarian system by a combination of revolution and coup d état. Although there are significant differences in the processes of transition in the different countries of eastern Europe, there is a clear pattern which we can identify. The first transitions occurred in the least autocratic systems, and in these countries it took place in a more peaceful and evolutionary manner. In those regimes where human rights were most severely curtailed, the changes were more drastic.3 In other words, forms of transition from communism are affected by the nature of the old regime. The Decay of Communist Rule: The Beginning After the suppression of the 1956 Hungarian revolution, the communist leadership gave up the idea of creating a totally politicized society or of mobilizing the citizens in order to legitimize the system of rule. They were basically satisfied with the fact that most people had resigned themselves to the existing system and had accepted their inability to bring about change through collective political action. During the 1960s the Hungarian political system ceased to be ‘totalitarian’ (in the sense that it has been defined by Friedrich and Brzezinski4 and Hannah Arendt5), but became a ‘soft’ dictatorship. This post-Stalinist, authoritarian-paternalistic system, hallmarked with Kádár’s name, was based on the political neutralization of the citizens and no attempts were made to achieve ideological legitimation. Kádár implemented economic reforms and helped bring about a political and economic stability which many people considered to be more important than ideological legitimacy. Passive neutrality became the most important life strategy of the people as this made life easier to endure. Later, from the late 1960s onwards, political ‘participation’ through informal pressure groups meant that large sections of society felt that they were able to have some indirect influence on the system and therefore had something to lose when it began to disintegrate. The communist political leadership of the 1980s reacted to the erosion of the system with the introduction of assorted liberalizing reforms which helped to prevent the development of a cohesive and unified political opposition by creating divisions of interest. From the late 1970s onwards, any political opposition that emerged was diffused through creating divisions and isolating those elements of the opposition which were perceived as most threatening. However, when conflicts emerged between politicians and those holding key economic positions, this


opposition could not always be diffused through ‘divide and rule’ strategies. The political leadership needed to be able to work with the economic elite in order to maintain both its own political dominance and social stability in the wider society. The growing petty bourgeoisie, which started to emerge in the 1970s as a consequence of Kádárism, gradually disrupted and fragmented the monolithic economic system, which was based on neither plan nor market, and the intricate economic bargaining mechanisms with which it was associated. This process of economic transformation was implicitly encouraged and justified by Gorbachev’s accession to power in the Soviet Union. The development of critical initiatives and alternative strategies within civil society did not arise solely on a political and economic level: during the 1980s avant-garde literary and art groups, alternative lifestyle movements and some ‘single issue’ groups such as the peace movement and the environmental movement were also important. The revival of critical attitudes, especially among young intellectuals, was first indicated by the formation of subcultures. These fringe cultural groups, which organized around new, alternative styles in music, were marginalized during the early 1980s. Their politically interpretable songs focused more and more on global problems such as the future of mankind and the chances of human survival. After a series of sociographs and other documentaries at the turn of the decade, the various avant-garde and ‘post-modern’ groups started to call for a greater aestheticism. These cultural trends cannot be described as a new social movement, but the emphasis on cultural transformation, aesthetics and values had an important social impact. Since the negativity of the existing society had its complement in the positivity of art, poetry and literature, social and political criticism came to be linked with a conception of art and literature as capable of bringing about an aesthetic transformation of social reality. Central to this viewpoint was the rejection of ‘social reformist illusions’ and the best works of literature were written ‘in the spirit of exact, light neutrality’ (István Kemény) and explained the existing social environment in the context of an ‘unbearable lightness of being’ (Milan Kundera). The alternative lifestyle movement can also be seen as an avenue for the expression of critical attitudes within an authoritarian social structure. These can be exemplified by the establishment of psycho-clubs, yoga movements and free religious communities and by an increasing interest in eastern religions and mysticism. These movements each represented an ‘escapist’ ideology and were a mixture of idealism, transcendentalism and other, indirect expressions of a critical attitude.6 Although these activities were non-political or even anti-political, they created autonomous spaces in society, and the communists, regarding this as


potentially threatening, tried to politicize them in order to marginalize their activity from the everyday routine of ‘normal’ behaviour. The single-issue movements in Hungary tried to resist these pressures by putting themselves between the authorities and the opposition circles and by declaring their goals as ‘beyond politics’. In 1982–83 the Dialogue Peace Group represented the beginning of the peace movement, while in 1985–86 the Danube Circle served the interests of the environmental movement. Both of these single-interest groups can be seen as trying to manoeuvre towards a constructive critique of the regime. Yet many single-interest groups were hindered by a series of internal conflicts. The Dialogue Peace Group, for example, had protracted discussions over the election of a leader, ultimately leading to a rift between the ‘radicalautonomist’ and ‘moderate-constructivist’ groups. This internal crisis of the Dialogue Peace Group, which was common to many other movements in this period, served to weaken its effectiveness. The ‘constructivists’ accused the other wing of extreme radicalism while the ‘autonomists’ spoke about the illusion of self-limitation. Yet the demise of the Dialogue Peace Group was not simply a consequence of internal conflicts: after the ‘hot autumn’ of anti-nuclear protest in 1983, the peace movement also declined in many parts of western Europe. During the period of late Kádárism, the Danube Circle and other environmental pressure groups had gradually become umbrella organizations for different kinds of political groups who were not able to express their political goals directly. Many of these single-issue interest groups faced a crisis during the period of political change. Although the Danube Circle was large and influential in the late Kádár period, once people were able to organize democratic political parties many left the ecological movement and the Hungarian Green Party received less than one per cent of the votes in the 1990 elections. Strong demands for democratic political institutions began to emerge during the mid-1980s and there was an increase in the number of clubs and groups that discussed these issues at their regular meetings. Many members did not accept the ‘old’ consensus agreed upon by their predecessors after the 1956 revolution and considered that the time had come to redefine social and political conditions within a more democratic framework. Observers, and the participants themselves, often regarded these initial movements as constituting a ‘revitalization’ of civil society.7 In fact this phrase became a slogan during the transition and a means by which the intellectual elites within the movements started to define the term ‘civil society’ in a political as well as in an economic sense. This definition made it possible for people to distinguish between ‘us’ (the autonomous, politically independent avant-garde of human rights and civil liberties movements) and ‘them’ (the old-fashioned communists, represented by


the party-state bureaucracy which maintained its rule through the oppression of society). Thus the concept of civil society was not confined to the economic sphere, but included a broader notion of citizenship along with a development of ethics and critical thought. On a political level the notion of civil society implied a rejection of the system of informal relationships which operated behind the façade of a communist dictatorship in the Kádár period. The term ‘civil society’ was also understood as a sort of substitute for ‘bourgeois society’ and it carried the implicit suggestion that democracy was achievable without the existence of a bourgeois class. Movements into Parties: The Formation of Political Opposition The first phase of the transition (from September 1987 to February 1989) was characterized by the appearance of autonomous initiatives within the state party and by the growth of social movements outside of the party. These movements gradually underwent a process of politicization and were finally transformed into parties. The internal disintegration taking place at this time was sensed by politically aware citizens, and many autonomous organizations began to engage in party-like activities.8 Between November 1988 and February 1989 a multi-party system was placed back on the political agenda. After the May 1988 conference of the communists (the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party—HSWP), constitutional reform was placed on the agenda by the leadership. While the leadership were willing to facilitate political reform, they wished to keep the process of liberalization within the framework of ‘socialist pluralism’. In the view of the leadership, this meant bringing about the greater involvement of nonpolitical social organizations which had not posed a threat to their own monopoly rule or power. In other words, it entailed the continued exclusion of rival political parties and trade unions while allowing for a limited expansion of social dialogue through which they hoped to achieve a national consensus. However, the acceptance of limited elements of democracy had unexpected consequences which fundamentally challenged the framework of the one-party system. Once the process had started, neither the HSWP nor the government or parliament was able to control reform as they each lacked the necessary political legitimacy. The first meaningful legal change took place with the amendment of the Act of Association, accepted by the government in November 1988 and passed by parliament at the beginning of January 1989. This Act created a legal framework for the evolving political organizations. Although there had been no legal barrier to the setting up of political


parties, the police would have harassed the leaders of any new political opposition using a restrictive interpretation of the law and suspecting oppositional groups of participating in a conspiracy against the state. At first there were also problems in interpretation associated with the Act of Association. According to the broader interpretation, the right to association included the right to organize political parties and the Act was seen as creating the legal conditions for a multi-party system. The old parties which had been active in the 1940s (such as the Independent Smallholders’ Party and the Social Democratic Party) interpreted the Act in this way and between November 1988 and January 1989 they started to reorganize. Some of the new groups emerging from the established social movements (such as the Hungarian Democratic Forum, the Alliance of Free Democrats and the Alliance of Young Democrats) also saw the Act as creating the conditions which would allow them to organize as parties. As a consequence of the Act, a de facto multi-party situation evolved within the institutional framework of the one-party system. However, the communist hardliners, including the general secretary, interpreted the law more narrowly. The Act of Association was seen as applying to interest groups, not political parties, although they expected to pass a law specifically dealing with political parties at a later date so as to regulate their activities more closely. The period of rapid party-formation in Hungary took place at the end of 1988 and the beginning of 1989. During this period the Alliance of Young Democrats (AYD), the Hungarian Democratic Forum (HDF), and the Alliance of Free Democrats (AFD) were formed and some of the old parties which had been forced out by the communists at the end of the 1940s (such as the Independent Smallholders’ Party (ISHP), the Hungarian Social Democratic Party (HSDP), the Hungarian People’s Party (HPP), and the Christian Democratic People’s Party (CDPP)) also reappeared. During this initial period, the main aim of the new parties was to broaden political communication among individuals and groups, although each party tried to meet these objectives through different means. The first moderate opposition organization, the Hungarian Democratic Forum, made efforts to co-operate with the reform wing of the state party, represented by the communist Minister of State, Imre Pozsgay, and located itself between the government and the opposition. In the beginning it rejected both Soviet-type communism and western-type capitalism, and consequently it was often referred to as a ‘third way’ political organization. This idea of a ‘third way’ was based on a position developed by populist writers in the 1920s and 1930s, although it was subsequently suppressed in the communist period. During those two decades, intellectuals in Hungary often saw themselves as either ‘populists’ or


‘urbanists’, the central issue being whether Hungary should develop from within, in its own organic way, or whether it should try to push itself forward by importing the modernizing principles of western countries. Populists were concerned to establish a national identity and promote their countries cultural and historical heritage. On the other hand, urbanists espoused the idea of human rights and attached central importance to the concepts of status and citizenship. Populists sought organic improvement and adhered to the notion that Hungary had to follow an internal value system which suited its own collective identity because accepting external, global ideas was regarded as a cause of alienation. According to the populists, economic and political spheres in themselves were not able to touch the deeper strata of national existence: economic philosophies like socialism and capitalism could operate only on the surface of the national interest. It was in this populist tradition that the Hungarian Democratic Forum (HDF) was formed in September 1987 as a discussion forum for different groups of democratically committed people. It reorganized itself as a political organization at the second Lakitelek meeting a year later, in September 1988. Before the elections, the HDF gradually abandoned its original populist ‘third way’ philosophy in favour of a new strategy designed to win centre-right votes. This strategic change was accompanied by the selection of József Antall as the party leader, and Antall became prime minister in the 1990 elections. Under Antall’s chairmanship the HDF became a centre-right, Christian-conservative political party with populist and sometimes nationalist overtones. On the other hand, the radical-liberal opposition groups and movements (from which the Alliance of Free Democrats later emerged), were attached to the principles of human rights and saw themselves as an oppositional force. Consequently they rejected the idea of co-operation with the communist leadership. The radical-liberal opposition groups also transformed the language of political discourse and generated public interest in political issues, especially among intellectuals. During the 1980s, these intellectuals edited samizdat journals, such as Beszélö, Hírmondö and Demokrata, which reached in the region of 10,000 readers. In this period, people in the communist countries had had to read between the lines in the official newspapers in order to understand the real political situation. Underground opposition journals broke this ‘metaphoric’ tradition of political discourse by discussing political problems frankly and openly. In turn this affected the official media and forced them to formulate their opinions in a more straightforward manner. Members of these radical-liberal groups were closely linked with various opposition groups in other Eastern bloc countries, such as Charter ’77 in Prague and the Workers’ Self-Defence Committee (KSS-


KOR) in Poland in which group of workers and intellectuals helped to launch Solidarity. These links facilitated a useful exchange of information. The immediate precursor of the Alliance of Free Democrats was an organization called the ‘Network of Free Initiatives’ which was created in May 1988 to establish communication among various unofficial groups. However, this initiative soon proved to be inadequate. During the period when Kádárism was disintegrating, this type of loose cooperation was not always efficient. Members of the network eventually came to the conclusion that a party structure had advantages and, as a result, the Alliance of Free Democrats (AFD) was formed in November 1988. The AFD defined itself as a social-liberal party and in the spring of 1989 became the first party to call for a radical break with the communist regime. The Alliance of Young Democrats (AYD) was formed as the first political organization of opposition in March 1988. Its founding members were mostly university students of law and economics. Most of them had been involved in earlier movements which had tried to create selfgoverning colleges that were independent of the university bureaucracy. The political orientation of the AYD developed during the last phase of the Kádár era out of its dissatisfaction with the higher education system as well as the broader political situation. Human rights issues were at the forefront of their programme and individual liberties, constitutionalism and non-violence were all core concerns. Originally the AYD was launched as a youth organization, a simple alternative to the Young Communist League (YCL), but by 1989 (after the disintegration of the YCL) the AYD went further and became a political party under the flag of radicalism, liberalism and alternative values, with a primary concern to mobilize youth. One of its leaders, Viktor Orbán, gave a famous speech at the burial of Imre Nagy and his fellow martyrs of the 1956 revolution on 16 June 1989, when he openly called on the government to negotiate the immediate withdrawal of Soviet troops from Hungary. Although at the time the AYD had been regarded as too radical, it subsequently managed to secure nine per cent of the vote and a place in the new parliament. During this early period, members of the three new political parties (HDF, AFD, AYD) co-operated quite closely. In contrast, all that the ‘historical’ parties had in common was a 40-year history and a suspicion on the part of the old guard of new recruits from the younger generation. For each of these parties, much time and effort was needed to bring about party unity. Indeed, neither the Hungarian Social Democratic Party (HSDP) nor the Hungarian People’s Party (HPP) has been able to achieve unity to this day. The Independent Smallholders’ Party (ISHP) was reborn as an agrarian party with a programme which included total reprivatization of the land, while the Christian Democratic People’s Party


(CDPP) became a small and modest party representing religious (especially Catholic) values and institutions. After the elections, the ISHP and the CDPP joined the Hungarian Democratic Forum as partners in the governing coalition. Political Disentanglement and Constitution-Making The second phase of political transition (March-October 1989) was characterized by negotiations between the state party and its satellite organizations, on one hand, and the opposition, on the other. The significance of this phase is indicated by the fact that a number of social scientists call the Hungarian transition the ‘negotiated revolution’.9 It was during this period that the opposition managed to secure a role in the scrutiny of new legislation and laws were no longer imposed without first achieving a broad consent. In late January 1989, the reform wing of the HSWP reacted to recent political changes and Minister of State Imre Pozsgay announced a ‘reevaluation’ of the events of 1956: the notion of a ‘counter-revolution’, as previously used in communist terminology, was replaced by the concept of ‘popular uprising’. Following an internal struggle within the Central Committee of the party, the principle of a multi-party system was finally accepted in mid-February, and the communists accepted that they could no longer insist on playing a leading role. Yet they attempted to safeguard their longer-term position as the leading party by asserting the ‘socialist’ nature of the state within the new constitution. While the multiparty system was accepted in principle, the only parties that could function legally were those which accepted this socialist framework. The principles were to be upheld by a new Constitutional Court. Naturally the party leadership wanted to avoid the risk of free elections and envisaged a negotiated power-sharing arrangement rather than open competition. Through this strategy, the communists aimed to keep the still embryonic opposition divided, and in this spirit negotiations were conducted separately with these organizations in February and March. The leaders of the state party proposed entirely free elections for 1995. Meanwhile, a negotiated transition began in Poland with the participation of the most important political forces. The Polish model seemed to work and was adopted both by the HSWP and by the opposition, although they each laid an emphasis on different elements of the model. Once it had accepted the principle of a multi-party system, the objective of the communists was to reach a compromise similar to that reached in the Polish round-table talks. This position would have meant retaining the essential traits of state socialism. Realizing that they were weak and lacking in organization, the divided opposition forces accepted that they were powerless to hinder the efforts of the HSWP. The fear was


that the HSWP would dictate the nature of the reforms and the speed of the transformation and would do everything in its power to maintain the existing framework. The HSWP benefited from the fact that the opposition had not formed a single organization of national liberation, as had been the case in Poland, but had developed a plural system of opposition. Consequently the divided opposition needed to reach some agreements. On 21 March 1989, only a few days after an important opposition demonstration,10 the opposition round table was set up with the theoretical and practical help of opposition lawyers. Nine oppositional organizations were represented at the round table: the Hungarian Democratic Forum, the Christian Democratic People’s Party, the Bajcsy-Zsilinszky Friendship Society, the Independent Smallholders’ Party and the People’s Party (conservatives); the Alliance of Free Democrats and the Alliance of Young Democrats (liberals); the Hungarian Social Democratic Party and the Independent League of Democratic Trade Unions (social democrats).11 This new situation was frustrating for the HSWP as its leadership had hoped to co-opt some of the new organizations which they thought to be dependable into a power-sharing arrangement. A united opposition, however, was much more dangerous. The opposition ‘round table’ did not give in to the continued efforts of the HSWP to create divisions among them, and decided not to attend the negotiations scheduled for 8 April 1989 to which a selection of opposition parties had been invited. Even negotiations over the seating arrangements for the round-table talks proved difficult. Whilst the HSWP wanted the parties to be seated at a round table, where the parties of opposing interests would have been seated side by side, the opposition insisted on an angular negotiating table so that the representatives of authority and of the opposition would be seated in a more confrontational manner. After months of talks, the parties eventually agreed on a triangular table with the HSWP along one side, the opposition parties along the second and communist satellite organized interest groups along the third. Thus, after a tenacious struggle the opposition round table could retain its unity and became the participant of real negotiations from June 1989 onwards. The meaningful phase of the trilateral negotiations lasted from 13 June until 18 September 1989, and the issues of both political and economic transition equally were dealt with. After a couple of weeks, however, it became clear that the political negotiations were much more important than the economic issues. Initially the participants of the opposition round table thought that only the key issues which constituted the preconditions of peaceful and democratic transition should be negotiated (such as electoral law and the amendment of the penal code). The HSWP proposed a much broader discussion including all political, economic and social issues that they


considered to be important. The stance of the opposition was that, since the national assembly elected in 1985 was not legitimate, they did not have the right to influence issues which were not directly related to the transition. Consequently negotiations on the constitution, the office of the President of the Republic and the Constitutional Court were opposed by the opposition round table. Yet the introduction of these legal institutions was considered important by the HSWP because it had come to realize that its plan for negotiated elections was unlikely to come to fruition. The HSWP had to accept that there would be free elections in Hungary and it wanted to exercise some control over the transition process by providing a candidate for the presidency and by shaping the constitutional framework to incorporate socialist principles. Finally, the parties agreed to discuss the political issues in six subcommittees: the amendment of the constitution (President of the Republic, Constitutional Court and so on); the law on parties and their financing; the electoral law; principles for amending the penal code; publicity and information policy; and safeguards for a non-violent transition). Figure 1 shows the initial standpoints of the HSWP and the opposition round table over these political issues and focuses on the main differences between them: it includes the major agreements, and shows the issues on which the parties could not agree. During the first phase of the negotiations it became clear that the opposition round table was unable to maintain its initial standpoint and that it had to discuss the modification of the constitution. As it was forced to negotiate despite its original intentions, the opposition round table strove to supervise the revision of the entire constitution item by item, sentence by sentence, even though it held the view that the Hungarian constitution could not be reformed and that the newly elected national assembly should create an entirely new constitution. However, the amendment of the constitution was initially started within its original framework, thus significantly contributing to the completion of the ‘constitution of transition’. After a heated debate, the parties agreed that Hungary should be referred to simply as a republic rather than a ‘people’s republic’. The HSWP wanted to use the definition ‘independent, democratic socialist state based on law’, whereas the opposition round table wanted to eliminate the ideological elements from the constitution and proposed the formula ‘independent democratic state based on law’. After long disputes the terms ‘bourgeois democracy’ and ‘democratic socialism’ were given equal weight within the constitution, in keeping with the p2000ab909980082 September agreement. Accordingly, ‘the Republic of Hungary is an independent democratic state based on law, where the


FIGURE 1 MAJOR AGREEMENT AND DISAGREEMENT BETWEEN THE HSWP AND THE OPPOSITION ROUNDTABLE ON POLICY ISSUES


values of bourgeois democracy and democratic socialism have an equal standing’. The constitution was also amended to incorporate a multiparty system and it was recognized that political parties could be set up and could function freely. While they cannot exercise public authority, they may participate in the shaping and expression of popular will. The amended constitution also made provision for the setting up of two new legal institutions, the Constitutional Court and the State Audit as the economic and financial control agency of the national assembly. However, the greatest debate ensued around the issue of the replacement of the Presidential Council with the office of the President of the Republic. The HSWP held the view that the president should be directly elected by the people as this would ensure that presidential authority could be asserted in situations where the political legitimacy of parliament was being challenged. On the other hand, the opposition round table held the view that only a freely elected national assembly had the authority to decide the terms for the selection of a president and that neither the existing assembly nor the participants of the tripartite negotiations had the authority to introduce such a fundamental constitutional reform. Indeed, the problem of legitimacy became a key issue for the opposition round table as none of the participants in the transitional negotiations had any real political authority. The opposition organizations had not acquired the political legitimacy needed to engage in a constitution-making role which they agreed could derive only from popular will expressed in free democratic elections. Despite these concerns, the opposition round table agreed to provide principles governing the institution of the president in the new constitution, although they left the role of the presidency as ‘weak’. The president was to have a role as a ‘balance’ between the legislative and executive authorities, and was to lack an autonomous power base. The office of the president was not to be set above the legislative and executive branches of authority, and power could be exercised only through the government. It was agreed that the Speaker of the national assembly would temporarily exercise the rights of the head of state during the transitional period. The opposing sides also agreed in that the election of the president should not be decided by the existing parliament. However, no agreement was reached on who should elect the president (parliament or the people), and when the President of the Republic should be elected (before or after the parliamentary elections). The HSWP held the view that the President of the Republic should be elected directly by the people. One may take the view that this idea was truly democratic, as a national election is the best way to select the holder of presidential office. However, the HSWP still controlled the media and had a popular reformist communist leader (Imre Pozsgay), whereas


the potential candidates of the opposition were almost totally unknown by the population owing to their lack of access to the popular media. According to the HSWP, the temporary power vacuum which would occur during the transition strengthened their argument for a president who could help avoid political chaos. The initial position of the opposition round table was that a parliamentary democracy, and not a presidential system should be built in Hungary. After 40 years of communism, such a system was seen as offering safeguards against the dangers of autocratic rule. The opposition round table held the view that the elections of the president by parliament is no less democratic than election by a direct vote of the people, and, in a parliamentary system, is a constitutionally acceptable solution. The HSWP thought that the presidential elections should take place before the parliamentary elections so that the stability of public authority could be maintained. But the opposition roundtable was of the view that the political situation was not so unstable that presidential elections should be given precedence. Most of the opposition parties also worried that if the presidential elections were held before the free parliamentary elections, it might influence their outcome and would offer the communists the chance to save their political power. The opposition round table was concerned to avoid the Polish pattern of change and thought that the dismantling of the old system would not be complete if a president with communist past became the head of state at an early date. The Polish opposition, aware that it might be able to make changes at a later stage, was able to compromise with the communists. The Polish opposition was strong enough to accept the communist General Jaruzelski for the position even though he had suppressed the ‘selflimiting revolution’ of Solidarity in 1980–81. Paradoxically, the Hungarian opposition was too weak to accept this type of compromise and maintained its efforts to secure the rapid democratization of society. In Hungary, the HSWP wanted more than a temporary influence on the presidency and came to consider the break-up of the unity of the round table to be central to its own political survival. Reformists within the HSWP made secret contact with the ‘moderate’ opposition parties in order to convince them of the necessity of step-by-step change instead of radical transformation. In this four-actor game, the parties each played different roles.12 The communist hardliners refused the idea of an agree ment with the opposition while the reform communists first tried to compromise with the ‘constructive’ opposition, and, when these attempts failed, started to bargain with them. Among the opposition, the moderate wing considered the co-operation shown by the reformist wing of the HSWP to be a major guarantee of a non-violent transition. On the other hand, the radical opposition did not want to make any pacts with the


communists which would limit their future scope for action and emphasized the political importance of the break with the old regime. During this phase of the transition, the reform communists and the moderate opposition started to co-operate informally against the conservative hardliners, on one hand, and the radical opposition, on the other. Going against the agreed position of the opposition round table, the Christian Democratic People’s Party and the Hungarian People’s Party both proposed the election of the president by plebiscite in July 1989. Furthermore, the representative of the Christian Democratic People’s Party suggested that free elections could be secured only if there was a sizeable time lag between presidential and parliamentary elections. Consequently they suggested that the presidential elections should be given priority over the parliamentary elections. The spokesman of the Hungarian People’s Party also proposed giving priority to the presidential elections, but in this case because of the implications for foreign policy. It was argued that speedy presidential elections would pacify the Russians who might otherwise interfere with the transition in Hungary. The reformist Imre Pozsgay was seen as the only person who could guarantee peaceful change. These two parties were joined by the Bajcsy-Zsilinszky Friendship Society and the Independent Smallholders’ Party. This body of opinion put pressure on the Hungarian Democratic Forum which in some senses held the political balance among the opposition. Gossip in the lobbies of parliament held that the HSWP was interested in a deal whereby it would sacrifice the Workers’ Guard, the paramilitary unit of the state party, in exchange for the position of the presidency. In mid-August one member of the ‘third side’, the Democratic Youth Alliance (the former League of Young Communists), started a petition for an early presidential election. Although the HSWP dissociated itself from this action, the opposition round table regarded this stance as one which undermined the agreement that had formed the basis of their negotiations. Finally the HDF altered its position. While as a general rule it agreed to the election of the president by the new parliament, it regarded the first occasion as different and agreed that on this occasion the president should be elected by plebiscite before the parliamentary elections. Thus the opposition round table was divided over this central issue: four parties were left in the minority (AYD, HSDP, AFD and Independent Trade Unions’ League) as against five, which insisted upon the original agreement. Thus there was a rift between the moderate and radical wings of the opposition. As the opposition round table was based on the principle of consensus, no decision could be reached for a long time because of the different views of the organizations represented at the roundtable. At the trilateral


negotiations, the round table kept avoiding making a definitive statement and kept postponing discussions. This went on until 18 September 1989, to the last meaningful stage of talks. In the third month of the talks, there was a growing tension among the parties of the opposition round table and among participants at the trilateral negotiations. The public was calling for results, and the HSWP was willing to make minor concessions to try to resolve outstanding issues. Government ministers also informed the opposition that lawmaking procedures could not be slowed down and that the government intended to introduce bills in parliament without first seeking a consensus. The reform wing of the HSWP also wanted to reach an early agreement so that it could report its achievements to the approaching party congress in October. The majority group of five at the roundtable held the view that their achievements should not be risked and the agreement with the HSWP had to be signed despite the difference of views at the round table. In contrast, the four minority groups thought that no democratic state could evolve if the election of the president preceded the parliamentary elections. They also thought that democracy would be under threat as long as the Workers’ Guard survived, if the HSWP did not give an account of its wealth, and if it remained legal for the HSWP to maintain its political activity in the work-place. As a result of these differences, the radical members of the opposition round table did not sign the pact at the plenary session on 18 September. However, they did not hamper the progress of the moderates and gave up their right of veto. On that day the real history of the opposition round table came to an end and the meaningful phase of the trilateral talks was also terminated. At this meeting the AFD asked for the people to be allowed to decide the four unresolved issues mentioned above and were supported in their motion by the Alliance of Young Democrats and the Social Democrats. The Smallholders’ Party decided to lend its support to the campaign a few weeks later. The tripartite negotiations were central to the success of the Hungarian transition by functioning as a kind of national assembly.13 Nevertheless, the talks themselves were not sufficient to complete the process of democratization and this underlines the revolutionary character of the changes. Political Mobilization and Emerging Pluralism The next phase of the political transition, which lasted until the free elections (October 1989–April 1990), can be characterized by a broader social participation in political life. After the round table pact of 18 September, the AFD campaigned for support so as to settle the outstanding issues. The referendum of 26 November sharply marked the


split between the radical and the moderate opposition. In the meantime, the old HSWP ceased to exist at the October party congress and it was replaced by the Hungarian Socialist Party (HSP) which was much less influential. The topics of the tripartite negotiations in the summer of 1989 were almost totally unknown to the people. The HSWP did its best to prevent a wider knowledge of the negotiations which had taken place, supposedly in order to prevent the negotiations being used as political propaganda. The opposition round table agreed to this suggestion at a meeting on 10 June. Consequently most citizens had little knowledge of the talks. This aroused suspicions in which the opposition round table was seen as implicated in a behind-the-scenes deal. Some smaller parties outside the round table utilized this generalized suspicion by claiming that what was happening was in fact an underhand political bargain between the old and new political elite over which the public had not been consulted. Although the opposition round table did whatever was possible to dissipate such suspicions, its room of manoeuvre was severely limited by the agreement of 10 June. While the lack of publicity did not cause conflicts between the negotiating elite of the parties and their membership, it caused a number of misunderstandings in the wider society. The public became fully aware of the different standpoints represented at the round table only on 18 September, when the plenary session dealing with its break-up was broadcast on television. From that point on, the radical opposition parties attempted to mobilize public support so as to make clear the ways in which they differed from the moderates. While in the first phase of transition, the struggle between the conservatives and reformers within the state party was in the forefront, followed in the second phase by confrontation between the power elite and the opposition, by the third phase, with the retreat of the old power elite, the struggle of the moderate and radical opposition forces became dominant. In Hungary, unlike other postcommunist countries, a de facto political pluralism had developed before the first democratic elections. The old cultural gap between ‘populists’ and ‘urbanists’ was reformulated in political differences and played an important role in the early emergence of the competitive multi-party system. The divisions which existed between the various opposition groups did not jeopardize the success of the political transition in Hungary. The pact entered into by the opposition groups safeguarded the agreements and allowed the framework for the transition to be laid down. On 23 October 1989, the thirty-third anniversary of the 1956 revolution, the republic was proclaimed and the national assembly passed the renewed constitution. By refraining from signing the new constitution, the Hungarian opposition was able to avoid entering into temporary pacts


with the communists. In Poland such a pact had resulted in restrictions on the first ‘free’ elections, and in 1989 the success of Solidarity was limited by a previous agreement. With the fall of the Berlin Wall and the rapid collapse of the communist regimes in East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria, it became clear that no real change was possible without public participation. In Hungary, the public attacked and finally broke the co-operation between the reformers and the moderates. The moderates could no longer afford to collaborate with the reformist communists because of the changing mood of the society. By the late autumn of 1989 even cautious people realized that the system could be changed. While it was an advantage to be seen as a moderate during the negotiations, by the time of the plebiscite and election campaign it had become a disadvantage as anti-communist emotions became manifest. For this reason the Hungarian Democratic Forum changed from a middle-of-the-road party and adopted a vehement anticommunist style just three months before the elections of 25 March 1990. It was characteristic of the Hungarian political transition that negotiations were pursued as far as possible but that, once agreements became difficult, they did not constrict further development. Realizing the apparent success of the petition demanding a referendum, the old parliament itself hastened to decide on three of the four questions on the proposed agenda of the referendum. It was the plebiscite of 26 November 1989 that finally removed the last obstacles from the road to free elections. It made possible what the parties of the opposition round table were not strong enough to achieve: the complete dismantling of the party state so as to make way for a parliamentary system. Conclusion In Hungary, the historical importance of the opposition round table lay in its ability to unite the previously divided opposition forces. The appearance of the opposition round table meant a choice between reform and democracy, and it also meant a political commitment to the latter. The birth of the opposition round table served the democratic transition but, paradoxically, did so by its death. By not standing in the way of competition, and by not becoming a sort of national liberation movement, the opposition round table helped to preserve the peaceful character of the transformation and did not stand in the way of a multiparty system. In this respect the Hungarian transition came somewhere between the purely negotiated Polish transition and the Czechoslovakian ‘velvet revolution’ which was basically a non-violent mass mobilization. In Hungary, the ‘soft’ dictatorship of Kádárism made it possible for the second-generation communists to be represented by technocrats rather


than ideologically committed cadres.14 These new technocrats were able to negotiate with the opposition and were much more willing to compromise with them. On the other hand, the revolution of 1956 gave a pattern, in both positive and negative senses, for the new opposition of the late 1970s and early 1980s. This opposition was deeply committed to democratic values but politically could behave in a self-limiting, pragmatic way. The Hungarian transition to democracy was strongly affected, if not determined, by both the memory of the 1956 revolution and the legacy of the informal-paternalistic style of Kádárism. Today, four years after the parliamentary elections, the process of institution building is still going on. The victory of the socialists in the 1994 election does not represent a reversal of this process. The constitution is basically the same as that which was accepted in the 1989 negotiations. Parliament made slight modifications in the summer of 1990 and since then the Constitutional Court has continuously added to an ‘invisible constitution’ through its decisions. But these actions are rather parts of the long-lasting settling down of a new system than of the political transition itself. NOTES 1. Sándor Agócs and Endre Medvigy (eds.), Lakitelek, 1987 (Budapest: Antológia-Püski, 1991). 2. Guillermo O’Donnell, Philippe Schmitter and Lawrence Whitehead (eds.), Transitions from Authoritarian Rule, Vol. 4 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986); Donald Share, ‘Transitions to Democracy and Transition Through Transaction’, Comparative Political Studies, Vol.19, No. 4 (1987), pp. 525–48; M.Burton, R.Gunther and J.Higley, ‘Elites and Democratic Consolidation in Latin America and Southern Europe: An Overview’, in John Higley and Richard Gunther (eds.), Elites and Democratic Consolidation in Latin America and Southern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 323–48. 3. András Bozóki, ‘The Hungarian Transition in a Comparative Perspective’, in A. Bozóki, A.Körösényi and G.Schöpflin (eds.), Post-Communist Transition: Emerging Pluralism in Hungary (London: Pinter, 1992), pp. 163–91. 4. Carl J.Friedrich and Zbigniew K.Brzezinski, Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1956). 5. Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1958). 6. András Bozóki, ‘Critical Movements and Ideologies in Hungary’, Sudosteuropa, Vol. 37, Nos. 7–8 (1988), pp. 377–87. 7. Ferenc Miszlivetz, ‘A lehetséges határainak újrafogalmazása’ (Budapest: SzalonSavaria University Press, 1993). 8. Robert Jenkins, ‘Movements into Parties: Political Formation in Hungary’, in György Szoboszlai (ed.), Flying Blind: Emerging Democracies in East


9.

10.

11.

12.

13. 14.

Central Europe (Budapest: Hungarian Political Science Association, 1992) pp. 257–81. Rudolf L.Tökés, From Post-Communism to Democracy: Hungary’s Negotiated Revolution (Bonn: Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, 1990); László Bruszt, ‘1989: The Negotiated Revolution in Hungary’, Social Research, Vol. 57, No. 2 (1990), pp. 365–87. 15 March is the anniversary of the 1848 Hungarian revolution which later developed into a national struggle for independence against the Habsburgs and the Russians. This day was not an official holiday during the communist period in Hungary, although independent groups always celebrated it even though they were often threatened by the police. On 15 March 1989 more than 50,000 people were marching on the streets of Budapest chanting slogans demanding freedom and democracy. This show of public opposition to communist rule encouraged the emerging opposition parties. For details of the formation of the opposition roundtable see András Bozóki, ‘Hungary’s Road to Systemic Change: The Opposition Roundtable’, East European Politics and Societies, Vol. 7, No. 2 (1993), pp. 276–308. Adam Przeworski, ‘The Games of Transition’, in S.Mainwaring, G.O’Donnell and J.S.Valenzuela (eds.), Issues in Democratic Consolidation (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992), pp. 105–48. István Kukorelli, ‘The Birth, Testing and Results of the 1989 Hungarian Electoral Law’, Soviet Studies, Vol. 43, No. 1 (1991), pp. 137–56. Erzsébet Szalai, Gazdaság és hatalom (Budapest: Aula, 1990).

56

Political and Social Conflicts Arising from the Transformation of Property Relations in Hungary ERZSÉBET SZALAI

An instructive element that charts developments in the new Hungarian political system is the competition among social groups over property ownership. The main groups involved are the ‘new technocrats’ emerging under the old regime in the ruling party and state bureaucracies, the managers of state enterprises, industrial workers, and the political elites of the new political parties. Privatization and the growth of a market economy can be seen as the outcome of the complex interrelation of these groups competing for power and position during the course of the fall of the old regime and the establishment of the new one. Ownership Relations in the Kádár Period For most of the period of the Kádár regime, following the economic reform of 1968, the productive units known as ‘state enterprises’ were not really exclusively in state ownership at all, but were effectively the joint property of the party and state bureaucracy and of the enterprise management. Moreover, since the internal division of ownership rights was neither open nor unambiguous, this ownership relation was a diffuse one, giving rise to never-ending struggles. For each type of ‘owner’ the aim was continually to acquire further rights and continually to avoid further responsibilities. However, in such conditions the enterprise management’s share in ownership was such that its wishes prevailed in the fundamental strategic decisions relating to enterprise property. In the first place, these were decisions relating to enterprise expenditure, development and product range. In general, the managements of small enterprises were in the best position to expand their ownership rights by maintaining the largest possible distance between themselves and the party and state bureaucracy. However, while the managers of large enterprises had fewer ways of escaping the intervention of the party and state

58 THE TRANSFORMATION OF PROPERTY RELATIONS

bureaucracy, they did have opportunities to influence the decisions of those ‘above’ them directly and significantly, even being able to dictate to them. Although the formal legal ownership rights of the enterprise managers were as a rule narrower than would be expected in the case of exclusive ownership rights, in practice they enjoyed control because they had opportunities to exercise serious influence over the making of economic policy and on state-directed redistribution. In effect they exerted significant pressure, both directly and indirectly, on the way in which the enterprise property as a whole was utilized. Besides their struggles, the relationship between the party and state bureaucracy and the managers of the large enterprises was also one of mutual interdependence. On the one hand the party and state bureaucracy was dependent on the accomplishments of the large enterprises that were in a more or less monopoly situation, and whose export achievements were far greater than the average. On the other hand the large enterprises, being far less efficient than the average enterprises, were strongly dependent upon the favours of the party and state bureaucracy that played the central role in the reallocation of resources. However, from the beginning of the 1980s, the extent of the resources that could be redistributed by the party and state bureaucracy fell rapidly and the umbilical cord between them and the large enterprise managers weakened, so that the ownership rights of the managers of large enterprises grew, to the disadvantage of the party and state bureaucracy. After 1984, in more than two-thirds of the enterprises, ownership rights were exercised by the enterprise councils elected by the enterprise managers and the workers (or by mass meetings and delegate assemblies), but within these it was above all the enterprise management that had the upper hand. From 1988 onwards further changes affecting the large enterprises began and the ownership rights of the enterprise managers were further extended.1 The aim of the changes was to distinguish the functions of ownership and management: that is, in essence, they were primarily intended to enable enterprise managers to sell the ownership rights of their enterprises—a process that became known as ‘spontaneous privatization’. Several large enterprises turned their internal units into joint stock companies, in principle increasing the independence of these units and creating a self-interest in property on the part of the managers.2

Erzsébet Szalai is a Senior Research Fellow at the MTA Institute of Economics, Budapest. This study draws on the author’s research based on an analysis of literature and press articles plus a total of 70 in-depth interviews. The author wishes to acknowledge the help of the leadership and members of the Hungarian Workers’ Councils National Federation.

HUNGARY: THE POLITICS OF TRANSITION 59

The remaining central core sections of the large enterprises were transformed into property trustees of the new joint stock companies. By far the greater part of the new owners were other state enterprises and the possibility of cross-ownership was in fact expressly encouraged. The main new owners at this time were the enterprises’ suppliers and purchasers, and large commercial banks that were invariably in state ownership and very often the creditors of the enterprise. These changes were usually initiated without state control, although the process was encouraged by many state benefits and concessions.3 Meanwhile, the collapse of the existing political order was beginning. At the conference of the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party (HSWP) in May 1988, when János Kádár and his immediate entourage departed from the leadership, the ‘new technocracy’ generation in the party and state bureaucracy significantly increased its political weight.4 The new technocracy emerged within the party and state bureaucracy from the beginning of the 1980s. It leaned towards liberalism and represented technocratic, pragmatic values. Even so, it was not sufficiently strong to regain the ownership rights lost by its predecessors, and the party conference effectively legitimized the process of spontaneous privatization. On the one hand, in the resulting economic and political situation, the new technocracy increasingly came to feel its dependence upon the economic performance of the large enterprises. On the other hand, its energies were taken up by the skirmishes going on at the highest levels of power. Political and Social Conflicts Around the Changes in Ownership Relations in the Period of Regime Change During the period of regime change the government, now increasingly dominated by the new technocracy, was operating in a political void. The old political order was falling apart while the new power relations were still only beginning to take shape. In this period three distinct groups began to emerge over issues of ownership relations. These were the managers of large state enterprises, managers of smaller sub-units within them, and the shopfloor workers. In such conditions there was no force that could halt the process of spontaneous privatization. In 1989 this trend was reinforced by the introduction of the Transformation Act. This removed the obstacles to the complete transformation of state companies, but did so without clarifying the state’s ownership rights. The possibility of workers’ ownership also featured in this law, but only to a very limited extent. It meant, first and foremost, the further strengthening of the position of the large enterprise managers.5 The relationship of the large enterprises to the power centre was now characterized less by the separate informal bargaining processes


of the old system, and far more by the new idea of the ‘big bargain’. In essence this entailed the transfer of ownership rights to the large enterprise managers in exchange for their ability to keep the economy functioning, despite being in the midst of political flux. The period of regime change was characterized by a fever of company formations. During the period between September 1988 and September 1989 the number of economic units grew by two and a half times. The motor of the changes appears in the form of the shareholding company, and the limited liability company. While in the period under examination the number of traditional enterprises and cooperatives remained essentially unchanged, the sphere of shareholding companies grew five times, and the limited liability companies thirty-five times.6 During this period the sphere of activity drawn into the new companies also changed. Whereas it had previously been the state enterprises that formed companies, primarily with the participation of other state firms, in the newly forming companies there was a powerful impetus to draw in foreigners. The involvement of foreign capital was also motivated by significant state concessions.7 In the new shareholding companies domestic private capital was also appearing. In the changing situation the competition among different interests over property change became more manifest. With the reduction of the traditional concessions that could be gained from the state budget, the state’s power over the large enterprise centres and industrial units declined. At the same time, the large enterprise managers attempted to keep a more than 50 per cent share of their enterprises while the industrial units formed from the enterprise were increasingly struggling for their own independence. The aim of the enterprise managers was to find a compromise in which they would accept a reduction in their power, and a growth in the independence of the industrial units, but without breaking the umbilical cord between them. Precisely in order to prevent this compromise, however, there was a mushrooming of activity by industrial units striving for complete independence. Meanwhile other voices began to be heard that were both in favour of a break-up of the old state enterprises and, at the same time, in opposition to spontaneous privatization. Moreover, these protests had deeper social roots. From the beginning of 1989, a number of enterprise workers’ councils were formed, quite spontaneously, one after another.8 Workers affected by the changes brought into being workers’ councils, for instance, in the Rába Hungarian Wagon and Machine Factory at Mosonmagyaróvár at the end of 1989,9 and in the Hungarian Steel


Products Factory at Tiszaszalka. At Tiszaszalka the workers argued as follows: Our workers have for long been demanding a separation from the Budapest centre. As it is, we have been producing at a profit for over ten years, while for half a decade the achievements of the central factory have been progressively getting worse, and in recent periods they have actually shown a significant loss. And that’s without mentioning that average earnings in the capital are higher: they take home almost 30,000 forints more each year in their pay packets, despite the fact that the production values there and here are almost the same.10 This example provides a good illustration of the motivations of the workers in forming workers councils and wishing to break away: these were not in opposition to efficiency or to the market. On the contrary, in many cases their aim was to achieve the break-up of the large monopolies and to establish the independence and preservation of their own viable sections. However, these actions gave rise to sharp conflicts within the large enterprises and there was more than one case of the workers’ council leaders being sacked or threatened with the sack. Overall, there were several different motives behind the formation of the workers’ councils but most important was the dislike of spontaneous privatization, arising from the workers’ feeling that they had been excluded from it. Their predominant concern was that they were given no say in dividing up the property— ‘they are disposing of the factory over our heads’ —and in many cases by the very same managers who had led the enterprise into bankruptcy. These workers demanded a change of regime in the work-place, and total or partial control over the property of the enterprise, because they felt that its value was the product of their work. In this way, the developing workers’ council movement was not simply directed against the ‘communist managers’: it also aimed to establish control over other potential owners of the enterprise as well (internal or foreign private owners). Thus their movement was also directed against the new political and economic elite that was in the process of formation, and, within this, particularly against those who were seeking to convert their former political power into economic power. In other words, the workers’ demand was for control over the whole process of privatization. János Lukács, who understood the mood of different sections of the workers very well, described their feelings at the time: Those who accept the liberal economic standpoint look for people who could be innovative and have abilities to be managers, as well


as for those who have capital. In their opinion, what is important is that the enterprise should be competitive in the market, that it should produce goods that can be sold at high prices, that it should increase the national wealth, and in this way, over the long term, improve the standard of living of the population. Today this is the most popular standpoint, and the one most often heard. There are many others, however, who consider that such a way of strengthening private ownership is unacceptable, and who would like to see, through the formation of workers’ councils, the workers being entrusted with daily economic decisions too, or at least the creation of possibilities for their participation in decision-making. The fear has become public that an economically based ruling stratum is forming out of the former and current political elite, while the masses remain dispossessed, just as before. In the creation of the workers’ councils, a large role was played by the traditions of 1956, by disillusionment with the traditional trade unions, and also by the fear of unemployment. There were two types of worker who played prominent roles in the establishment of workers’ councils: on the one hand, the 30–40-year-old elite skilled workers, who felt themselves to be capable of directing their enterprises, or at least of taking part in that direction; on the other hand, those who feared for the collapse of the enterprise and the unemployment of the work-force. In parallel with the spontaneous establishment of the workers’ councils, several intellectual groups also gave their support to the setting up of workers’ councils around the country. On the basis of these developments the organization into a movement began, with fundamentally three centres. In the first place, at the instigation of new leftist and socialdemocratic intellectuals, the Workers’ Councils Information Office came into being, around which the National Association of Workers’ Councils was formed a little later. The Hungarian Democratic Forum’s Council for the Defence of Workers’ Interests similarly occupied itself with the organization and coordination of workers’ councils. Finally, there appeared on the scene the Central Workers’ Council of Sándor Rácz (the most important workers’ council leader at the time of the 1956 revolution, who had been imprisoned under the repression that followed the revolution’s defeat). There were conceptual differences separating the three wings. Sándor Rácz was a believer in unlimited self-management spreading to the entire sphere of the economy on the basis of the 1956 model, with productive capacities in their entirety as the property of workers’ collectives. The HDF type of workers’ council leaders represented the ‘liberal’ wing: they were advocates of limited share ownership by individual workers. The new leftists sympathized with Sándor Rácz’s position, and soon broke


away from the movement, while the social democrats assumed an inter mediate, shifting position. Despite the internal debates among the three wings, they appeared to come closer to one another in the second half of 1989 and the first half of 1990, but only because they consciously avoided —or, to put it more bluntly, swept under the carpet—their political and ideological differences. In the first half of 1989 it also became clear that the new technocratic leadership of party and state was not united on the process of spontaneous privatization, and a part of it was determined to get back at least some of its ownership rights. This group pressed for the urgent establishment of a state property organization.12 Their efforts were assisted in this period by a change in the political context. The new parties, and some of the other new political organizations, which had earlier concerned themselves with ownership relations to only a very small extent, were now beginning to protest against spontaneous privatization, seeing it as the preservation of the power of the communist managers and the selling-off of the country. Under the influence of the new technocracy and most of the new parties, the last months of the period of political regime change saw the birth of the laws that aimed to establish state controls over the process of spontaneous privatization. It was in this way that the law for the establishment of the State Property Agency (SPA), and for the defence of the property entrusted to the state enterprises, came into being. Political Debates on Ownership Policies in the Period of the Regime Change It so happened that in the summer of 1989 I took part in the tripartite political and economic talks preparing for the transition to a multiparty system.13 In this way I was able to see from close up how the ownership policies of the parties and other political organizations took shape, particularly as regards the organizations belonging to the opposition round table. The chief aim of the talks as far as the opposition parties were concerned was to work out the conditions for the peaceful transition to a multiparty system, while for the ruling party, the HSWP, it was to share out the responsibilities of a government that was now under the rule of the new technocracy and increasingly seeking to distance itself from the HSWP. However, at the HSWP’s instigation, economic themes as well as political ones became a subject of the talks. The Ownership Reform Committee was one of the six economic working groups, positioned on the lowest rung of the hierarchy of committees, thus signalling that the problems of ownership were deemed to be not political but economic questions. In truth, the work and the conclusions of the Ownership Reform Committee did not exercise any sort of influence


at all on the processes of ownership reform. This was partly because the leaders of each side showed no real interest in the problem, but also because there was no success in establishing a consensus amongst the many different approaches to property that were under discussion. Not even the individual negotiating delegations enjoyed united and hardhitting standpoints. The fault lines were not drawn between the three delegations, but somewhere completely different. There were three main ‘opinion neighbourhoods’ of attitudes and standpoints. The first combined the members of the HSWP delegation and the representatives of the Alliance of Free Democrats (AFD) and also those of the Alliance of Young Democrats (AYD). At the centre of their ownership policies stood the principle that private property should be the dominant form. An essentially similar standpoint, a strong ownership position for the local self-governments, associations and foundations within a pluralist ownership structure, was represented within the opposition round table by the Hungarian People’s Party, and within the Third Side’ by the representative of the Patriotic People’s Front. Believers in selfmanagement were represented within the Opposition Roundtable by the Democratic League of Free Trade Unions (League), and by the Left Alternative in the ‘Third Side’. The party that was later to be the victor in the elections, the Hungarian Democratic Forum (HDF), did not draw up any distinctive policy during the course of the negotiations, but its general sympathy seemed to lie with the aim of creating a domestic bourgeoisie largely based on small businesses. It also took up a position in favour of workers’ ownership. It was soon clear to everyone that the committee did not have the slightest chance of influencing the outcome of the talks. Although the majority of participants (with the exception of the AFD and Young Democrats) violently attacked spontaneous privatization, the process continued and the measures to prevent it that many urged did not come about—or, at least, not until much later. This was not unrelated to the fact that the the new technocratic government’s plan for a State Property Fund (later to be called the State Property Agency) was rejected by the majority on the two other sides, on the grounds that it would bring into being a state bureaucracy with excessively strong ownership powers. Even those who rejected the principles and the practice of spontaneous privatization argued in this way. Thus the basic question as to how the process of privatization might be brought under control, without increasing and even further strengthening the state bureaucracy, was unresolved. For the parliamentary elections that were held in March–April 1990, most parties formulated economic programmes including policies for the transformation of property relations. In general terms the ownership


policies of the parliamentary parties did not differ from one another in essentials; they saw privatization as a slow process, and they came out in favour of pluralist ownership relations. At the same time, some serious differences became evident; the programmes of the AFD and the Young Democrats emphasized the importance of classical private property more strongly than those of the others. In the programmes of the Christian Democratic People’s Party (CDPP) and the Hungarian Socialist Party (HSP) the various forms of social ownership, including workers’ ownership, figured not as unavoidable compromises but as valuable in their own right. The HDF was to be found in the middle. It can be seen in retrospect that there were important differences in the ownership policies of the two biggest parties, the AFD and the HDF, in particular concerning their attitudes towards spontaneous privatization. The AFD battled most radically for the removal of the old ruling order, but it was only much later that it came to distance itself, hesitatingly and cautiously, from the process of spontaneous privatization that favoured the large enterprise managers. In the battle against the leading forces of the old ruling order, the Hungarian Democratic Forum was at first less radical, but at the same time it stood out firmly and resolutely against the intermediate power centres, the local oligarchies and the process of spontaneous privatization, in favour of a more democratic, open and just reform of ownership relations. The difference in the motivations of the two large parties arose largely from the differences in their social composition. At the risk of oversimplifying a little, the AFD could be seen as made up of two parts. One part was a hard, politically and professionally credible vanguard that had been welded together during the years of its clandestine existence; the other part was an undifferentiated majority only just beginning to learn how to express itself politically and to assert its interests. This majority had joined the Free Democrats not because of the liberalism of their programme but, above all else, because of their radical opposition to the old ruling order of the party. The leading forces of the AFD, coming as they did mainly from Budapest intellectuals accustomed to independence, would have preferred to be the ‘living conscience of the nation’ rather than the holders of formal power. Alternatively, if they did seek power, then they aimed to occupy the key positions of power (and not the provincial positions or the seats of the large enterprise managers). The composition of the Democratic Forum was more homogeneous. Its membership was formed by the middle class, the roots of which could be found in the Christian middle class of the period between the two world wars. As the centre of gravity of this middle class was located in the countryside rather than the capital, this was the social stratum that had had the most direct experience of the arrogance of the local oligarchies and the large enterprise bureaucracies, and for whom it was


rather these power positions that appeared within their reach. For this reason, their aggression was directed primarily against the ‘middle-level authorities’ and against the process of spontaneous privatization. The Struggle Over Ownership After the Regime Change After the parliamentary elections of March 1990, the battle for political power subsided to some extent, but the struggle over ownership intensified. Battle ensued among the ‘nomenklatura bourgeoisie’ (this included the large enterprise managers positioned within the power structures), the stratum of small worker, peasant and intellectual entrepreneurs emerging from the second economy, entrepreneurs from abroad, the skilled intellectuals joining with them in mixed enterprises, the workers demanding workers’ ownership and organizing workers’ councils, and also the local governments and the former proprietors whose assets had been confiscated in the course of nationalization and collectivization. These struggles were to be reflected in the sometimes contradictory trends in government policy on ownership. (They also found partial expression in party political divisions. Those who hoisted the liberal principles to their standard were more ardent and urgent advocates of the import of foreign capital than were their opponents who professed the populist, nationalist ideology.) The most powerful owner, however, was the state bureaucracy and within that the State Property Agency. One of the most important moments in the battle over ownership was when the new technocracy, which was increasingly gaining ground within the state bureaucracy, openly sought to win back a large share of property rights from the large enterprise managers. Its strength for this struggle derived from the fact that the change of regime had again legitimized the growth of the power of the state bureaucracy.14 By the summer of 1990, the government had published its policies for the privatization of the large economic organizations. According to those initiating the process, three roads of privatization were sketched out. The first, and the one given most importance, was privatization initiated from the centre, in which the State Property Agency decided on the range of enterprises to be privatized and determined the method of privatization; the second was that of privatization initiated by the enterprises, while the third was that of privatization on the initiative of a foreign individual or group. These steps represented a policy no longer laying the foundations of a domestic bourgeoisie but directed against the power positions of the large enterprise managers, whittling away their ownership rights. Connected with these goals were measures that aimed to restrict the structures of the large enterprises, and relied upon the support of forces


pressing up from within and below them. Previously, within each large enterprise, the enterprise managements could make the final decisions over requests for independence by factory units. According to the new regulations, however, at the request of two-thirds of the workers of a factory unit, the enterprise management had to decide within 30 days whether or not the unit could be turned into an independent enterprise. In the case of rejection, the manager of the industrial unit could apply for authorization of its independence from the branch ministry. Thus the first measures of the new HDF-dominated government included the proclamation of governmental support (by branch ministries) for enterprise decentralization arising from initiatives from below, that is from factories or factory units, and, on more than one occasion, with the support of local workers’ councils. This action began in 1991 and achieved significant results, especially where the mother companies were medium-sized rather than large enterprises.15 At the same time, however, there were contradictory signs that government policy was turning in favour of the large enterprises. This came about partly because of continuing economic uncertainty. Although the balance of payments was beginning to improve, the direction of the economy was still unsure, and it was unclear how lasting the improvement would be. One of the first signs was the intervention of Mihály Kupa, the new finance minister in charge of ownership issues. In his first public statements, such as at the Chamber of Commerce, the organization representing the interests of the large enterprise managers, he expressed his faith in the process of spontaneous privatization.16 At the same time Bertalan Dicházy, a prime ministerial adviser, who had earlier been one of the most forceful representatives of the idea of popular share ownership and one of the most forceful opponents of spontaneous privatization, suggested in a speech to the Chamber that a change of direction in the government’s privatization policy could now be discerned. Up until then the government had been under pressures that had weighed against the interests of the large enterprises, but now it would be their managers who had the key role.17 Thus the battle began between Kupa and the enormous power concentrated in the State Property Agency. Striving for power in the governmental system, and interested for the sake of his job in rapidly raising earnings from privatization, Kupa sought control over the State Property Agency. By his support for spontaneous privatization he aimed to win favour with the large enterprise managers. A strengthening of the position of the large enterprises could also be observed in the developing relationship between the SPA and the large enterprise managers. It had become increasingly clear that this relationship was characterized by bargaining reminiscent of the days of the Kádár regime:


a relationship of an individual, informal nature, continuing the old practices of fixes and deals. However, despite such trends, the turn was by no means as sharp as government propaganda made it out to be.18 In fact, beneath the cover of a decentralization of decisions to the enterprises, the centralizing forces were still advancing. While 99 per cent of the SPA’s decisions were taken in response to the initiative of enterprises, and 90 per cent of its income came from the enterprises, the number of state initiatives and decisions rose markedly in the summer. The ownership and privatization strategy adopted by the government showed that in the Autumn of 1991 the State Property Agency had succeeded in defending its most important positions. (The only public ‘defeat’ was the decision to set up a separate organization concerned with the control of permanent state property.) Ironically, however, part of the reason for the SPA maintaining its position can be found in the personnel changes taking place within its management council which indicated that it was increasingly falling under the direct influence of the HDF. As a result, the further expansion of the sphere of competence of the SPA no longer appeared so dangerous for the government and the HDF. The result of these changes was complex. While the personnel changes helped to support the centralizing role of the SPA, it also affected its attitude to different kinds of ownership. The influence of government policy can be seen in the attitude of the SPA to foreign investment. According to the research of Êva Voszka, in 1991, in the competition between foreign and domestic capital, there were several cases where the SPA gave preference to a Hungarian buyer amongst the potential buyers for a company, even though in principle everyone welcomed foreign investments, and the favourable concessions they received were far from negligible. It was also striking that, in every instance of privatization associated with domestic private entrepreneurs that received wide publicity, the main actor was a well-known figure in political life belonging to the narrow circle of the HDF.19 However, according to Voszka, the general process of property change, continuing into 1992, was one of re-nationalization. With the formation of companies, the accumulation of property in the ownership of the SPA accelerated. ‘This process which, after the centralization of the rights to sell firms and company shares in 1990, came to represent the centralization of the entire ownership rights, is nothing other than renationalization.’ Real privatization was slowing down. According to a not fully comprehensive list, the SPA’s share ownership was 68 per cent of the 1,000 billion forints’ worth of total company property. This majority ownership meant an absolute domination (that is, more than 70 per cent of the shares) in 60 per cent of the companies. A simple majority (50 per cent of shares being held by the SPA) was to be found in 79 per


cent of the firms; 92 per cent of the total property of the SPA was concentrated in these companies. What is more, the SPA’s property represented only the lower limit of all state holdings, for the holdings of state firms and financial institutions also have to be included.20 The activity of the SPA reached a turning point in August 1992 when the privatization law came into force. According to this law, the SPA exercised the right of ownership in the name of the state. Amongst other things, it appointed the top managers of the enterprises that had been formed into companies, plus the members of the management board and the supervisory committee. That meant that, whereas the departmental ministries had previously had the right to make proposals and reach agreements in deciding upon personnel questions in the transformed enterprises, from this point on they could only express opinions. The enterprise managers were now primarily dependent upon the SPA and, within it, most of all upon the personnel office. While previously it had not been considered particularly important for the SPA to be represented in the formation of the leading bodies of the enterprises, now they were attempting to place their own representatives almost everywhere.21 By this time the law on the State Property Handling Company had also come into force, and the government had completed its list of companies which were to remain permanently in state ownership. In this category there were about 160 firms and 500 billion forints’ worth of their assets which were devolved to the State Property Handling Company. However, the full value of these companies at the disposal of the state was more than 1,000 billion forints. Furthermore, according to the estimate of Tamás Szabó, the minister for privatization, the total assets under the control of the state entrepreneurs could now be put at 2,000 billion forints.22 The Workers’ Councils and the Debate Over Property Change Meanwhile, the three previously mentioned wings of the workers’ council movement had united in the middle of 1990, and the National League of Workers’ Councils was established. There was one issue on which they were all united: namely that the workers’ councils should ‘seek the realization of their demands for participation through the election of managers under all forms of ownership’.23 However, almost immediately thereafter, the wing supporting the principle of selfmanagement, led by Sándor Rácz, broke away from the movement because Rácz was offended that he had not been elected president. Other sources of conflict within the leadership also arose. The first concerned the relationship of the movement to the HDF. The leadership was continually being forced to counter the charge—which


was not completely unfounded—that the movement was under the influence of the HDF. Meanwhile sharp conflicts were taking place within the movement between its information office, which fundamentally consisted of left-wing social democrats, and the council of the League of Workers’ Councils (the movement’s highest decision-making organ), which was decisively committed to the HDF. The second point of conflict concerned the question of whether the organization should preserve its unique features or begin to resemble more closely the other main type of organization for the defence of working-class interests, the trade union. The former view was represented by the left-wing social democrats and the latter by the HDF supporters. Increasingly it was the latter standpoint, the view favouring taking on more of a trade-union character, that came to dominate. However, in seeking to integrate themselves into the national system of institutions of interest defence such as the trade union round table and the Interest Conciliation Council, and into the foreign networks of such organizations, the workers’ councils, with their very rudimentary and unique features, did not find compatible partner organizations either at home or abroad. The influence of HDF members in high positions of the workers’ council movement was also evident in changes in the movement’s views on ownership issues. To begin with there was significant support for employee share ownership, and at this time there appeared the government’s proposals for the Employee Share Ownership Programme (ESOP), which would regulate conditions for the acquisition, at a discount, of ownership shares by employees. However, when this programme was not included in the legislative programme after all, questions of ownership were pushed into the background in the activity of the workers’ councils, and the demand for the defence of the work-place came to the fore, often in the guise of far right-wing ideology. For example, at the conference of the National League of Workers’ Councils held in September 1990 (which also strengthened the interest-defence and trade union tendency) Csaba Horváth, a member of the presidium of the workers council of the Videoton Electromechanical Limited company, protested against a proposal to sack 5,250 employees and announced that ‘if the government does not make an honourable decision in this matter— we will go on strike, and if that fails—we will occupy the factory’.24 Legislation on the Employee Share Ownership Programme continued to be dragged out until the middle of 1991,25 and by March 1991 it had become clear that, even were the ESOP law to be passed, the government was intending to allocate only a very restricted quantity of shares (at most 10 per cent) for employee ownership under privatization. This was determined by the government’s fear that, if the workers should develop too great a desire to acquire property, this would prevent the


transformation into ESOPs of enterprises standing on the brink of bankruptcy.26 In response, opposition to the government’s line grew, and it was not only the workers’ councils that took up the matter of the ESOP, but the unions as well. In the course of negotiations aimed at preventing a national warning strike by the main union federation, the National Confederation of Hungarian Trade Unions (NCHTU), ‘the negotiating delegation of the government undertook to put forward to the government the trade unions’ demand for the Employee Share Ownership Programme to be taken out of the sphere of privatization regulations and be placed with urgency before parliament’.27 At the end of 1991 the government submitted the ESOP bill to parliament, which voted for it to be debated ‘urgently’. Throughout all this, the workers’ councils were the most radical voice in promoting the interest of the ESOP. In May 1991, the national executive of the League of Workers’ Councils declared that ‘the employees also have a right to compensation’. The executive called upon the government to keep the election promises of the HDF, which had declared its aim to be the establishment of a bourgeois democracy and a market economy, and to create the bourgeoisie out of the wide circles of those living from wages and salaries. According to the NCHTU the latest version of the Employee Share Ownership Programme was completely inadequate for the creation of employee ownership. In addition, it called upon the government ‘to put before parliament the prohibition of the sale and privatization of the social welfare institutions of the enterprises, and with retrospective effect’.28 In the same month, the presidium of the National League of Workers’ Councils demanded a retrospective review of the process of spontaneous privatization,29 and also called for the SPA to give an account of its activity up until then.30 After these actions, the leadership of the workers’ councils came increasingly into conflict with the government. Imre Palkovics, who had been elected to parliament with the support of the HDF, said in the course of an interview: I had hoped that the parliament would pass the necessary laws, and establish freedom of organization in the factory, and that the workers would be able to make use of and benefit from this. Unfortunately, none of this has been realized…. I was forced to recognize that we had come into conflict with the government, too…. In the factories they are doing everything they can to put an end to the workers’ councils. For example there is loads of evidence that if somebody starts to organize they will be moved to another job or sacked…at the same time their contacts with the successor to the old state-party trade union are as good as they have always been.31


According to the statement of the League of Workers’ Councils, in September 1991, if the government does not bring forward the introduction of enterprise employee ownership, then the proportion of foreign capital will rise above an acceptable level, or a minority will secure the state property for below its price, or it is possible that state ownership will remain dominant. Not one of these solutions is acceptable…. In the course of the transformation of the enterprises the workers should be officially offered the right to take over either partially or entirely, for their own use and at their own risk, the direction of the enterprise and thus of their own fates, and they must ensure that this takes precedence.32 At the end of 1991 the atmosphere cooled down, and at a press conference in October, Imre Palkovics announced: ‘it is not only the employee share ownership programme that is being accepted more favourably by government circles, but renting and leasing are also included in the latest privatization proposals’.33 The general debate on the bill about the ESOP began in February 1992, and in June the parliament approved it. The overwhelming majority of the more than 150 proposals to modify the bill, mostly associated with the names of certain HDF and HSP members of parliament, sought to improve the situation of the employees, but the greater part of them received fewer than a third of the votes in the debates in committee. The HDF was in an ambiguous situation. On the one hand it was the governing party, in which capacity it had to respect budgetary and other viewpoints, while on the other hand the leaders of the workers’ councils, the organization of employees most committed to workers’ ownership, sat in its ranks. The HDF chose Imre Palkovics, the workers’ councils leader, as its main spokesman, and, besides supporting the bill, he recommended modifications weakening its financial restrictions. Further proposals were also included in the final law but not, for example, the proposal for the ending of compulsory guarantees of the company and for their replacement with a state guarantee fund. Similarly radical demands were expressed in the HSP’s proposed amendments. One of the proposals was that the state property handling organization should be able to reject the ESOP workers’ initiatives only in exceptionally well-founded cases. The HSP described as misleading the government statement that the ESOP would provide property for the masses of workers, since according to the calculations carried out on the basis of the 1989 data only seven per cent of work-places were sufficiently economical for ESOP entrepreneurship. Since then, however, the


situation has grown essentially worse on account of the privatization of the better firms and the general recession. Against this, the spokesman of the CDPP unequivocally identified the aim of the ESOP law as ‘the beginning of economic system change’. The standpoint of the spokesman for the AFD was characterized by ambivalence. The representative of the Young Democrats brushed aside his doubts by describing the law as being ‘of little significance’.34 In the second half of 1992 the workers’ councils carried on only a lastditch fight on the question of ownership. According to Imre Palkovics, by the time that the ESOP is now perhaps finally able to come into operation, the more successful enterprises have already been sold off. But the workers could only buy firms making a profit. We are trying to dampen the workers’ enthusiasm, so they won’t have exaggerated illusions about the system, for it is surely not possible to make use of it without cost, or in the case of every factory. At the same time the banks have no interest at all in granting favourable credit to the workers. Many workers’ council leaders took exception to the fact that the rules of the ESOP favoured the well-remunerated managers, and made possible concealed managerial buy-outs at the expense of the workers. Voices were also heard in the leadership of the workers’ councils to the effect that only a defensive strategy now remained, which meant that, in the interest of slowing down the growth of unemployment, it was necessary to slow down privatization as well. Postscript: May 1994 In 1993 and the first few months of 1994, signs of division were evident in the process of the dismantling of state ownership, linked, no doubt, to the coming parliamentary elections. Towards the end of 1993 the Small Investors’ Share Ownership Programme was introduced. The original aim of this programme was to allow a large proportion of Hungarian citizens the opportunity of gaining ownership, but, in view of the property on offer, only a small proportion of the population would be assigned ownership (within a framework of instalment payments); meanwhile the ESOP has continued to fall in significance. In May 1994 more than half of all enterprise property remains under state control. Also, the process of privatization is by no means irreversible. The bankruptcy of new owners has led in several cases to the return to state ownership of enterprises that had been sold off.35 In the first round of the May 1994 parliamentary elections the HSP and the AFD achieved the best results and the downfall of the HDF-led


coalition ensued; the MSP and AFD formed the new government. As far as their thoughts on privatization are concerned, both parties have placed emphasis, albeit in vague terms, on ‘decentralization’, which in reality signifies the continuation and expansion of spontaneous privatization. The MSP programme also includes the revival of the ESOP. The expansion of spontaneous privatization may cause sharpened social tension, if only because the consequences of Hungary’s growing national debt will mean that measures to curb this trend in the second half of the year will lead to a fall in the standard of living and an expected sharp rise in inflation. Summary and Conclusions Although the private economy is spreading it is not primarily through privatization. According to András Vigvári, privatization taking place in an ‘organic way’, which would advance embourgeoisement built upon domestic accumulation, is incompatible with monetary restrictions. ‘The practice of debt-management as a source of funds takes away the air from the domestic small and medium capitalist classes that are trying out their wings’.36 In contrast to the programme on which it won the 1990 elections, and innumerable declarations made since then, the MDF became rather ambivalent towards the development of a property-owning bourgeoisie, and in particular of a broad ownership stratum that would embrace a part of the labour force as well, because it feared that would be a threat to its power. In the competition between the real groups of potential private proprietors and the state bureaucracy it stood behind the latter, and instead of clearing away the institutions restricting the development of a market economy, it placed its own clientele into leading positions. There is nothing the state bureaucracy fears more than the power of a really strong ‘ownership class’. From the point of view of the holders of political power and the state bureaucracy, the slowing down of privatization, criticized by many professional commentators, represented a restriction on the development of a propertied bourgeoisie that could become a rival for power. At the same time, many signs indicate that slow privatization is also in the interest of those groups that have not yet accumulated sufficient capital to buy larger state enterprises, and these groups of entrepreneurs are coming to be found in the entourage of every political party. The probable solution to the conflict and competition between the governing party, the state bureaucracy and the ‘entrepreneurial class’ could be the creation and establishment of a client bourgeoisie committed to supporting the existing political order and to maintaining good relations with the state bureaucracy. However, this client bourgeoisie is in all


likelihood going to resemble the lobby of large enterprise managers of the Kádár regime, who sought after the 1968 economic reform to ‘cream off those elements of the market and of liberalization that were favourable to them, while shifting their disadvantages to the state. The extreme right-wing views of the former vice-president of the HDF, István Csurka, seeking to appeal to the Christian and nationalist middle class, does not for the time being have any wide social influence, because this stratum is only sporadically represented in the society. The narrow middle stratum that still exists in Hungary (after the process of radical division that followed the change of political regime) is, as a consequence of the unique socialization of the Kádár period, not Christian and nationalist, and not responsive to ideologies—particularly not to extremist, irrational ideologies—but is rather characterized by pragmatic value systems and attitudes. If, however, over the long term an economic power does not come into being that is pragmatic and based on private ownership to counterbalance the fundamentally ideological political power; or even if it does come into being but modernization remains incomplete, the economic power being concentrated in the hands of a narrow private ownership group, which creates islands of modernity while other parts of society and the economy sink down and fall into the periphery—then extremist ideas could find a breeding-ground, and this could then seriously endanger the operations of the institutions of both economic and political democracy. For these reasons the development of a wide ownership base is of fundamental importance, and the condition of this is the acceleration of the process of privatization, even at the price of ‘distributive’ elements becoming involved in it, and even at the price that this could lead to a growth of political and social conflicts accompanying privatization. In the course of this study, I have attempted to show that it is precisely the slowing down of privatization that will or could lead to even more conflicts. It is also necessary for the possibilities for employee ownership to be opened up in the less efficient areas as well, and for the assurance of equal chances within the enterprises (or at least an approximation to this) for the managers and the employees. However, the acceleration of privatization in this way too could in all probability be accompanied by unemployment, and for this reason the establishment of a stable system for dealing with it is absolutely necessary. One part of this is the realization of the aim, already formulated many times, for a considerable proportion of the proceeds of privatization to be used for the creation of new work-places.


NOTES 1. More accurately, partial and limited transformations had already been made possible by earlier laws as well. The sequence was begun in the autumn of 1986 by Medicor, and continued in 1987 by Budaflex and four other enterprises. 2. The Company Act of 1988 allowed the transformation of sub-units of state enterprises into independent companies and specified the legally recognized types of private company that could be set up in Hungary, including limited liability and joint stock companies. Existing managers and other new owners could then buy shares in the newly formed companies. They could also take advantage of loopholes in existing rules on tax and credit. In some cases the state-owned parent company was reduced to ‘an empty shell’, with all decisions being made in the newly formed subunits. If the new sub-units also became the employers of the enterprise workforce, and the parent enterprise therefore had few employees of its own, the management could also side-step the need in law to consult the employees’ representatives on the Enterprise Council since this applied only to state enterprises. For further details, see R.Frydman et al., The Privatisation Process in Central Europe (London: CEU Press, 1993), pp. 140–42 [Editors’ note]. 3. One group of concessions consisted of normative tax reliefs or reductions. At the beginning (until 1 November 1988) these applied only to companies of purely Hungarian ownership, but were later extended to enterprises established with only foreign share ownership. A second type of concession for such newly formed companies was automatic exemption from the enforcement of many aspects of the state system of regulations (such as wage regulations, import and export restrictions and restrictions on entertainment allowances). In addition, there were also a number of individual judgements and informal bargains between state representatives and the managers: see Éva Voszka, Tulajdon-reform, Pénzügykutató Részvinytársaság, March 1991 (manuscsript). 4. I have analysed the sociological characteristics of this group in my article ‘A hatalom metamorphózisa?’, in Valóság, Vol. 34, No. 6 (1991). 5. The Transformation Act of 1989 established procedures for the transfer of whole stateowned enterprises into denationalized forms of ownership, including private ownership. The law also offered an incentive for ‘insider managers’ to buy shares in such transformed companies by allowing them to buy 20 per cent of the company’s shares at a discount of up to 90 per cent. Furthermore, since the law imposed no regulations on the valuation of the company’s assets, existing managers were often able to set an artificially low asset value and then buy the shares for themselves; for further details, see Frydman et al., op. cit., pp. 142–3 [Editors’ note]. 6. Voszka, op. cit. 7. Mária Móra, ‘Az állami vállalatok (ál) privatizációja’, Gazdasâg Kutató Intézet, Dec. 1990. 8. The first of these took place at Herend and Pét.


9. F.Hajba, ‘Vihar a Rábában. Lesz-esztrájk Mosonmagyaróváron?’, Népszabadság, 5 Jan. 1990. 10. ‘A munkások megelégelték a huzavonát. Megápodás a tiszaszalkai gyár jövöjéröl’, Népszabadság, 5 Jan. 1990. 11. János Lukács, ‘Gazdasági demokráciát, privatizálással’, Népszabadság, 14 Nov. 1989. 12. These aims also made their appearance in the columns of the press: see, for example, Auth Henrik-Krokos János, ‘Kié az állami vállalat? gyanús átalakulások’, Figyelö, 9 Feb. 1989; ‘Milliárdok válaszüton. Mennyit vesztett az állam a Tungsramon? Gergely László interjúja az Országos Tervhivatal egyik munkatársával’, Magyar Nemzet, 10 May 1989. 13. The three sides were the ruling Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party (HSWP), the opposition round table that brought together the opposition political organizations, and the ‘third side’ comprising organizations loyal to the ruling party such as the National Women’s League and the Hungarian Patriotic People’s Front. I participated for a time in the work of the committee on ownership reform. Within the opposition round table, I represented the Democratic League of Free Trade Unions (The League). 14. The role played by the State bureaucracy in the privatization process was significantly increased by the fact that, according to the HDF-AFD pact born after the parliamentary elections, the laws concerning ownership did not feature amongst those requiring a two-thirds majority in parliament. According to Mária Móra (op. cit.), the lack of the two-thirds rule, whilst it led to instability in decisions concerning ownership, made it possible for the government rather than parliament to gain overall control over the working out and implementation of the fundamental principles of privatization. At the same time, the companies formed from the enterprises established by the local councils also fell under the government’s State Property Agency (SPA). In addition, amendments made to the transformation law also mirrored the centralizing intentions of the government. 15. ‘By June 70 requests for separation had been received by the Ministry of Trade and Industry. While half of the cases were still unresolved at the beginning of the summer, the decisions that had been made showed a clear tendency. The ministry only rejected the application in six cases, and approved it in eleven. In a half of the cases, however— after the application had been made—the enterprise council itself approved the organizational decentralization, while in a tenth of the applications, those concerned withdrew them’: Éva Voszka, ‘A privatizáció és a szervezeti decentralizáció összefüggései’, Pénzügykutató Rt., Sept. 1991. 16. Lajos Kovács, ‘Lépések a kinálati piac felé. Mihály Kupa a nemzeti privatizációs stratégiáról’, Népszabadság, 11 March 1991. 17. Miklós Z.Hajduska, ‘Vita a Kamarában. Irányváltás a privatizációban?’ Magyar Hírlap, 10 April 1991. 18. ‘Jelentés gazdaságunk 1991 évi helyzetéról’, Pénzükykutató Részvénytársaság, May 1992. 19. Éva Voszka, ‘Kerülöutak, ösvények, zsákutcák’, Közgazdasági Szemle, 1992, No. 6.


20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25.

26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36.

Éva Voszka, ‘Tart a visszaállamositás’, Figyelö, 6 Aug. 1992. ‘Az ÁVÜ kegyelméböl’, Figyelö, 17 Sept. 1992. ‘Egymilliárdos vagyon állami kézben’, Figyelö, 3 Sept. 1992. ‘Munkástanácsok tiltakozása’, Magyar Hírlap, 15 Aug. 1990. ‘Érvek és indulatok a munkástanácskokan. Elfoglalják a Videotont?’, Népszabadság, 24 Sept. 1990. However, in the case of more than 30 enterprises, employee ownership worth almost one billion forints had come into existence, or at least was being planned. Pál Réti, ‘Munkvállalói részvények. Megkapjuk a magunkét’, Héti Világgazdaság, 2 March 1991. ‘Sürgösséggel’, Figyelö, 18 June 1992. ‘A MOSZ állásfoglalásai. Munkavállalónak kárpótlást, Magyar Hírlap, 11 May 1991. ‘Munkástanácsok: nem restauráció’, Uj Magyarország, 22 May 1991. ‘Privatizáció igen, korrupció nem’, Uj Magyarország, 24 May 1991. János Czingráber, ‘Padlóra küldött munkástanácsok. Beszélgetés a lemondását fontolgató Palkovics Imrével’, Népszabadság, 18 June 1991. ‘A MOSz a privatizációról’, Magyar Hírlap, 28 Sept. 1991. ‘Egyenjogú privatizáció’, Népszabadság, 10 Oct. 1991. Gábor Karsai, ‘Húszezerért egymillió’, Figyelö, 18 June 1992. ‘Report on the Process of Economic Transformation between 1990–93’, Financial Research Report, April 1994. Andás Vigvéri, ‘Tulajdonváltás és érdekek’, Társadalmi Szemle, 1992, No.3.

Part II Political Institutions and Processes

80

Obstacles to the Development of Democratic Politics BILL LOMAX

So far, the countries of the former communist eastern Europe have avoided a reversion to authoritarian rule. Nevertheless, the immense difficulties of establishing functioning democracy have been recognized in the wake of the euphoria of 1989, and fledgling democracy is not yet secure. Indeed, while many of the appurtenances of democracy are apparent, evidence also suggests that transfers of allegiance, personal conflicts, disintegration and fragmentation are hindering the establishment of solid parties, a tendency that is exacerbated by continuing undemocratic values and attitudes. Despite the doubts expressed by certain commentators, the present author included, concerning the viability of the democratic regimes established in East-Central Europe in the aftermath of the ‘people’s revolutions’ of 1989, not one of the countries where democratic multi-party systems were formed has yet seen a reversal to single-party or authoritarian rule.1 Yet there has been a recognition by many of the new political leaders that the tasks facing them in establishing and consolidating democratic political systems are far more difficult than they had at first imagined. In Hungary, for example, the leader of the Alliance of Young Democrats, Viktor Orbán, speaking at the Liberal World Congress meeting in Budapest in November 1993, said that the bricks of the Berlin Wall have been snapped up by Japanese and American tourists, while here the remains of the wall have remained in people’s spirits, in their way of thinking, in the economy, in the social system, in education and in many other areas of social life.2 The argument has been put in a more theoretical form by two Hungarian sociologists who conclude their study on the dissolution of communist power in Hungary with the observation ‘the fact that communism is dead does not mean a panacea, does not necessarily entail


a “transition to democracy”’.3 In their view, communism has ‘left behind an enormous burden in terms of built-in expectations, forms of behaviour and frames of mind’ and they have argued that communism ‘disseminated techniques that will be with us for a long time to come’. Consequently, they argue that the establishment of democratic political institutions will not in itself lead to the practice of democratic forms of political behaviour, a view to which I lend my support in this article. Parties, Values and Political Behaviour The Hungarian political scientist László Kéri has recently compared the Hungarian party system to a Rubik’s Cube. Just as the Rubik’s Cube has six sides, so the Hungarian party system has six parties. Just as in an unsolved Rubik’s Cube, the various colours of the Hungarian political spectrum are found mixed up within each of the six parties. With time, the puzzle may be solved, and each of the parties may come to be seen in clear political colours.4 Yet four years after its first free election, the Hungarian political spectrum, far from taking on a clearer structure, has become increasingly disparate and confused. It looks rather as though the Rubik’s Cube may actually be falling apart. In the parliament elected in March-April 1990 there were six large parties, one small one and a handful of independents. By spring 1994, there were representatives of some 20 parties in parliament. Around 50 MPs have left or have been expelled from their original parties and at least another 25 MPs have been replaced through deaths or resignations and many ‘new’ parties have been formed.5 This process has been

Bill Lomax is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Sociology, University of Nottingham. The author is deeply indebted to many Hungarian friends and colleagues for their advice and information during his conduct of the research on which this study is based. He would particularly like to thank both András Bozóki and László Kéri whose publications on the political parties in Hungary today are too vast to mention. He has equally benefited from the outstanding research carried out by József Kis and his colleagues at the Jelenkutató Alapítvány (Contemporary Research Foundation) in Budapest. Finally, this study could not have been completed but for the excellent studies and so far unpublished manuscripts written on the Christian Democratic People’s Party and the Independent Smallholders’ Party by Magdolna Balázs and on the AYD (the Young Democrats) by Zsolt Enyedi. This study has been written as part of an ongoing research project on ‘Regime Change in East-Central Europe: Political Parties and the Transition to Democratic Politics’ funded by the East-West Programme of the Economic and Social Research Council of the UK. He is most grateful to the ESRC for its continuing support.

OBSTACLES TO DEMOCRATIC POLITICS 83

marked by bitter debates and conflicts within the parties and, in some cases, by internal rifts and occasional litigation. Far from democratic institutions fostering democratic political behaviour, the attitudes, values and behaviour patterns learned and acquired in the past appear to be undermining the functioning of the democratic process and of the new political institutions. One explanation for this phenomenon has been put forward by George Schöpflin, who argues that Soviet-type systems preserved a variety of ‘pre-modern’ values and beliefs that are out of tune with modern realities. He argues that these beliefs and values ‘make the smooth functioning of democracy problematical’. There is also an inclination for politics to focus on personalities rather than institutions, and that again ‘militates against the smooth functioning of democracy’.6 The problem for democracy, according to Schöpflin, arises from the fact that political behaviour tends to be determined by values rather than by material interests. The trouble with values, particularly ‘pre-modern’ ones, is that they are non-negotiable. Democratic political behaviour, however, is about compromise, bargains, and impersonal interactions, and this can succeed only where the focus of politics is upon a conflict of material interests rather than of values. I cannot, however, agree with Schöpflin’s apparent view that there is no role for values in modern societies and I feel that he overstates his case in suggesting that conflicts of values cannot be resolved through democratic institutions. The problem is not values themselves, but the form of commitment to them. It is when one value is asserted to the exclusion of all others that the democratic process is endangered. In this respect, one element in the legacy of communism is the denial of a pluralism of political values. Should pluralism be accepted, then conflicts of values can be resolved through democratic processes, often just as readily as can conflicts of interest. Democratic politics is about individuals and groups of individuals, representing a variety of interests and adhering to a variety of values, acting together through political institutions to promote what they agree to be their common interests and ideals. Politicians who are committed to one supreme value, or who seek to assert their interests to the exclusion of all others, can realize their aims only by denying the very legitimacy of their opponents’ participation in the political process, thereby undermining the functioning of democratic institutions. The successful consolidation of democracy, on the other hand, requires the acceptance of pluralism, and the willingness to negotiate, bargain and compromise with those who represent different interests and values. Democratic politics is certainly about conflict and struggle, but it is not about victory or defeat. It is, on the contrary, about coexistence. This point has been made most recently by Chantal Mouffe who, drawing on the


insights of Carl Schmitt’s critique of liberal democracy while rejecting his political conclusions, writes: A healthy democratic process calls for a vibrant clash of political positions and an open conflict of interests… It requires that, within the context of the political community, the opponent should be considered not as an enemy to be destroyed, but as an adversary whose existence is legitimate and must be tolerated.7 Politics, in other words. is about both conflict and compromise, diversity and agreement, to the exclusion of neither, and no political solution is ever final. Against John Rawls and the Kantian liberals, Mouffe argues that ‘the defining feature of politics is struggle’. Conflicts, antagonisms and power relations will never disappear; indeed, politicians in a modern democracy must accept division and conflict as unavoidable, and the reconciliation of rival claims and conflicting interests can be only partial and provisional.8 Thus the first requirement of a democratic political system is the acceptance of the legitimacy of political opponents, their recognition as adversaries rather than as enemies, and the acceptance by political actors that their aims and interests can never be totally realized because the aims and interests of other actors have to be given equal respect. Without the development and practice of pluralist forms of political behaviour, the institutions of political democracy will not survive for long. Another result of politics being presented in largely absolutist ideological terms is that for the majority of citizens it has become a form of theatre, unrelated to their real lives—a process to which they relate not as participants but as spectators. Thus they are detached, and often disaffected, not only from the government but from the entire party system and political process. Indeed, the adoption and practice of pluralist forms of political involvement and participation can be just as difficult for ordinary people as it is for the politicians. Thus the main constraint on the development and consolidation of democratic politics in Hungary today is the weakness, or lack, of a democratic political culture: this weakness is most clearly demonstrated by the fragmentation of the party system over the four years of the first democratically elected post-communist parliament. Party Elites and Members Several commentators have remarked that many of the new parties in East-Central Europe are elite parties of professional intellectuals lacking both the mass membership and the social basis of traditional parties in western democracies. They have been described as more like ‘clubs’ or


‘tribes’ than parties, as ‘spiritual communities’ or ’intellectual milieux parties’, held together by emotionally charged cultural identities rather than by socio-economic interests or ideological principles.9 Some of the new politicians, however, have accepted this characterization as representing a new and modern type of political party as against the classical mass parties of traditional industrial societies. Bálint Magyar of the Free Democrats describes them as ‘modern people’s parties’, analogous to the ‘service’ rather than the ‘manufacturing’ sector of the economy, in which the ‘function of the party member is totally different from that in the classical mass party’.10 The members of such a party are neither ‘recruits’ nor ‘recruiters’ but ‘managers’, and the party elite communicates with and mobilizes its supporters, not primarily through the party’s organization and membership, but directly through the mass media. In consequence, such parties do not need the large mass membership characteristic of traditional mass parties. Instead, the active membership is almost equivalent to the professional political elite of the party at a national and local level. One consequence of this is that, in Hungary, the parties with the largest mass membership are often also those with the lowest electoral support, having their base in particular sectors of society. Amongst these can be counted the hardline communist Workers’ Party and the maverick, far right, Independent Smallholders’ Party led by József Torgyán. Electoral support for these parties is often not much wider than their claimed membership. On the other hand, the party that consistently led the polls throughout 1992 and 1993, the Alliance of Young Democrats, has the smallest active membership of all the major parties. Another consequence of these party structures is that the parties are in no sense rooted in the wider society and do not function as ‘schools of democracy’ to encourage and enable popular participation in the political process. On the contrary, their structures ensure that both debates over policy and contests for leadership positions take place largely within the elite of professional politicians rather than among a wider party membership located in society at large. This, once again, strengthens the impression amongst the wider public that politics is a game restricted to the political elite and that they are little more than passive spectators. The result is likely to be growing public detachment and alienation from the democratic political process, a disillusionment that could result in support for political demagogues and extremist political movements of either left or right.11 In the following six sections, I will look at the structures and organization of the six parliamentary parties and provide a brief history of the conflicts within them during the course of Hungary’s first postcommunist Parliament. The six major parties have surprisingly similar


political structures and a similar division of powers. In most cases, the sovereign body is the national delegate congress, which generally meets annually or twice a year and elects the party’s leading executive body or presidium and the party leader or president. The parliamentary party (or parliamentary fraction as it is referred to) elects both the leadership team and the individual who will lead the party in parliament. Finally, the party also has a national council elected from representatives of party organizations throughout the country which elects a chairman. The national council is a smaller body than the congress and meets more frequently, generally several times a year. Its chairman has some influence within the party, but less power than the party president or parliamentary leader. Most parties also appoint a fulltime party manager. In the run-up to a general election, the larger parties will usually also select a prime minister-designate and a campaign coordinator. Within the parties there may be several distinct platforms representing different political or ideological standpoints. In most cases, however, these platforms would not regard themselves as factions; nor have they necessarily been the primary sources of intra-party conflict. These party structures, with different leading positions and centres of power, clearly provide ample opportunity for both personal and political conflicts. Should these be engaged in through tolerant and pluralist political behaviour, and resolved through democratic procedures and negotiations, such conflicts could enrich and enliven the parties as democratic institutions. Should this not be the case, they may serve to fragment, divide or split the parties, thereby undermining their very functioning as democratic institutions. The Hungarian Democratic Forum (HDF) The Hungarian Democratic Forum (HDF) was set up by a loose alliance of populist writers, together with some liberals and reform communists, in September 1987, but it did not form itself into a party until June 1989. The party’s first president, the reform communist Zoltán Biró, was replaced in October 1989 by a canny conservative historian, József Antall, who led the party in a more anti-communist and politically conservative direction, taking as his model Ludwig Erhard and the West German economic miracle after 1945, and hoping for a similar achievement in Hungary after the fall of communism. Antall led the HDF to victory in the free and multi-party elections of 1990, and remained both president of the party and prime minister until his death in December 1993. Of the new prime ministers who came to power through free elections in East-Central Europe after 1989, Antall was to stay in power the longest, though was also the first to die in office.


Immediately after the 1990 election, Antall became the leader of his party’s parliamentary fraction, but gave up the post upon forming a government. His replacement as fraction leader was Imre Kónya who remained in that post until his appointment as minister of the interior in the new government formed at the end of 1993 under Péter Boross, after Antall’s death. Imre Kónya was replaced in turn as the HDF fraction leader by Ferenc Kulin. Owing to Antall’s unchallenged authority as party leader and prime minister, there was little or no political change or conflict in the top leadership of the party between 1989 and December 1993. In this respect the HDF has been one of the most stable of the parliamentary parties. Nevertheless, different political groupings (referred to as platforms) did form within the parliamentary party, principal amongst them being the National Populists, the National Liberals and the Christian Democrats. Several HDF MPs ‘crossed the floor’ to join other parties, while others died, resigned or were expelled from the party. The biggest breakaway was led by István Csurka in 1993 when he formed the Hungarian Justice and Life Party. By the late summer of 1993, the HDF’s parliamentary party had been reduced to 134 members (from 164 in 1990), and the coalition government’s parliamentary majority was approaching vanishing-point. The Christian Democratic People’s Party (CDPP) The Christian Democratic People’s Party (CDPP) has also been one of the more stable parties and after the 1990 elections it joined the government coalition with the HDF and the Smallholders.12 The CDPP was the successor party to the strongly anti-communist Democratic People’s Party which was led by István Barankovics after the Second World War. It was re-formed in June 1989 under the leadership of politicians who had been members of the party before the communist takeover. Sándor Keresztes was elected party leader in September 1989. In May 1990, however, soon after the parliamentary elections, the old guard were ousted from office and replaced by younger politicians who identified with more modern European forms of Christian democracy rather than with their party’s historical traditions. The new party leader, László Surján, was also prepared to be more accommodating to the policies of the coalition government leader, József Antall. The parliamentary fraction of the CDPP elected Tibor Füzessy as its leader, although in June 1992, when Füzessy took up a ministerial post, he was replaced by Béla Csépe. Since 1990 the parliamentary fraction has lost two members and gained five, thereby increasing in strength from 21 to 24. Several tendencies have been identified within the parliamentary party, ranging from those close to the politics of the Smallholders to the more


centrist and less ideological Christian democrats, and those favouring some form of Christian socialism, but none of these have organized themselves as separate platforms within the party. The CDPP is also the one party whose membership and local activity have grown steadily since 1989, its local organizations serving more than merely electoral purposes. While remaining loyal to the coalition government, it has also sought to maintain its independence and separate identity and it is probably the only party in the coalition that can expect to see both its popular vote and its parliamentary representation increase in the 1994 elections. The Hungarian Socialist Party (HSP) The Hungarian Socialist Party (HSP) has also remained relatively stable since 1989, or at least after a number of personnel changes in the months immediately following the 1990 elections. The HSP was formed in October 1989 following the disbandment of the former Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party (HSWP), its leader being the former social democrat and reform communist Rezsö Nyers who became both president of the party and chairman of its national council. Other leading figures in the new party were the reformist and presidential aspirant Imre Pozsgay, the last communist prime minister, Miklós Németh, and the foreign minister, Gyula Horn. Following the 1990 elections, Imre Pozsgay was elected leader of the HSP fraction in the new parliament, whereas Miklós Németh resigned from the party and sat in parliament as an independent. At the party’s congress in May 1990, Rezsö Nyers stood down both as party leader and as national council chairman, being replaced in the former post by Gyula Horn and in the latter by the sociologist Iván Vitányi. In November, Imre Pozsgay resigned from the party, standing down as its parliamentary fraction leader but remaining in parliament as an independent. He was replaced as HSP fraction leader by Zoltán Gál. Following these changes, the new leadership of the party has remained stable and united, and has not had to face any direct challenges, although several platforms have been active within the party, amongst them the Union for a Social Democratic Hungarian Socialist Party, the Liberal Socialists, the Left Wing Unity platform, the Religious Socialists and the Patriotic and Progressive Socialists.13 The HSP, however, probably more than any other Hungarian party, has come to behave much like modern democratic parties in the West, so that debates over policy and ideology have not so far caused it irretrievable damage or served to tear it apart. For the first year after the elections the HSP found itself isolated and coldshouldered in parliament, but since then it has gradually come to be accepted as a legitimate democratic party and by 1993 it was playing a


key role in initiating contacts and discussions with the other parties in the runup to the 1994 elections. Within the parliament, the HSP’s losses have been balanced by its gains, with the result that it had the same number of MPs at the end of 1993 as it had in May 1990 (33). It has had several successes in parliamentary and local government by-elections, while its fortunes in opinion polls have constantly improved. Throughout 1993 it held second place in the polls, creeping up in the autumn to challenge and finally overtake the party that had been in the lead for the previous two years, the Alliance of Young Democrats, so as to occupy first place in the polls by the end of the year. The Independent Smallholders’ Party (ISHP) If the Hungarian Socialist Party can be regarded as a party that has successfully come to behave like a modern democratic party capable of managing political conflicts and debates without tearing itself apart, the same cannot be said about the Independent Smallholders’ Party (ISHP). In truth, it would hardly be an exaggeration to describe the politics of the ISHP as ‘the politics of the madhouse’.14 The Smallholders, the successor to the party of the same name that was the largest party in Hungary after the Second World War, was re-formed in November 1988 under an ‘old guard’ of leaders, many of whom had been MPs after 1945. It was one of their number, the 79-year-old Vince Vörös, who was elected president of the new party in June 1989. The first of the new independent organizations to constitute itself as a party, the ISHP was at first overshadowed by the HDF. Yet at the same time the ISHP was the first party to organize supporters at the local level, amongst ordinary people in the countryside. By November 1989 it was claiming a membership of 25,000 and by the end of 1990 its membership had risen to 60–70,000, the highest membership claimed by any party in the country. Forty-four Smallholders were elected to parliament in 1990, and József Torgyán, a lawyer and demagogic orator from the younger generation of Smallholder politicians, was elected leader of the parliamentary fraction. At the same time, Vince Vörös, who was elected a deputy Speaker of parliament, was replaced as party president by Ferenc József Nagy. The Smallholders joined the coalition government under József Antall, although Torgyán himself did not become a minister. The Smallholders’ main demand in the coalition negotiations was for a radical reprivatization of land and other properties collectivized or nationalized after 1947. When the government’s proposals for re-privatization and compensation of former owners were finally put forward, they were


judged inadequate by Torgyán who announced his party’s withdrawal from the coalition in February 1992. By this time Torgyán had already replaced Ferenc József Nagy as party president (in June 1991), while he in turn had been replaced as fraction leader by Gyula Pasztor. Meanwhile the Smallholders’ parliamentary fraction had increased to 45 through a defection from the CDPP. However, only 11 MPs followed Torgyán into opposition. The 33 who remained loyal to the government were successively expelled from the party by Torgyán, and came to constitute their own parliamentary fraction. Although Torgyán had been in a minority in the parliamentary party, he had overwhelming support in the party’s national council and in the party in the countryside. Moreover the courts ruled in favour of his party as being the legitimate ISHP. Owing to deaths and desertions, Torgyán’s parliamentary group, the leadership of which had been taken over by Emese Ugrin who had defected from the CDPP in August 1991, had by August 1992 fallen below ten members, thereby losing the right to constitute itself as a parliamentary fraction. The 33, meanwhile, had grown to 36, with the return of some of Torgyán’s former supporters, eventually including Emese Ugrin. Then, in September 1992, Gyula Pasztor was replaced as fraction leader by János Szabó. Within this parliamentary fraction a number of tendencies had emerged which by 1993 had come to form themselves into separate parties, namely the Historical Smallholders’ Party, the Conservative Smallholders’ Party, the Radical Smallholders’ Party and, outside parliament, the National Smallholders’ Party. In September 1993, apparently at the instigation of József Antall, an attempt was made to reunite these splinter parties in a Historical Independent Smallholders’ Party, but this fell apart almost as soon as it had been formed. A second attempt, initiated a short time later, appears to have been more successful in finally establishing a United Smallholders’ Party supported by 27 MPs and led by János Szabó as party president and István Böröcz as parliamentary fraction leader. A further nine MPs remained in the Historical Smallholders’ Party led by Tivadar Partay. As the 1994 elections approached, each of the Smallholders’ parties was concerned as to how the electorate would be able to distinguish between them. Torgyán, being unquestionably the most popular and best-known leader amongst both party members and supporters, set up the Torgyán Party, led by his wife, with the intention that it would stand in all constituencies alongside his ISHP so as to pull in the maximum number of votes. The Torgyán Party, however, was denied registration on the grounds that no political party could be named after a living person. Far from giving up, Torgyán then formed yet another Torgyáni


Hungarian Future Party that was allowed registration. He also formed an electoral alliance with the 1956 League, led by the 1956 revolution workers’ leader Sándor Rácz, in the hope of attracting workers’ votes. Meanwhile, conflicts within the HDF had led to the break away of István Csurka’s Hungarian Justice and Life Party and a separate, equally nationalist and right-wing, Market Party. The eight parliamentary supporters of Torgyán’s ISHP were thus able to join forces with the Market Party’s four MPs so as to have the right once again to constitute a parliamentary fraction. The leader of the new fraction was the ISHP’s new vice-president, a recent defector from the HDF via the independents, Ágnes G.Nagyne Maczó. Finally, Emese Ugrin changed camps once again to support a newly formed Conservative Party. Such a history of personal conflicts and transference of allegiances, of disintegration and fragmentation, could hardly have been imagined before 1989. It reads more like the history of a religious sect than of a political party, and quite clearly demonstrates that the simple establishment of democratic institutions is not in itself any guarantee of the emergence of democratic forms of political behaviour. The Alliance of Free Democrats (AFD) The story of the Alliance of Free Democrats is a story of intellectuals in politics, and not a particularly happy one at that. Although with regard to their beliefs and policies they could not be more distant from the Smallholders, they have been almost equally riven by personal conflicts and rivalries. These have not resulted in splits and breakaways, yet they have damaged the public image and popularity of the party that has been the largest opposition party since 1990. The roots of the Alliance of Free Democrats lie in the democratic opposition movement of the 1980s, the writers and publishers of samizdat books and journals, the organizers of ‘apartment seminars’ and ‘flying universities’. Activists from the opposition first came above ground in March 1988 by launching a Network of Free Initiatives, an umbrella organization that was also supported by future members of the Young Democrats, the HDF and the Smallholders, together with environmentalists and other independent organizations. In November 1988, a majority of delegates to a national congress of the Network of Free Initiatives voted to set up a separate, more organized and structured, organization that they named the Alliance of Free Democrats (AFD). Initially, the AFD was an elite grouping of intellectuals with very limited popular support, until its success in the referendum of November 1989 transformed it almost overnight into one of the leading political forces in the country. However, the AFD had constituted itself as a party only in October 1989, and it fought the elections in March–April


1990 with no designated leader and thus no prime minister-designate if it had won. The de facto leader, the scholar János Kis, was not even a candidate in the elections. Following the elections, the post of party president was created and János Kis was elected to the post without any contest. In parliament, the talented and ambitious lawyer Péter Tölgyessy was elected leader of the party’s parliamentary fraction. Péter Tölgyessy, however, who had made his name in the opposition round table and the trilateral talks of 1989, had played no role in the democratic opposition before 1989 and joined the AFD only in the spring of that year. Over the following months, his leadership of the parliamentary fraction came under constant criticism and in October 1990 he was ousted by Iván Petö, who had been a member of the circle of friends that constituted the core of the former opposition. In January 1991, Tölgyessy challenged Petö’s leadership of the parliamentary fraction, but the fraction narrowly voted to confirm Petö in the post. In the autumn of 1991, János Kis announced his decision to resign from the party leadership and return to academic life. At a party conference called in November 1991, Péter Tölgyessy contested and unexpectedly won the post to become the party’s new leader. The old leaders were taken aback: Iván Petö declared that the party was being ‘devoured’ by its membership and resigned as parliamentary fraction leader. Other former dissidents stood down as members of the party’s executive body. Tölgyessy’s victory was partly a result of the arrogance of the party’s old guard and showed that they were unprepared for any challenge to their authority. Tölgyessy’s success can also be seen as the outcome of a wellorganized campaign amongst the party membership throughout the country. The following year saw a constant and steady obstruction to Tölgyessy’s leadership and in November 1992 Iván Petö successfully stood against him, winning back the party leadership for the old guard. Some months later, in February 1993, the economist Márton Tardos, who had replaced Iván Petö as parliamentary fraction leader, stood down and was replaced by a relative newcomer Gábor Kuncze. Kuncze had been a card-carrying member of the AFD only since August 1992, although he had been elected to parliament with the support of the AFD and had joined its parliamentary fraction. Despite this background, in September 1993 he was adopted as the party’s prime minister-designate for the 1994 elections. Kuncze’s advance to the leadership of the party reflects the total inability of the old guard AFD intellectuals to produce professional politicians from their own ranks. It even throws into question the suitability of dissident intellectuals for political roles. It is perhaps not surprising that several of the AFD’s most prominent intellectuals,


such as Miklós Haraszti and Gáspár Miklós Tamás, followed János Kis’s example in not seeking re-election to parliament in 1994. It is also true that the conflicts within the AFD over the past four years have rarely been about policies or principles, but about personalities, personal loyalties, conflicts and rivalries. Separate platforms have been formed within the AFD, reflecting the existence of different political tendencies within the party (for example, Liberal, Liberal-Conservative, Social-Liberal and Bourgeois-Liberal platforms). Yet these platforms have not played significant roles except in the course of internal conflicts and leadership contests where it has been conflicts of personalities and personal loyalties rather than ideological allegiances that have been at stake.15 The domination of the politics of the AFD by personal conflicts, of little relevance or concern to the lives of ordinary people, has played a significant part in the loss of the party’s former popularity. At the same time, the parliamentary fraction of the AFD, which rose from 92 to 94 members in the first month of the new parliament, subsequently fell to 84, with desertions to the CDPP, the HDF, the Alliance of Young Democrats and the independents. Nevertheless, at the beginning of 1994, with the growing prominence of its new leader Gábor Kuncze, the party appeared to be regaining some of its former dynamic and popular support. The Alliance of Young Democrats (AYD) The Alliance of Young Democrats (AYD) was founded in March 1988 as the first group to challenge, openly and successfully, the communist monopoly on political organization. The alliance started out as a loose federation of autonomous groups with a collective leadership. In practice, however, its organization was directed from the start by an informal elite which gradually converted the initially decentralized movement into a highly centralized and hierarchical professional organization.16 The key founders of the AYD were a group of students most of whom had studied in the law faculty of Budapest University. Those most prominent in the leadership, both at the time of the AYD’s foundation and since, have been János Áder, Tamás Deutsch, Gábor Fodor, László Kövér, Zsolt Németh, Viktor Orbán and József Szayer. Of these, the undisputed leader has been Viktor Orbán. Indeed, between 1988 and the end of 1993 there was probably more continuity in the leadership of the AYD than in any other party. Initially, however, the AYD was seen as representing a very different lifestyle and culture from that of the other parties—a style that was liberal, radical and alternative and critical of authority and tradition (its symbol is an orange). Many of its members believed in direct democracy


and were opposed to the transformation of the AYD into a political party. Tendencies towards a centralization of power, however, were evident from the beginning and as early as April 1989 an anarchist group within the AYD disbanded, with most of its members leaving. Nevertheless, because of the recognized abilities and popularity of the leaders, a relatively decentralized structure coexisted for some time with the informal domination of the organization by a small elite. After the unexpected success of the AYD in the 1990 elections, in which it gained 22 parliamentary seats (which shortly rose to 23), Viktor Orbán was elected leader of the parliamentary fraction, but there was still no post of party president. Even though it had registered as a party in order to participate in the elections, at the end of 1990 the AYD was still calling itself a ‘national political youth and social organization’ rather than a party. While there were conflicts within the AYD and desertions from the party, these were usually at the level of rank-and-file groups, rather than amongst the top leadership. All this changed at the AYD’s fifth congress at Debrecen in April 1993, at which it categorically characterized itself as a party rather than a youth movement. The previous age limit for members of 35 was lifted, a new hierarchical and centralized party structure was adopted under which all non-territorially based groups were excluded from representation, and the post of party president was created and filled with the unopposed election of Viktor Orbán. Subsequently, Orbán was replaced as parliamentary fraction leader by László Kövér. By the end of the summer the AYD’s parliamentary representation had risen to 26, with two former members of the liberal wing of the HDF joining their ranks. The Debrecen conference marked a sharp change in the style and image of the AYD. Gone were the jokes and the humour; gone were the beards and the casual dress. The Alliance of Young Democrats was clearly still liberal, but it could no longer be regarded as either radical or alternative. Many members and supporters felt that something was wrong and those who represented alternative values within the leadership felt themselves less and less able to exert any influence on the party’s policy. In this situation, Gábor Fodor, who had been voted on to the party’s executive at the Debrecen conference with the largest vote, decided to stand for the chairmanship of the AYD’s national council. Gábor Fodor was one of the most popular politicians in Hungary and was more popular than Viktor Orbán, both in the party and in the country. Yet Fodor represented no challenge to Orbán’s leadership of the AYD and his presence in the party leadership was an invaluable electoral asset for the party. Viktor Orbán and his close supporters, however, chose to direct a vicious campaign against him and Fodor was defeated in the contest for the chairmanship. Shortly afterwards, Gábor Fodor and two other AYD MPs (one of them also a member of the party’s executive)


resigned both from the party and from parliament. In the weeks that followed, at least a hundred other party members also resigned from the AYD and, early in January 1994, Fodor and the two other ex-AYD MPs accepted an invitation to stand for parliament on the AFD ticket in the elections due in the spring. The Alliance of Young Democrats, which had once been seen as different from traditional political parties, free from the conflicts and enmities of the past, and whose campaign slogan had been ‘listen to your heart’, was now behaving with an intolerance that had previously been believed to be foreign to it. Democratic politics, as previously argued, involves compromises and co-operation among the representatives of different, and often conflicting, interests and values. It requires a willingness for different tendencies to co-operate and coexist within common political organizations. In this respect, the AYD would appear to have met with little more success than any of the other parties. Splits and Breakaways The conflicts within the six main parliamentary parties have also led to splits and breakaways and the formation of several new parties. I will now turn to look at the history of these developments and at some of the parties that were not represented in the first parliament. The Hungarian Democratic Forum’s apparent unity was dramatically shaken in August 1992 when one of the party’s vice-presidents, the playwright István Csurka, published a rhetorical tract on the situation of the country and the HDF two years after the fall of the old regime. Csurka was already known for his ultra-nationalist and anti-Semitic views, but his latest contribution presented a new rallying-point for the right and an alternative political programme to that of the mainstream of the HDF.17 Csurka claimed that the change of regime had not been carried through to completion: that many members of the old regime, who were then communists but now called themselves liberals, remained in power; that privatization had saved the nomenklatura and enabled it to become a bourgeoisie; that the financial and banking community had sold off the nation’s assets; that the same power network dominated the country that had been there, in changing guise, ever since 1945. Finally, the President of the Republic, Árpád Göncz, was said to take his orders from ‘those standing behind his back: the communist, reform communist, liberal and radical nomenklatura, and his Paris, New York and Tel Aviv connections’. Behind Csurka’s assertions lay the insinuation that the cause of all these shortcomings was ‘the influence of Jewry’, an alien force working against the vital interests of the Hungarian nation. As even one HDF member of parliament contended, Csurka’s tract was a complete epitome of Nazi thinking.18 It also represented, as the HDF president and


prime minister, József Antall, would belatedly concede, a challenge in which Csurka ‘is preparing to grab political power’.19 Csurka’s next move, in the autumn of 1992, was to form a Hungarian Road movement, with local circles supported primarily by HDF members, to propagate his ideas throughout the country. Increasingly, he argued that the opposition were not true Hungarians, and that the question of the next election would be whether the Hungarians would be rulers in their own country. A national conference of the Hungarian Road movement was held in February 1993, and later in the spring the formation was announced of a Hungarian Justice group in parliament with the support of 29 HDF members. At the beginning of June, Csurka and three of his supporters were expelled from the HDF parliamentary fraction, along with his two leading critics from the liberal wing of the party, József Debreczeni and István Elek. In the following weeks, the Hungarian Justice platform constituted itself into an independent fraction within the Parliament and on 21 June announced the formation of a new Hungarian Justice Party. The following day, Csurka was officially expelled from the HDF. Eventually, his new party was registered as the Hungarian Justice and Life Party (HJLP). Not all the HDF MPs who had so far supported Csurka, nor even all the 25 MPs who left or were excluded from the HDF following the schism, were to join his new party. In fact, only 11 MPs joined Csurka in his Hungarian Justice and Life Party’s parliamentary fraction. (Two months later, one MP left HJLP to sit as an independent, while János Dénes, another Independent MP who was originally elected on the HDF ticket, moved to Csurka’s party fraction.) Four other right-wing MPs formed a separate Market Party which later entered into a parliamentary alliance with Torgyán’s eight Smallholders to form a joint parliamentary fraction. Another MP, Izabella B.Király, formed her own far-right Hungarian Interest Party. Of the three liberals who left the HDF, two subsequently joined the AYD. Old Parties—New Parties One of the first parties to have suffered from chronic fragmentation was the Hungarian Social Democratic Party (HSDP), a historical party that was re-formed in January 1989. From the start the HSDP was split on generational and personal as well as ideological grounds and some former reform communists and dissidents either left in disillusionment or were excluded at an early stage. Subsequently the historical wing found itself in a minority and broke away to form the Independent Social Democratic Party (ISDP). In the 1990 elections neither party drew enough votes to enter parliament.


In the two years following the elections there were both continuing conflicts and efforts at rapprochement. Then, in September 1992, the independent MP Zoltán Király (a former HSWP member expelled in 1988 and elected to parliament with the support of the HDF in 1990) formed a new Social Democratic People’s Party (SDPP). Finally, in June 1993, the three parties united under the old name of Hungarian Social Democratic Party (HSDP) and under the leadership of Zoltán Király. One of the first splits to occur in the parliament elected in 1990 was the desertion from the Hungarian Socialist Party of their fraction leader and former presidential candidate-designate, Imre Pozsgay. Pozsgay first sat as an independent and then became the founder and co-leader of a National Democratic Association, which claimed to represent the national democratic centre. The National Democratic Association became a party in September 1993 and Pozsgay was subsequently joined by three other MPs. On the other side, amongst the most significant desertions from the HDF was that of János Palótás, the president of the National Association of Entrepreneurs, in March 1992. Palótás at first sat as an Independent, then in November 1992 formed the Republic Party in which he was joined by two other MPs. Outside parliament there also existed another Entrepreneurs Party, expressing similar liberal views, headed by the wellknown businessman Péter Zwack. In addition, the Agrarian Association, a progressive party of agrarian reform with two MPs led by Tamás Nagy, represented similar views in the countryside. While none of these three parties is likely to meet with electoral success on their own, they may still be elected to parliament through local alliances with the AFD or the AYD or both. Three other parties, each enjoying the support of one MP, are the Pensioners’ Party and, more recently formed, the Conservative Party and the Democratic Party. Finally, amongst the parties outside parliament that will contest the next election, the most significant is undoubtedly the party that claims to represent the former communists of the old Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party (HSWP). A week after its dissolution at the congress that gave birth to the new Hungarian Socialist Party in October 1989, the HSWP was reconstituted under four of its former hardline leaders. Two months later, however, they stood down and a new, younger party leadership took over under Gyula Thürmer. The four hardliners later resigned from the party, and the word socialist was subsequently dropped from the party’s name, which became simply the Workers Party. More recently a break-away group has formed to reconstitute the HSWP under its old name.


Prospects for the Future Paradoxically, owing to the workings of the Hungarian electoral system, the fragmentation of the parties that has characterized the past four years has not been reflected in the new parliament elected in 1994. Yet this only reinforces the argument that many, if not most, politicians in Hungary have been acting in ways which are inappropriate in a democratic political system. This is not only because their behaviour militates against the smooth functioning of democratic institutions, but because it is also self-defeating and, in the majority of cases, can result only in political failure both for themselves and for their political enterprises.20 The problems facing the 1994 parliament will be of a different nature. In the first parliament there was a strong majority for a right-wing coalition within which one party, the HDF, was clearly dominant. The lack of pluralist political behaviour led to party fragmentation but not to any significant undermining of governmental stability. In the 1994 parliament the HSP, despite having an overall majority, has formed a government coalition with the AFD. In the coming years, coalition politics will require the political skills of seeking agreement, consensus and compromise, the skills of pluralist political behaviour. An inability to recognize the opponent as an adversary with whom it is possible to reach accords will in the new situation result not merely in the fragmentation of parties but in the collapse of governmental authority. The result could be the undermining of the democratic political system itself. The threat to democracy, as was argued at the beginning of this article, can be laid at the door of the survival of pre-modern forms of political attitudes and political behaviour. These survivals in the spirits and ways of thinking of post-communist political actors have been aptly depicted by Viktor Orbán as ‘the remains of the Berlin Wall’, survivals that, as I have sought to show, can be detected in the behaviour of Hungary’s postcommunist liberal politicians just as much as in the behaviour of her nationalist, conservative or socialist ones. The ‘remains of the Berlin Wall’, however, cannot be just wished away. On the contrary, as David Stark has remarked, ‘it is in the ruins that these societies will find the materials with which to build a new order’.21 Eastern Europe since the fall of communism is not a tabula rasa on to which new institutions, values and behaviour patterns can simply be superimposed at will. On the contrary, it is out of the remains of the old system that the post-communist future will have to be built. Whether that future will be a pluralist democracy, or a return to some form of authoritarian rule, will depend upon the growth of a pluralist political culture, and this will itself depend upon the ability of Hungarian politicians to develop and practise pluralist forms of political behaviour. Their record so far is not exactly a promising one.


NOTES 1. I have expressed this opinion in a number of articles: Bill Lomax, ‘PostCommunism in Hungary: Towards Democracy or a New Authoritarianism?’, The Times Higher Education Supplement (15 March 1991), p. 15; Bill Lomax, ‘Hungary at the Crossroads’, in Stephen Whitefield (ed.), The New Institutional Architecture of Eastern Europe (London: Macmillan, 1993), pp. 79–98; Bill Lomax, ‘From Death to Resurrection: The Metamorphosis of Power in Eastern Europe’, Critique, No.25 (1993), pp. 47– 84; and Bill Lomax, ‘Impediments to Democratization in East-Central Europe’, in Gordon Wightman (ed.), Party Formation in East-Central Europe (Aldershot: Edward Elgar, 1995). 2. Viktor Orbán ‘Középen megállítani az ingát’, speech to the Liberal World Conference in Budapest, Magyar Hírlap, 27 Nov. 1993, p. 7. 3. Ágnes Horváth and Árpád Szakolczai, The Dissolution of Communist Power: The Case of Hungary (London: Routledge, 1992), pp. 162 and 221. 4. László Kéri and Adam Levendel, ‘The First Three Years of a Multi-Party System in Hungary’, in Wightman (ed.), op. cit. 5. For movements between parliamentary fractions up to the end of 1992, see László Szarvas, ‘Parlament, Pártfrakciók—módosuló strukturák?’, in Sándor Kurtán, Sándor Péter and László Vass (eds.), Magyarország Politikai Évkönyve 1993 (Budapest, 1993), pp. 131–9. For fuller details to the end of 1993, see ‘Az országgyülés fötitkára szervezési és tájékoztatási titkárság’, Tájékoztató az országgyülés összetételében bekövetkezett változásokról (Budapest, 20 Dec. 1993). 6. George Schöpflin, ‘The Road from Post-Communism’, in Whitefield (ed.), op. cit., pp. 183–200. 7. Chantal Mouffe, The Return of the Political (London: Verso, 1993), pp. 4 and 6. 8. Ibid., p. 113. 9. See in particular György G.Márkus, ‘Parties, Camps and Cleavages in PostCommunist Hungary’, in Bruno Coppieters, Kris Deschouwer and Michael Waller (eds.), Social Democracy in a Post-Communist Europe (London: Cass, 1994). 10. Bálint Magyar, ‘A liberális paradoxon’, in A Szabad Demokraták Jövöje (Budapest: Liberalis Koalíció és Szabadelvü Kör, 1992), pp. 60–63. 11. Such fears have been expressed in Hungary by György Csepeli and Péter György in two articles in Népszabadság (24 Aug. 1991 and 9 Nov. 1991). 12. I have drawn in this section on an unpublished manuscript by Magdolna Balázs, A KDNP politikája (Budapest, Sept. 1993). 13. László Vass reports the existence of 48 platforms within the party: see László Vass, ‘A Magyar Szocialista Párt’, in Mihály Bihari (ed.), A Többpártrendszer Kialakulása Magyarországon: 1985–1991 (Budapest: Kossuth, 1992), p.153. 14. I have drawn in this section on an unpublished manuscript by Magdolna Balázs, A Kisgazdapárt története, politikája, társadalmi bázisa: 1988–1993 (Budapest, Sept. 1993).


15. The Free Democrats in fact claim that their platforms ‘aren’t factions in the formal sense, with vertical organizations inside the party…[they] do not have internal party structures’: interview with Bálint Magyar, ‘What Went Right in Hungary’, Uncaptive Minds, Vol. VI, No. 3 (1993), p. 112. 16. I have drawn in this section on an unpublished manuscript by Zsolt Enyedi, A Fidesz Felépitéséröl (Budapest, 1993). 17. István Csurka, ‘Néhány gondolat a rendszerváltózás két esztendeje és az HDF új programja kapcsán’, Magyar Forum, (20 Aug. 1992), pp. 9–16. 18. Debreczeni József, Népszabadság (27 Aug. 1992). 19. Antall in an interview with Magyar Hírlap, March 1993, cited in Sándor Révész, István Csurka in Hungarian Politics, unpublished manuscript (Budapest, April 1993). 20. This aspect of the political behaviour of Hungarian MPs has been depicted and discussed in László Kéri, Patterns and the Environment of Conflicts in the Years of the Hungarian Political Transition, unpublished manuscript (Budapest, Oct.-Nov. 1993). The need for democratic political behaviour to be characterized by ‘co-operative strategies based on long-term horizons’ as against antagonistic strategies dominated by either fundamentalist standpoints or short-term particularistic considerations, has been emphasized in László Bruszt, Why on Earth Would Eastern Europeans Support Capitalism?, draft discussion paper (Budapest, 1993). 21. David Stark, ‘Path Dependence and Privatization Strategies in East Central Europe’, East European Politics and Societies, Vol. VI, No. 1 (1992), p. 19.

Leading Democracy: The Emergence of Party Leaders and Their Roles in the Hungarian Parties MALCOLM PUNNETT and GABRIELLA ILONSZKI

Among the characteristic features of Hungary’s new political parties, the absence of open competition for leadership positions is striking. Fragmentation, defections and other factors of the establishment of parties make their internal structures and procedures difficult to become established. Nevertheless, there appears to be a trend towards a somewhat elitist uniformity, which may reflect external influences. The mechanisms of leadership selection and the role of leaders are likely to be tested as the democratic process unfolds. In the many recent studies of Hungarian party politics, the parties’ procedural and organizational features have been neglected. This is especially true in respect of the selection of the party leader and party leadership. The sociological aspects of leadership have been examined quite extensively, in the case both of individual leaders and of group leadership. In particular, there have been a number of studies of elitemass relationships,1 the demographic characteristics of leaders and their career patterns.2 The processes through which party leaders emerge, however, have not been examined at length. This relative neglect is unfortunate. In the first place, it is a widely accepted view in the literature on democratization and the emergence of competitive party systems that leaders perform very significant roles. Certainly, in the Hungarian case, one of the key factors that has determined the degree of electoral effectiveness that the new parties have achieved has been the question of how satisfactorily they have dealt with the issue of leadership. Furthermore, it is clear from studies of leader-selection procedures in western political parties that the particular method of selection a party uses often determines who gets the job.3 The view that an ‘obvious’ candidate will always emerge, regardless of the selection procedure that is used, is not supported by the comparative evidence. For example, the emergence of Margaret Thatcher as the leader of the British Conservative


party in 1975, and then her removal from that post in 1990, were both consequences of the specific rules of selection that the party used. While the Hungarian experience is as yet too short to allow such examples to be identified, it is reasonable to assume that in Hungary in the long run procedures will determine outcomes. As the rules ‘can make a difference’ they are important in themselves. The selection process that is used also provides an insight into the party’s ideological disposition. The extent to which it has adopted ‘open’ and ‘participatory’ procedures, for example, will give some indication of the strength of its commitment to intra-party democracy. A party that involves all its members in the selection process clearly has different values from a party that limits the choice to a few senior figures. In addition to these general factors, which are common to all competitive party systems, there are three specifically Hungarian reasons why the parties’ leader-selection processes should be examined. First, new parties in an emerging democracy such as Hungary provide a rare opportunity for established theories about political processes to be reexamined. Conclusions that have been drawn, and assumptions that have been made, about leaders and recruitment processes on the basis of the experience of parties in the old democracies can be tested in the context of a ‘new’ democracy. While Hungary is not unique in providing this opportunity (with the new democracies of southern Europe, Latin America and other parts of East-Central Europe providing further points of comparison)4 the Hungarian parties are now sufficiently wellestablished to allow meaningful studies to be made of the structures and procedures that they have created. Second, while the leader will be an important figure in any political party, in the Hungarian parties ‘personalities’ are especially important. Hungary’s transition to democracy was shaped primarily by individuals rather than by social organizations or mass movements. The leading figures of the emerging parties quickly came to symbolize the cleavages and issues on which the parties were based. At the time of the first national election, parties had not had time to develop clear-cut policy programmes and in the absence of apparent policy conflicts or

Malcolm Punnett is Reader in the Department of Government, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow. Gabriella Ilonszki is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science, Budapest University of Economics. The authors are grateful to the MPs and party officials who gave them interviews and provided information on which much of this study is based. They are grateful also to the British Council and the Carnegie Foundation for their financial support for the project.

LEADING DEMOCRACY: PARTY LEADERS AND THEIR ROLES 103

ideological distinctiveness, personalities played a vital role in defining the nature of the parties. Third, a feature of the transition to democracy in Hungary has been that each of the parties has experienced leadership problems of one kind or another.5 For example, the late József Antall, leader of the largest parliamentary party (the Hungarian Democratic Forum—HDF) and prime minister from the first free elections until his death in December 1993, had to face a significant challenge to his authority as president of the party in the winter of 1992–93. Even immediately prior to the 1994 election it was not clear whether the president of the Hungarian Socialist Party (HSP) would be its candidate for prime minister. Similarly, the Alliance of Free Democrats (AFD) has experienced a series of conflicts between the president of the party and the leader of the parliamentary group. The Alliance of Young Democrats (AYD) agreed only in the spring of 1993 that the party required a single leader. While to some extent these intra-party conflicts have arisen from the sort of personal and policy issues that are found in parties in all countries, they have also been about the concept of party leadership itself. Given these factors, an analysis of the procedures through which the Hungarian parties acquired their leaders is appropriate. In this analysis the process of leader selection in the main Hungarian parties will be examined. The major focus will be the Hungarian Democratic Forum, the Alliance of Free Democrats, the Alliance of Young Democrats and the Hungarian Socialist Party, as the most active and most influential parties. The Christian Democratic People’s Party has been excluded because it can be regarded as a satellite of the HDF since it has not developed an independent role, while the history of the Independent Smallholders’ Party is so chaotic that leadership roles cannot be examined satisfactorily. Three main questions will be considered in each case: who is the party leader and what functions does he perform; what procedures does each party use to select its leader; and how have these procedures operated in practice? The third question in particular will shed light on the manner in which Hungarian democracy functions and on its prospects for survival. From Collective to Shared Leadership The tasks of party leadership can be grouped under five main headings. First, a leader is required to personify the party. Just as a nation has a president or monarch as its official representative and ‘human face’, so a party may require a symbolic ‘head of party’. Second, as an electoral extension of this first role, a party requires to be led in a general election campaign. In a party-list electoral system this role will be institutionalized in the form of the ‘number one’ position on the list. The Hungarian electoral system (a ‘mixed’ system, based partly on individual


constituencies and party lists) makes this function relevant. Third, in the post-electoral situation a party will need to be organized and led in parliament. If the party is out of office this will involve leading the attack on the government and presenting the party as a credible alternative to those in power. Fourth, if the party is in office, either alone or at the head of a coalition, it will be required to provide a prime minister (or chancellor, premier or president). This ‘governmental imperative’ will face parties that aspire to office as well as those that are in office. Fifth, a party organization has to be managed on a day-to-day basis. This is perhaps the most mundane of the leadership tasks but it is vital for the effective operation of the party. These five functions need not be performed by a single person and parties differ in the manner in which they distribute the tasks. At one extreme the British Conservative Party does concentrate all five functions in one person. The single party leader personifies the party, leads its election campaign, fills the post of prime minister when the party is in office and of leader of the Opposition when it is out of office. Also, although the leader appoints a party chairman he or she retains final responsibility for the organization of the party. At the other extreme, the Dutch parties distribute these functions among three or four persons. The party chairman is head of the organization outside parliament, the parliamentary leader manages its affairs in the legislature, the electoral leader accepts the first place on the party’s list of candidates and is generally seen to symbolize the party. In government, the party’s most prominent minister is not necessarily any one of these three figures. Most parties fall between these British and Dutch extremes and share the five leadership functions among two or three persons. In some parties the pattern may change over time and, as has been suggested in the case of the German Christian Democratic Union, the change from one arrangement to another may be a factor in the party’s success or failure.6 Where do the Hungarian parties fit into this pattern? Initially, each of the newly formed parties had a collective leadership. In each party, ‘the leaders’ were the group of people who initially were active in declaring the intention to establish a political party. The party leader was found only later. Thus in the Hungarian case the parties were born together with their leaders but not with a single leader.7 Although we are dealing only with a six-year period since the birth of the new parties, it is still possible to observe two distinct phases in this matter. In the initial, formative phase the question of whether the party should have a collective or individual leadership was considered, but the merits of collective leadership were seen as predominant. Even at this stage there were pressures for the party to produce an individual leader: electoral considerations, international expectations and the ambitions of certain figures within the parties were all potent factors encouraging the


identification of a single leader. Nevertheless, collective considerations prevailed in this formative period. It was only in the second, consolidating phase, when the party processes and procedures became more settled, that pressures to move away from collective to individual leadership emerged more strongly. In the case of the HDF, the structure that was devised in September 1988 placed the leadership of the party in the hands of a presidium of nine members. For the most part they were academics and intellectuals who, according to the initial party declaration, ‘would undertake the moral and judicial responsibility’ for the party’s affairs. With the Free Democrats and Young Democrats also, there was no clearly dominant figure in the early stages of the parties’ development. The leadership of the Free Democrats was initially placed in the hands of an executive committee of 11 members, while the Young Democrats chose to be led by a team of six spokesmen. Even in the case of the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party (the old ruling communist party) there was pressure towards collective leadership in the transitional phase when the outcome of systemic change was still uncertain. Despite, or perhaps because of, the fact that the party had been characterized by the dominance of a single, powerful leader (János Kádár for 32 years), the party sought to gain legitimacy by relying on reform-minded party politicians and their collective appeal. Collective leadership in the party emerged as early as June 1989 and served a tactical purpose: the four-member presidium (Nyers, Pozsgay, Németh and Grósz) wished to neutralize the extreme Left and saw their collective leadership as the means of achieving this. This situation changed at the party congress in October 1989, when the new Hungarian Socialist Party was formed and was united under President Nyers, who was an acceptable and respected figure for all factions except the left-wingers (who, in any case, left the party). To some extent the parties’ adoption of these collective structures was a consequence of their intellectual commitment to the principle of collective, rather than individual, leadership. The HDF, the Free Democrats and the Young Democrats saw themselves as social movements rather than conventional parties and their ideological assumptions about leadership reflected this. Collective leadership also represented a reaction against the concept of an authoritarian leader that had been a feature of the old regime. In this regard three intellectual traditions can be noted in Hungary in the transition period: groups with neo-Marxist sympathies who advocated full-scale popular participation; idealistic elements who identified with the anti-hierarchical notions of new social movements of the West; and ‘third way’ theorists for whom plebian radicalism, with its egalitarian and collectivist assumptions, was the norm. In different ways these elements all nurtured ‘collectivist sentiments’.


As well as these ideological factors, however, practical considerations also encouraged collective leadership. During the uncertainties of the earliest stages of the transition to democracy, collective leadership constituted ‘safety in numbers’. When a party has emerged from a loose alliance, the leading figures from each element can combine into a leadership team. Again, when a party’s internal divisions are marked, the selection of a single leader can be difficult. If it is attempted, it can result in a leader who divides, rather than unites, the sections of the party. The new Hungarian parties were not formed on the basis of clear-cut cleavages. Initially several (sometimes irreconcilable) tendencies and groups came together in each party and some of these could not be kept together in the normalization process. A clear example would be the HDF, where conflicts between centre-right and far-right radical groups led not only to a leadership challenge in 1993 but later to the expulsion of the most notorious right-wingers from the party. It is perhaps desirable for a single leader to emerge only when a party has become relatively integrated, or when the emergence of a single leader is thought likely to help to achieve the unity of the party. The commitment to collective leadership was also to some extent the creation of a virtue out of a necessity: with the exception of the HSP, relatively few of those who subsequently became prominent in the new parties had had an opportunity to be politically active under the old regime. It is also the case that the normal electoral, parliamentary and governmental functions that a party leader performs in a developed party were not required in the early stages of the transition. Initially, the concern was with the overthrow of communism and the creation of a new political order. The elite groups were not yet required to devise electoral programmes or prepare for office or parliamentary opposition. The pattern of collective leadership did not persist, however, as in each party pressures developed for the identification of a distinct leader. Institutional factors were important in this. The Hungarian electoral system, with its party list component, requires each party to identify its principal figure and place him in the number one position in its list of candidates. To a great extent a party’s electoral appeal is governed by the popularity of this electoral leader. The Hungarian electorate tends to think of parties and politics in terms of personalities. Parties that seek to subordinate individuals within a collective appeal are battling against this personalization of politics. Thus, during the 1990 general election, the success of the HDF was due partly to the fact that it placed great emphasis on the appeal of its potential prime minister. A leader’s position will be affected considerably by the question of whether the party is in office or in opposition. After the 1990 election it was more urgent for the HDF than for the other parties to stabilize the leadership issue. As the leading party in the coalition government, the


HDF was required to fill the post of prime minister. This involved the public identification of the party’s leading figure. Once József Antall assumed the office of prime minister, the authority of the premiership added to his status within the party and emphasized the significance of the post of party president. For each of the out-of-office parties, of course, their parliamentary functions required an identifiable figure who could organize the MPs and lead the attack upon the government. The status of this opposition leader, however, was appreciably less than that of the Prime Minister. In addition to these electoral, governmental and parliamentary considerations, the absence of an identifiable leader was widely regarded by political commentators and activists as unusual. The assumption of foreign observers and international organizations, with which the parties were increasingly coming in contact, was that it was normal for a party to have a leader: the Hungarian parties were seen as somewhat eccentric in emphasizing collective leadership. Certainly, in practical terms, negotiations among the parties, and between the parties and outside bodies, are more easily conducted when there is a recognisable leader who can speak with authority and legitimacy. As a result of these factors the initial commitment to collective leadership has given way to a pattern of ‘shared leadership’, with a division of functions between the president of the party and the leader of the members of parliament. This personal division reflects the organizational distinction between the parliamentary party and the party outside parliament that characterizes Hungarian parties as much as parties elsewhere. In each of the Hungarian parties there have been debates over the question of what constitutes the party. This debate has been most pronounced in the case of the Independent Smallholders’ Party, where the conflict produced by the issue resulted in a situation in which a large parliamentary faction was opposed by a small parliamentary group which claimed to be the party leadership.8 Each of the main parties has evolved its own variation of this distinction between the parliamentary and extra-parliamentary leadership. As president of the HDF from October 1989 until his death in December 1993, József Antall performed three of the five leadership functions that were noted above. As well as symbolizing the party, he was its principal electoral figure and its choice of prime minister. Day-today party management was in the hands of a deputy president who exercised this function on behalf of the president. The fifth function, leadership in parliament, was performed by Imre Kónya from May 1990 until December 1993. His position within the party was clearly subordinate to that of Antall. Although the leader of the MPs is not formally dependent upon the party president for his post, the strong authoritarian personality of Antall, and the widespread respect he


commanded within the party, meant that he could probably have demanded his own choice of parliamentary leader. As Antall’s successor as prime minister, however, Peter Boross was faced with a parliamentary leader (Ferenc Kulin) who was a powerful figure in his own right. Kulin had a power-base on the liberal wing of the party, whereas Boross’s support was from the right. The scope for conflict was thus greater than in the period of Antall’s leadership. The president of the HSP (Nyers, October 1989 to May 1990, and Gyula Horn since then) is the overall leader of the party. He is its symbolic head, the most likely ‘number one’ on the electoral list and candidate for prime minister. Party management is the responsibility of the deputy president, acting in the name of the president. Leadership in parliament is provided by the leader of the MPs (Imre Pozsgay, May to November 1990, and Zoltán Gáll since then). The position of Nyers and then Horn within the HSP has been less dominant than that of Antall within the HDF. It is not clear whether this is simply a reflection of the authority that flowed from Antall’s position as prime minister: the status of the HSP’s president might well increase considerably as prime minister. Equally, however, it may be that the HDF and the HSP have essentially different attitudes towards intra-party democracy and that a Socialist Party president would always face more limitations on his authority than would his HDF counterpart. The relationship between the president of the party and the leader of the MPs has been more ambiguous in the Free Democrats than in the HDF and the HSP. Initially the post of president of the Free Democrats was largely symbolic. János Kis was an ideological theorist rather than a practical politician and he did not seek election to parliament in 1990. After he resigned in 1991, the profile of the post of president was raised by his successors (Peter Tölgyessy, November 1991 to November 1992, and Iván Pet since then). The post of leader of the MPs has been held by four people: Tölgyessy (April to October 1990); Pet (October 1990 to November 1991); Márton Tardos (November 1991 to February 1993); and Gábor Kuncze (February 1993 to date). Much more so than with the HDF and the HSP, the balance of power between the president of the Free Democrats and the leader of the MPs has been determined largely by the personalities involved. The relationship between Kis as party president and Tölgyessy and then Pet as leader of the MPs was relatively harmonious. When Tölgyessy became party president, however, Pet felt obliged to resign as leader of the MPs at once in the face of personal and policy differences between them. This is the only occasion where there has been an open conflict between the two leaders. Tardos succeeded Pet as leader of the MPs, largely at Tölgyessy’s insistence. Tardos worked successfully with Tölgyessy for a year, and then with Pet when he became president. In spite of this


harmony, the party went through a difficult period, losing members and popularity. Under the combination of Pet as president and Kuncze as parliamentary leader after November 1992, however, party fortunes revived somewhat. Collective leadership survived longer in the Young Democrats than in the other parties. Only in April 1993 did the party decide to create the post of party president. Prior to that, formal leadership of the party was in the hands of the presidium that had been established in 1989. After the 1990 general election, however, the MPs had chosen Viktor Orbán to be their leader in parliament. All the leading figures of the party had been elected to parliament and the parliamentary group became the dominant element in the party. Orbán’s role as leader of the MPs made him the principal figure in the party and he was elected to be to be the party’s first president in 1993, with one of his closest allies (László Kövér) occupying the post of parliamentary leader. Thus in each of the parties the question of what constitutes ‘the party’ has caused difficulties, although the problem has taken a different form in each case. Formal Rules Each of the Hungarian parties now has formal rules for the selection of the party president. In each case the procedure forms part of the party constitution which has been adopted, or revised, only recently. The Young Democrats’ procedure was introduced in April 1993, while the HDF’s rules date from January 1993 when the party constitution was amended. The HSP’s procedure was adopted at its third congress in May 1992. How do the procedures compare with each other and with the practices of parties in other countries?9 There are three main variables in a leader-selection process: the manner in which the procedure is initiated; the factors that determine who enters the contest; and the means by which the choice is made among the candidates. These three variables will be considered in turn. Initiating a Contest Some of the world’s parties make no provision for a regular review of the leader’s position but hold a leadership contest only when a natural vacancy occurs through the death or voluntary retirement of the leader. At the other extreme, some parties allow a contest to take place whenever a sufficiently large section of the party feels that a challenge to the incumbent should be mounted. Most parties, however, provide for leadership contests to be held at fixed intervals. Most often the interval is every one or two years but some parties provide for longer terms.


In Hungary, each of the main parties elects its president for a two-year term that is renewable. Initially, the president of the Free Democrats served for a one-year term but in November 1992 this was raised to two years in the interests of greater stability in the run-up to the 1994 general election. Each party has a means of filling a vacancy that arises during the two-year term and of mounting a challenge to a leader who is not performing satisfactorily. A special meeting of the congress of the HDF may be convened at any time that the presidium deems it necessary. It may also be convened within 60 days if a specific proposal is made by the parliamentary group, the party council, any six regional organizations or the president himself. The HSP and the Free Democrats both provide for a special gathering of the congress if it is requested by ten per cent of the party members or a majority of the party council. The Young Democrats included the same provision in their new constitution. In each case a special congress can be convened readily because delegates retain their mandates from one congress to another. While this continuity of personnel does not prevent a ‘change of mind’ by the congress, it does reduce the chances of that happening. It also allows the established leaders to resist calls for a challenge on personal or policy grounds. Thus, when leading figures were expelled from the HDF in June 1993, the party notables argued that, as the delegates had already indicated their preferences on personalities and policies as recently as January, it was pointless to re-convene the congress to consider the matter. Producing Candidates The question of who can enter a leadership contest is governed by the rules of eligibility and the process of nomination. These requirements may be inclusive or exclusive. The most open arrangement is for eligibility to extend to any member of the party. This might be modified by a requirement that a candidate must be in a certain age group, or have been a party member for a specified period. A more restrictive requirement, found in some Westminster-model countries, is that only the party’s MPs are eligible to be leader. With regard to nomination, the most inclusive arrangement is for any qualified person to declare his own candidacy. Such ‘self-propulsion’ is rare, however. Normally a candidate will at least require a proposer and a seconder, and often will have to be endorsed by a specific number of supporters. Party elites like to maintain control of the gate through which potential candidates have to pass in order to enter the contest. Clearly, control of this gate will be crucial in determining the extent to which the selection procedure is open and competitive.


Each of the Hungarian parties adopts an inclusive approach and allows any member of the party to be a candidate for the post of president. Beyond that, however, they have contrasting nominating procedures. In the Free Democrats a party member may nominate himself any time up to 30 days before the date of the congress. The nomination has to be accompanied by a curriculum vitae and a statement of the candidate’s views on policy. The nominating processes of the HSP and the HDF are more restrictive. In the HDF the formation of the official list of candidates is the task of a nominating committee that is set up by the national council. The local party organization may suggest names for inclusion on the official list. Each candidate who is proposed by the nominating committee must then be endorsed by at least 20 per cent of the delegates at the congress. Similarly in the HSP, the local constituencies may suggest names to the party’s nominating commission, which then produces a list of approved candidates. Endorsement by congress delegates is not required, however. Choosing Among Candidates A wide range of procedures can be used to choose between candidates but they can be grouped into four broad categories according to the elements of the party that make the choice. In the first place, the selection of the leader may be the preserve of a relatively small number of party notables. The name of an agreed candidate might simply ‘emerge’ from informal discussions among such an inner group. Second, the selection of the leader may extend beyond the party notables to its MPs. This is a practice that is most commonly (but not exclusively) associated with parties in Westminster-model countries. Third, the leader may be elected at a gathering of representatives of the party organization outside parliament. This may be a special ‘leadership convention’, that meets only for the specific purpose of selecting the leader, but more usually the party’s regular conference (or ‘assembly’ or ‘congress’) serves as the selection body. Fourth, the leader may be selected through a ballot of all members of the party. Members may be required to turn out and vote in polling stations on a particular day, as in a general election, or the election may be conducted through a postal ballot. A small but growing number of parties (including the Israeli Labour Party, the British Liberal Democrats, Japan’s Liberal Democrats and the Parti Québécois) use one of these fully participatory methods. Each of the Hungarian parties uses the third of these selection processes. The party president is elected at the biennial party congress in a secret ballot on the basis of one delegate, one vote. Within this common practice, however, the detailed rules of election vary from party to party. The Free Democrats require merely that a candidate should receive a


majority of the votes in order to be elected. If no candidate achieves this in the first ballot, the top two candidates compete in a second ballot. The Young Democrats’ rules specify that a candidate must achieve 60 per cent of the votes for a first-ballot victory. If this is not achieved, provision is made for a second ballot confined to the top two candidates of the first ballot. The HDF rules demand a two-thirds majority in the first ballot. If this is not achieved by any candidate, a second ballot is held that is confined to those who receive a quarter of the first-ballot votes. Thus the four parties have acquired a common procedural style. The leader is not appointed by a small group of party notables, nor chosen by the parliamentarians, nor elected directly by the party members, but is selected by a few hundred activists who seek to represent the party as a whole. In this respect, the Hungarian parties follow the leader-selection practices of most continental European parties. The theoretical merits of this method of selecting the party president are clear (although not all the points apply in the Hungarian case). The activists from the constituencies and regions are involved directly in an important aspect of party business. This provides something of a reward for their unpaid services to the party and an incentive to further activism. It is perhaps the natural means of selection when it is the extraparliamentary leader, rather than the leader of the MPs, who is the party’s leading figure. It is also the natural means of selection for a party that is composed of discrete regional, ideological or organizational sections whose distinctiveness has to be institutionalized in the leaderselection process. It is appropriate for parties that have only small numbers of MPs but a large organization outside the parliament. It will be favoured by parties that are not prepared to leave the choice exclusively in the hands of the MPs, but at the same time are wary of putting matters directly in the hands of the ordinary party members. The limitations of the process are equally clear. It is a relatively open process and thus is potentially dangerous to party unity. The representativeness of the party congress may be questioned. Constituency membership figures, on which the composition of congress is based, are not necessarily accurate and the methods that are used to choose the delegates can be arbitrary. Further, decision making in any such repre sentative institution involves the issue of how far the delegates should act in accordance with the wishes of those they seek to represent. While delegates to the Hungarian party congresses are not mandated, they are expected to ‘consider the views of party members’. This provides great scope for conflict. In the following section the extent to which the theoretical strengths and weaknesses of this method of selecting the leader actually apply in the Hungarian case will be considered.


Informal Practice The recognition of the distinction between formal rules and actual practices is vital to an understanding of any political process. New parties can fairly readily devise constitutions and standing orders but democracy requires more than formal rules. This is not to say that formal rules do not matter: it is always wise to be aware of the letter of the law. The written provisions, however, are only one part of the equation. The democratic intent behind the rules can be modified out of all recognition by the informal behaviour that governs their implementation. Evidence from parties in other new democracies indicates that those who were most prominent in the formation of a party are not necessarily those who are best equipped to lead it subsequently.10 This is especially true of parties that regard themselves as movements. In other parts of the region most of the original leaders of movements soon vanished from political life. The Hungarian experience, particularly that of the HDF, the Free Democrats and the Young Democrats, seems to follow this pattern. Various examples can be noted. Among the Young Democrats the radicals who advocated direct democracy were forced to leave the party; some prominent figures within the Free Democrats (including some founding members) announced that they would not contest the 1994 elections; in the HDF many of the ‘movement-orientated’ old guard have left the party or have been expelled. Optimistically this pattern can perhaps be interpreted as the replacement of ‘amateur’ by ‘professional’ politicians. At least until Antall’s death in 1993 the selection of the HDF president was characterized by the absence of openly contested elections. For the most part the selection process was managed in such a way as to secure the emergence of an ‘agreed candidate’ who could then be endorsed, and thereby legitimized, through the formal procedure. Antall became president of the HDF in 1989 without a contest, even though he was not a member of the original presidium set up in September 1988 to provide the party with a collective leadership. He was co-opted to the presidium after the roundtable talks in 1989 and was then ‘invited’ to become party president. His appointment was then formally confirmed by the party congress in October 1989. Antall’s re-election was not opposed the following year but he did face a challenge from István Csurka in 1992. Csurka’s bid for the leadership began, effectively, in August 1992 with the publication of an essay that expressed his right-wing views and his dissatisfaction with the established leadership. Although he did not mount an official campaign, he was able to pursue an unofficial campaign from August onwards through speeches, interviews and statements to the media. The party congress, due to be held in November, was postponed until January


1993, by which time six possible nominees had emerged. In the event, five of them (including Csurka) declined the nomination in the week preceding the congress. Antall remained as the sole nominee and was duly re-elected. A formal contest was avoided because it became quite clear before the congress met that Antall’s support would be sufficiently large to secure his reelection. Following Antall’s death in December 1993 there was a formal contest to choose his successor as prime minister. Peter Boross, the minister of the interior, had been acting prime minister for some time during Antall’s illness and was Antall’s preferred choice. Boross, however, had joined the party only in August 1992, he was not an MP and he was not universally popular in the party. His selection as the party’s candidate for prime minister was opposed by Iván Szabó (the minister of finance) and Lajos Für (minister of defence). At a gathering of the HDF MPs and national council, however, Boross was elected, after two ballots, to be the party’s choice of prime minister and his appointment was then approved by the president of Hungary and by parliament. Imre Kónya surrendered his post of leader of the MPs in order to become the new minister of the interior, and Ferenc Kulin was selected to be the new leader of the MPs. This relatively smooth change of personnel contributed to the stability of the regime, enabling the HDF to face the 1994 elections without having experienced a major upheaval. Boross indicated that, unlike Antall, he would not fill the post of party president, arguing that this post should be filled by one of the senior figures who had been involved in the party’s formation. Accordingly, in February 1994, at the HDF’s seventh national congress, Lajos Für was chosen to be the new party president. His selection was uncontested, and he received the votes of 689 of the 729 delegates. This separation of the posts of prime minister and party president constituted a significant change in the leadership structure of the party. Previously it had been argued that, were the posts of party president and prime minister to be separated, the post of deputy president would be superfluous (and its retention could even be dangerous, as the president might then become a mere figurehead). Nevertheless, the party’s rules were modified in 1994 so that the post of deputy president would be retained even when the party president was not prime minister. The HSP has been characterized by the lack of leadership contests. Nyers ‘emerged’ from the group of four leading party figures to become HSP president in 1989. He resigned after the 1990 general election and was replaced by Gyula Horn at a closed session of the party congress. Horn’s election was uncontested, in the sense that by May 1990 he had become the obvious candidate through a process of elimination. Of the other leading figures, Nyers had retired, Németh had left parliament and the political scene entirely, and Pozsgay became leader of the parliamentary


group (although only for six months, before he left the party, sat as an independent MP and then established a new party).11 In May 1992 Horn was re-elected without opposition. In contrast to the HDF and HSP, all three presidents of the Free Democrats have been selected through contested ballots. Although János Kis was recognized to be the leading figure of the party before and during the 1990 general election campaign, it was only at the party congress in November 1990 that he was elected to the post of president. Nominal opposition came from Imre Mécs, who nominated himself for the post but received only a handful of votes. In November 1991 Kis surrendered the post of party president. His leadership had been criticized for not being sufficiently dynamic but he did have a genuine wish to leave politics: he was among those who were drawn into politics by the demands of the times but wished to return to a non-political life as soon as possible. Péter Tölgyessy, Alajos Dornbach and (again) Imre Mécs emerged as the leading contenders to succeed him. Iván Pet’s name was also canvassed. Pet had succeeded Tölgyessy as leader of the MPs in November 1990, and in February 1991 had defeated Tölgyessy’s attempt to regain the post. In November 1991, at the beginning of the leadership campaign, Pet indicated that he wished to remain leader of the MPs only if Tölgyessy were not elected party president. The 1991 leadership campaign was very open, with the media giving it a great deal of coverage. Despite the furore that it aroused within the party, the public appears not to have been impressed by the candidates or the contest. One opinion poll (23 November 1991) found that only 27 per cent of all respondents, and 50 per cent of Free Democrat supporters, could identify an acceptable candidate. In the event, Tölgyessy was elected ahead of Dornbach, with Mécs a poor third. Although Tölgyessy’s majority was considerable (close to 60 per cent), his election was certainly not universally approved. Many saw his views as being closer to the HDF than to his own party and there were fears that he would alter the policies and whole style of the party. The conflict was often interpreted as one between the ‘old’ group of founding fathers and the relative ‘newcomers’ like Tölgyessy. Because the most prominent ‘old’ Free Democrats would not accept nomination to the party presidium, it came to be dominated by a majority of Tölgyessy’s backers. Pet duly resigned as leader of the MPs and a major division was avoided only because Pet chose not to lead Tölgyessy’s opponents out of the party. In the following year, under Tölgyessy’s leadership, the worst fears of intraparty conflict were not fulfilled, although the lack of co-operation between party groups did some harm to the party’s popularity and efficiency.


A year later, Tölgyessy’s re-election was opposed by Iván Pet. After the extremely divisive 1991 contest, the party realized that it could not afford a further open conflict and thus the campaign was fairly low-key. Pet easily defeated Tölgyessy, whose compensation was that he was elected to the presidium at the top of the list. This notion of ‘compensation’ seems to be a feature of electoral contests in the Hungarian parties, perhaps suggesting that congress delegates consciously strive to preserve party unity by balancing the various sections of the party in the positions of authority. In this respect it is significant that Kuncze, as leader of the Free Democrat MPs, rather than Pet as party president, was chosen to occupy the ‘number one’ position on the party’s 1994 electoral list. The Free Democrats’ conflictual leadership contests contrast with the experience of the HDF and the HSP. Unlike the HDF, of course, the Free Democrats have been in opposition and thus could enjoy the advantages of being free from governmental responsibility. A more fundamental factor, however, is that the Free Democrats have a greater commitment to the theory and practice of open and participatory democracy than the other main parties. To some extent the party wishes to be seen to be democratic. This intellectual commitment to open democracy is sustained in part by the influence of American party practices. Appropriate or not, the assumptions that underlie the selection of presidential candidates in the USA have found their way into the values of the Free Democrats. Conclusion The absence of leadership contests in at least three of the parties (at least until the contest to find Antall’s successor in 1993) may appear to be the reverse of open and participatory democracy. The manner of Antall’s selection and re-selection, in particular, seems more appropriate to a single-party authoritarian regime than to a democratic party. It has to be appreciated, however, that procedures that fit in one context are not necessarily exportable to another: open and participatory leadership selection procedures are more suitable for some parties, and some types of party system, than for others. In a new multi-party parliamentary system (as opposed to a two-party presidential system) the luxury of democratic and open contests can be damaging. The conflicts and animosities that are necessarily part of an open contest are less easily dissipated in a parliamentary arena than in the very different context of American presidential politics. The Hungarian parties are still at an early stage of development and lack the solidity that characterizes older parties in western countries. One consequence of the lack of roots, and the absence of clear policy commitments, is that leadership contests can highlight the (as yet) fragmented nature of the party. Equally, the emergence of major policy


differences can produce a challenge from those who seek to ‘steal’ the party. Above all, a party that is in office cannot afford the luxury of frequent and spectacular leadership contests. Such a party of government needs to be seen to be stable and not riven by factional conflicts. Unity is desirable for any party but is especially important for a party in office. Although parties cannot be separated from the general political environment, the commitment to participatory processes can vary from party to party within the same system. Nevertheless, in just four years the Hungarian parties’ leader-selection procedures have converged, suggesting that pressures of the democratic framework can encourage uniformity. This throws light on a current political science debate over the extent to which there is convergence in the behaviour and practices of European parties.12 Some have argued that, as a result of the unifying influences of European institutions and integrative forces within the political environment, there has been a tendency for European parties to become increasingly similar to each other in both organizational and policy matters. Regardless of any such tendency among European parties in general, each of the Hungarian parties has sought to steer a careful path between the conflicting pressures of elite management and popular participation in its decision-making structures. The search for this middle way has led the parties to evolve similar, though not identical, leaderselection procedures. The Hungarian parties seem to be basically satisfied with the leaderselection methods they have devised. None of them has shown any enthusiasm for widening the process of selection by involving the party members through a direct secret ballot. What is more, in so far as there have been changes in the procedures they have been in the direction of more closed practices. The question arises, of course, whether there have been challenges to the established process either from the grassroots or from the elites. As the parties are small and loose by western standards, with a relatively small number of members, challenges from the grass roots have not been strong. Equally, it is revealing that the most influential elites have not felt the need to replace the existing system of leader selection with a more specifically elitist process. No doubt this is to a great extent because they have ben able to influence the operation of the existing system by informal means. The Hungarian parties’ leader-selection procedures are not yet entrenched and it remains to be seen how they will be altered in the medium and long term. Although the parties’ constitutions have been constantly under review, the point may now have been reached at which stable structures have been accepted. In the aftermath of the 1994 general election, however, the defeated parties’ inquests will almost certainly include a review of the party leader’s position. The effectiveness of the established leader-selection procedures is thus likely to be truly tested.


NOTES 1. See, for example, Róbert Tardos and Róbert Angelusz, PártmobilitásVálasztások Között, in R.Andorka et al. (eds.), Társadalmi Riport 1992 (Budapest: Tárki, 1992), pp. 376–95. 2. See István János Tóth, Képviselk és Frakcik a Parlamentben in S.Kurtán (et al.) (eds.), Political Yearbook of Hungary 1992 (Budapest: Budapest University of Economics, 1992) pp. 81–91; A.Róna-Tas, ‘The Selected and the Elected: The Making of the New Parliamentary Elite in Hungary’, East European Politics and Society, 1991, pp. 357–93. 3. See R.M.Punnett, Selecting the Party Leader: Britain in Comparative Perspective (London: Harvester-Wheatsheaf, 1992); see also the special issue of European Journal of Political Research on leader-selection methods in Western political parties (Vol. 24, 1993). 4. See, for example, G.Pasquino, ‘Political Leadership in Southern Europe’, West European Politics, Vol. 13, No. 4 (1990), pp. 118–30; G.Pridham ‘Political Actors, Linkages and Interaction: Democratic Consolidation in Southern Europe’, West European Politics, Vol. 13, No. 4 (1990) pp. 130–51. 5. The principal Hungarian parties are the Magyar Demokrata Forum (Hungarian Democratic Forum, HDF); Független Kisgazdapárt (Independent Smallholders’ Party); Kereszténydemokrata Néppart (Christian Democratic People’s Party); Szabad Demokraták Szövetsége (Alliance of Free Democrats, AFD); Fiatal Demokraták Szövetsége (Alliance of Young Democrats, AYD); Magyar Szocialista Párt (Hungarian Socialist Party, HSP). 6. See Renate Mayntz, ‘Executive Leadership in Germany’ in Richard Rose and Ezra N. Suleiman (eds.), Presidents and Prime Ministers (Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute, 1980), pp. 139–71. 7. For a discussion of this point see Gabriella Ilonszki, ‘Hungarian Party Leadership in a Comparative Framework’, unpublished paper, ECPR Joint Sesions, Limerick, April 1992. 8. In December 1993 a dominant segment of the Smallholders’ parliamentary group founded a new party, the Egyesült Kisgazdapárt (United Smallholders’ Party, EKGP). It has an organizational structure similar to that of the HDF, except that the parliamentary leader is also the deputy president, responsible for party management. In a contested election, János Szabó was chosen to be party president. 9. For greater detail see Punnett, op. cit., Ch.1. 10. Pasquino, op. cit., p. 138. 11. Nemzeti Demokrata Szövetsége (National Democratic Association, NDSZ). 12. See, for example, R.S.Katz and Peter Mair, ‘Varieties of Convergence and Patterns of Incorporation in West European Party Systems’, unpublished paper, ECPR Joint Sessions, Leyden, April 1993.

Parties and Party Factions in the Hungarian Parliament LÁSZLÓ SZARVAS

The Hungarian parliament, elected by the first free elections after the collapse of communist power, worked continuously from its convening in May 1990 until the elections of May 1994. It passed several hundred laws, decisions and declarations and became established as a vital part of the new democratizing Hungarian political system. Looking back at the work of parliament over its first four years, the most significant outcome was the permanent existence of the parliament itself. The formal procedure of the Hungarian parliament now conforms to the general pattern of democratic parliaments. In accordance with the results of the 1990 elections and the ensuing agreement between the largest governing party, the Hungarian Democratic Forum (HDF), and the largest opposition party, the Alliance of Free Democrats (AFD), parliament operated in a stable manner, and even became the major actor in the political transition in Hungary. The MPs elected the leading organs and authorities of the House and established permanent and temporary committees. The Rules of the House established appropriate rights and duties for party factions to enable the effective operation of a multiparty parliament.1 However, in some ways the Rules of the House were not fully developed and sometimes they did not serve the effective functioning of parliamentary work. There were also problems concerning the behaviour of MPs towards rational debates and agreements, and, as Attila Ágh has noted, because a large part of government work was also performed in parliament, there was ‘no time left for much more important draft acts to be passed which really govern the life of the country and the entire transformation’.2 On entering parliament in 1990 the MPs created seven factions, among them the six party factions and a so-called ‘group of independents’.3 The Rules of the House of the Hungarian parliament provided the preconditions and prerequisites for the formation of party groups

120 PARTIES AND PARTY FACTIONS IN PARLIAMENT

(factions), including the requirements of party support, and the voluntary membership of the faction by a minimum of ten members. However, beyond the regulation provided by the Rules of the House, there have been problems due to a lack of coordination between party factions. There has been no written agreement on the norms of coordination and co-operation between the coalition parties, the party factions have had no organized relationship, and only occasional meetings have been held. The absence of coordinated co-operation, even among the governing party factions, has resulted in many unfinished debates. This has been clear in the passage of dozens of bills and subsequent proposals for their modification introduced by the coalition partners over the past four years.4 According to the Rules of the House there were certain differences between party factions and the independents. For example, the independents’ group leader was not an equal member of the House Committee, and the group did not have the right to delegate faction representatives to every parliamentary committee. According to a political agreement among the political party leaders the independents were allotted seats on only four of the ten permanent committees. Arguments have been made both for and against the existence of the group of independents. Its supporters base their arguments on principles of voluntarism and equality of representation, according to which no community of voters may be negatively discriminated against in parliament (a restriction on taking part in committee work is seen as synonymous with such a handicap). However, opponents point out that, given the broad differences in political orientation between the members of this group, often even a ‘minimal consensus’ is seriously lacking. In practice this faction has had a special role in parliament in that, as we shall show below, it has been a common resting-place for members who have left one or other of the party factions. In the remainder of this analysis I aim to show the basic characteristics of the party factions and to focus on some of the changes that have taken place during the four years of the parliament’s existence. The Political Orientation of the Party Factions The results of the first free elections and their consequences for the composition of the 1990–94 Hungarian parliament are shown in Table 1. The formation of the governing coalition and the way the mandates were shared present a picture of moderate pluralism, with a stable majority for

László Szarvas is Associate Professor in Political Sciences at the University of Economic Sciences, Budapest.


TABLE 1 THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE SEATS IN THE HUNGARIAN PARLIAMENT, 2 MAY 1990

* Parties forming the coalition government by a majority of 59.57 per cent Abbreviations: (with Hungarian abbreviations in brackets) HDF Hungarian Democratic Forum (MDF) AFD Alliance of Free Democrats (SZDSZ) ISHP Independent Smallholders (FKGP) A YD Alliance of Young Democrats (FIDESZ) CDPP Christian Democratic People’s Party (KDNP) HJLP Hungarian Justice and Life Party (MIÉ) [See Table 1A]

the ruling coalition. However, when it comes to characterizing the political orientations of the parliamentary parties, the approaches of parliamentary experts have differed in the emphasis they put on different characteristics.5 A common view is that of a centre-right governing coalition and a left and liberal opposition on the other side. One argument supporting the use of the left-right dimension in the Hungarian case is that of András Körösényi. He argues that the characteristics of the right can be attributed more to the Hungarian Democratic Forum (HDF), the Christian Democratic People’s Party (CDPP) and the Independent Smallholders’ Party (ISHP), while those of the left apply more to the Alliance of Free Democrats (AFD), the Young Democrats (AYD), and the Hungarian Socialist party (HSP). ‘In fact, the formation of the government confirms the relevance of the left-right political scale, since it is based on a centre-right “minimalrange” HDF-ISHP-CDPP coalition.’ However, Körösényi also points to the divergences between political and economic dimensions of the political scale, emphasizing a distinct deviation in economic matters, and he suggests that ‘the economic and ideological left-right scale[s] cross-cut each other. The libertarian economic line of the left-liberal AFD is on the right on the economic scale, while the recent economic program of the centre-right HDF is to the left of the AFD position.’6 This analysis shows the difficulties of adapting the left-right


TABLE 1A THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE SEATS IN THE HUNGARIAN PARLIAMENT, 7 APRIL 1994

* Member of government coalition

scale in the Hungarian case. I do not wish to detail the reasons for this here, except to mention that this problem is rooted in the social cleavages and the traditional political culture (or sub-cultures) of Hungary. In spite of this, other experts also use the above-mentioned scale, as a base for their ‘polarizational index’ of the party system.7 However, by contrast, Mihály Bihari uses a different approach. He states that ‘the six parliamentary parties were organized around three political currents of ideas and ideological centres. Thus in the tripolar system a multiparty competitive and diverging party structure has taken shape.’ The three political-ideological centres and the parties organized around them were as follows: (a) the national-conservative, Christian Democratic political centre (HDF the ISHP and the CDPP); (b) the social-liberal centre (AFD and the AYD); (c) the Euro-socialist, social-democraticcentre (HSP).8 A third, very distinct approach is represented by György G.Márkus. His approach is based on the theory of cleavages of Rokkan and Lipset, adapted to the Hungarian case. He shows a secondary ‘underdeveloped cleavage’ between employees and employers, and emphasizes a primary cleavage between those who hold values of national identity and those who support ‘westernization’. These values can be outlined as follows:


National identity (historical continuity) traditional community organic solidarity internal control (guidance) coalescence order particularism collectivism conformism

Westernization (conformity to the West) modern society mechanical solidarity external control separation productivity universalism individualism non-conformism

Márkus concludes that the primary and secondary cleavages are strengthening each other in Hungary, leading to the construction of political blocs. He describes two opposing blocs based on their value priorities: National-Christian (Dominant Party: HDF) populist style culture religious ethic state control of the market collectivism ‘authoritarian democracy’

Liberal-Westernized (Dominant Party: AFD) urbanist style economy secularization free market individualism competitive democracy

Márkus also suggests that the leading bloc parties are cross-cut by social cleavages, and he argues the necessity of the ‘oppositional’ internal groups such as liberals within the HDF and social democrats and social liberals inside the AFD, in order to achieve a balanced development.9 Finally another interesting approach has been proposed by Jerzy Wiatr in the case of Poland. He suggests a three-dimensional party characterization, based on economic outlook (strongly monetarist versus anti-monetarist), secularism versus fundamentalism, and finally attitude to decommunization (against or for). These aspects are not necessarily connected, and accordingly parties which are relatively close to each other on one dimension may be far apart on another.10 Although we have described the parliamentary parties as coherent wholes, it is clear that all of them possess several groups with different political orientations. The leading coalition party, the HDF, as a centre type of party, has declared itself to be a ‘harmonious alliance’ of three political orientations: populist-nationalist, Christian democrat and national-liberal. However, this ‘harmonious alliance’ had disappeared two years after the election. A group led by István Csurka, at that time


TABLE 2 THE POLITICAL-IDEOLOGICAL IDENTIFICATION OF MPs

Sources: É.Kovács and J.I.Tóth, ‘Ki mit mondott 1990-ben? Választási pártprogramok tartalomelezése’ (A content analysis of party programmes in the 1990 elections), Politikatudományi Szemle (Political Science Review), 1992, No. 1; J.I.Tóth, ‘Képviselók és frakciók a parlamentben’ (MPs and factions in parliament), in S.Kurtán et al., Magyarország Politikai Évkönyve (Political Yearbook of Hungary) (1992), pp. 81–91.

the vice-president of HDF, started attacking the government and called for more radical measures against the former nomenklatura, and proposed the idea of a ‘Hungarian way’ which had anti-Semitic and anti-foreign connotations reminiscent of Nazi ideas. Csurka also organized ‘Hungarian Way Circles’ within the HDF ranks and wanted Prime Minister Antall to resign. The dispute lasted longer than a year, and finally ended with the expulsion of Csurka and his supporters from the party and from the HDF parliamentary faction in June 1993. The immediate reason for their exclusion was their vote against the first agreement between Hungary and Ukraine, which declared the borders between the two countries to be stable and unchangeable. The excluded MPs then created a new, far-right party called the Hungarian Justice and Life Party which had 12 MPs in parliament until the 1994 election. The largest oppositional party group, the AFD, also has had at least two different tendencies within its ranks: the so-called ‘Liberal Coalition’ focusing on the values of traditional liberalism, and the social-liberal tendency, which emphasized the sensitivity of the party to social issues. Ideological Identity of the Parliamentary Factions According to a sociological survey of the opinions of MPs, based on interviews and analysis conducted immediately after the convening the new parliament in 1990, we can observe the extent of correlation between party membership and political orientation.


The orientation of ‘democrat’ proved to be held unanimously by all party factions, but the other orientations can be used to distinguish among the different factions. They reveal the following tendencies. Among these seven orientations, ‘Hungarian national’ revealed the clearest cleavage between the party factions in the ruling coalition and those in opposition. ‘Liberal’ was shared by the two ‘liberal’ parties, and the greatest differences were between the ISHP and HSP on the one side and the AYD on the other. There was also a definite cross-cutting division between the governing and the oppositional factions: 24.4 per cent of HDF MPs identified themselves as liberals, while 26.6 per cent of AFD members did not identify themselves as liberal. In spite of an internal division among the HSP MPs on their identification with ‘leftism’, a clear distinction can be drawn between the HSP and the other parties in terms of this orientation. A clear difference on party lines by ‘Christian religious’ values can also be observed between the HSP and the others, but, along with the socialist members, 71 HDF MPs also did not associate themselves with Christian values. In general we can see that the identities of a given party and the ideological identification of the MPs belonging to that party were quite strongly correlated. The MPs accepted most of the values that were suggested by their parties. In particular, to begin with, the extent of internal cohesion looked much stronger among the governing coalition parties than among those of the opposition. The Internal Organization of the Factions in Parliament An interesting perspective on the degree of maturity and coherence of the new party organization can be gathered from data on the extent of participation of the factions in parliament. The average attendance of members at the debates was only about 60 per cent, but it is interesting to note that the government coalition MPs attended more frequently than members of the opposition party factions. The attendance of government supporters was more than 80 per cent in 15 per cent of the votes, whereas opposition MPs had an attendance of more than 80 per cent in only three per cent of votes. On the other hand, the participation of government supporters fell below half on only three per cent of all occasions, but for the opposition party MPs less than half have turned out to vote on 38 per cent of all occasions. The MPs elected in individual constituencies voted more frequently than the MPs from the party lists. This in turn correlated with the high percentage of individual MPs in the HDF party faction. These figures reveal the more disciplined behaviour of the governmental


TABLE 3 THE DEGREE OF UNANIMITY IN FACTIONS’ VOTING

party factions, but this may be a result of their membership of the governing factions rather than a party attribute. A further question which can also be of value in assessing the degree of self-discipline of the factions is the extent to which they voted unanimously on different issues. On this issue it can be seen that the Hungarian government party factions voted together very frequently, to the extent that we can talk about them behaving like a voting machine. By contrast, the opposition party MPs vote together a little less than the government party MPs, while the independents have the lowest rate of unanimity. This is related to the fact that they became independent by leaving different factions with very different positions on issues and also that their individualism was not controlled by any ‘group discipline’. Table 3 shows how many members as a per centage of faction membership, have been of the same opinion, in parliamentary votes. To put these figures in perspective, it should be noted that unanimity of voting within party factions is usually very high in the most developed countries also. In the Norwegian parliament, for example, members of the same party voted together in 90–95 per cent of all votes.11 Voting discipline depends mainly on the issues and the stability of the majority. Where there is a narrow majority strong party discipline is required. Also, it is often the case that in votes on foreign and defence issues unanimity is high, but that on questions such as tax policies or the distribution of benefits party factions are more likely to be divided. The Distance between Factions Table 4 offers data on the average differences of opinion between factions over the four years of the last parliament. Clearly the internal unity of the coalition was very high, with much smaller differences of opinion within the coalition than between the opposition parties, but differences within government ranks grew over the life of the parliament. Among the opposition parties the two liberal party factions were relatively close when compared to the distances between them and the socialists. It is also interesting to note that the differences between the HSP and the liberal party factions was decreasing year by year. This was partly due to


the particular issues under discussion, and also to a real coincidence of the opinions among the three oppositional parties in many cases. Turning to the distances between the governing parties to those that separated the opposition factions, we observe very deep cleavages, which deepened further between 1990 and 1992, and then decreased again in 1993. A major part of the explanation of these trends lies in the nature of the issues that were subject to legislation and debate. The laws passed in 1990 were directly concerned with launching the new political institutions and establishing new rules for the transition. The parliament made decisions on such questions as the honour and the importance of 1956 revolution and war of independence, on the amendment of the Constitution of Hungary, and on the election and operation of local governments. Sándor Kurtán, in his analysis of the laws passed in 1990 and up to July 1991, has shown that the three opposition parties voted together with the governing coalition in 42 per cent of the votes, and they were completely on the opposite side in only ten per cent of the votes. He also stated that ‘during the passage of 107 laws (between May 1990 and July 1991) a relatively high level of consensus formed in the Hungarian parliament. Almost half of the laws were passed with near unanimity.’12 Similar basic legislation supporting the regime change was also passed in 1991. Included were scores of bills, such as the laws on the judiciary, on lawyers and on investment by foreigners in Hungary, which were passed with majorities of almost 100 per cent. However, in many other cases a strict contrast was emerging between the opposition and the governing party factions. For example, on the voting procedure for the passage of the next year’s budget, on personal income tax and on the order of taxation, divisions of between 60 and 40 percentage points were produced, accurately reflecting the distribution of seats between the governing coalition and the opposition. A few laws split the parliament more closely. For example, the acts on the compensation of former property owners, on the authority of municipalities and on the settling of former church property all showed a hard confrontation. This trend continued in 1992. Among the 54 laws of that year, 24 were passed with a majority of over 90 per cent. On the other hand, seven of them produced clear splits between the party factions into governing and opposition poles. Moreover, the following acts of 1992 caused almost total confrontation between the coalition and the opposition: Act No. 9 on the social security system; Act No. 22 on the Labour Code; Act No. 23 on public officials; Act No. 33 on public servants; Act No. 38 on the state budget; Act No. 53 on property to be kept permanently in state ownership; Act No. 54 on property to be held temporarily in state ownership. It can be seen from this list that the major differences occurred over issues of social, labour and privatization concerns. Because of the increase in


TABLE 4 THE AVERAGE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN PARTY FACTIONS

legislation on these kinds of issues more clashes occurred and greater


distances could be observed between the government and opposition party factions. Of course, there are also issues on which the opinion of the majority of factions overlaps, either totally (in 33 per cent of the votes in the last parliament), or when two opposition party factions have joined with the government coalition (in 20 per cent of the votes). In these cases it can be said that there was a ‘national consensus’ on those topics, for example on the fate of the Warsaw Pact, the desire to join the EC, fundamental issues of the state of law, or the framework of the market economy. On the other hand, there have been deep cleavages between the governnmental coalition and the socialist-liberal opposition factions. This has occurred on topics such as the budget, the compensation of former property owners, the question of church property, privatization, and the media. Many laws which would have needed a two thirds-majority to be passed have been delayed. The question of the media offers the strangest case: after a long preparatory debate on a new law, not a single party accepted the proposal! Changes in the Distribution of Seats between Factions Within the lifetime of the first Hungarian parliament, between May 1990 and April 1994, there were significant changes in the relative strengths of the different party factions. These are reflected for the four-year period in the Table 5. TABLE 5 CHANGES IN THE NUMBER OF SEATS PER FACTION: MAY 1990–APRIL 1994

* Percentage of all seats.


The 61 changes in seats represent 16.94 per cent of the total number of MPs. They reflect the changes affecting the relationships among factions. The figures do not take into account the replacement of individuals, such as the replacement of an MP by another from the same party list, when the seats did not change hands between parties. What is shown by the table? As a result of the loss of seats, the government coalition ended up with only a small majority in parliament, with resulting danger for the stability of the government. However, the situation was more complex than revealed in the table because it does not show certain particular complicating factors in the relations between factions in the Hungarian parliament. First was the split of the Smallholders’ (ISHP) faction. The case is unique in the history of parliamentarism. As the consequence of an internal dispute over the privatization of land, two groups emerged within the ISHP. The supporters of a radical re-privatization, based on the idea of a return to the ownership relations of 1947 (before the forced collectivization of property by the state), became the majority in the leadership of the party outside parliament. Only a minority of the party leaders accepted the coalition government’s position on the compensation of the former owners without the restitution of their actual property. The party leadership (supported by the hardliners outside parliament) then expelled the ‘minority’ from the party, including several MPs. The MPs in opposition to their party leadership then established a new parliamentary faction with 36 MPs in October 1991. They chose a new faction leader, applied for recognition by the House, and became an accepted legal ‘faction of the 36 ISH’. After that, the differences between the two factions became deeper and deeper and one of them turned against the government itself. The Smallholders’ group, supported by the ‘legal’ leadership of the party, declared that it was leaving the government coalition and dubbed itself a new opposition faction in February 1992. The political map of the Hungarian parliament was thus ‘Europeanized’ in the sense that there was now a ‘two-sided opposition’: there now existed a ‘right-wing’ opposition to the government, which had no connections with the liberal and socialist opposition groups of the AFD, AYD and HSP. Meanwhile the dispute among the Smallholders continued in the Supreme Court and in different areas of the political scene, and finally the ISHP became the legal party and the ‘36’ started to organize a ‘new’ party, the ‘Unified Smallholders’ Party’, in order to run separately for seats in the 1994 elections. Secondly the party faction of HJLP was also created and recognized, with a membership of 12 MPs after their exclusion from the HDF faction. However, the status of this faction is very strange. It stood outside the coalition as a radical-right critic of the government, but it was


also the supporter of it in many cases. This ‘multiple’ behaviour of the faction resulted in creating conditions for the survival of the government despite its very slight majority during the last half-year of its existence. Turning to the seats that transferred from one party to another, we find that most of the changes were initiated by the MPs themselves. Only a few MPs were forced by their own fraction to leave. What were the reasons for the changes in faction membership by MPs? Important factors were the degree of flexibility of party discipline and the extent to which the MPs were able to identify with the parties. The two largest parties (HDF and AFD) accounted for almost a majority of the changes. It is also evident that those members elected from individual constituencies were most frequently involved in such changes. Because the elections of 1990 were held too early for the effective establishment of the parties they did not always succeed in finding reliable candidates who could prove their fidelity. In such circumstances disappointment with a given party was the most frequent reason for MPs changing their allegiance. The majority of former HDF representatives changed party because of disagreements with the modifications in party orientation and party behaviour. For example, some took exception to the hard opposition of the HDF to the former regime and were not satisfied with their party’s behaviour towards former communists. These kinds of motivation also played a part in the changes of allegiance within the opposition parties, mainly the AFD. Former AFD MPs not only moved to the independents, but four of them even became MPs of the governing coalition. This controversial move either reflected the initial liberalism of the party or revealed a distinct gap between the promises and real opportunities of the party. Of course, the false expectations of some MPs also played a part in their changes of party membership. In examining the changes of allegiance it is interesting to observe the major direction of the changes (for details see Table 6). Twenty-two MPs have moved from one party faction to another, or created a new party faction, and some former independent MPs have joined the party factions. Most of the MPs involved in a change rejected all parties and became independent, even though they knew that the faction of independents was unequal in status compared with the party factions. Some of them were disappointed by party discipline or by the rigidity of the decision-making process, while others, especially those who have been organizers of separate new parties, left their party because of changes in their own political aims. The loose framework of the independent faction has proved to be an adequate playground for most of the party ‘dissidents’. While the changes were mostly opposed in the media, and for


TABLE 6 1. DIRECTION OF TRANSFERS AMONG MPs IN THE HUNGARIAN PARLIAMENT, 1990–94

2. SEATS TRANSFERRED IN BY-ELECTIONS

Note: The total number of seats changed during this parliamentary cycle was 61, that is, 16.94 per cent of the toal number of MPs.

ethical reasons, the voters in the constituencies seemed to accept the personal decision of the MPs. However, such changes of allegiance have emphasized the weak ties between the parties and the voters, and the strength of influence of the personalities of the MPs. Meanwhile five further mandates changed hands as a result of byelections held between 1991 and 1993. These by-elections openly showed up problems both in the political culture and in party identification. The turnouts were extremely low, and in the region of Komarom five rounds


of voting had to be held before a valid result was reached. Such passivity is a response not only to the candidates running in particular elections, but to politics in general. However, in respect of our concerns here, the most important aspects are the results of the by-elections and their consequences for the allocation of mandates. For each of the five by-elections there were five separate results and reasons for them. However, they also shared some common experiences. First of all, every vacated place was filled by a candidate of a different party. Two former AFD seats were occupied by HSP candidates, one transferred from the HDF to the AFD, one former independent mandate was won by the minister of finance, supported by the HDF, and a former Smallholders’ seat was won by an independent candidate in 1993. In spite of the small number of cases and the usually special factors associated with by-elections, the failure of the governing coalition parties is worth special mention, as is that of the AYD, as the party with the most popular leaders according to the public opinion polls in 1991–92. Although the by-election results did not bring about any major change in the relative strengths of the parties, nevertheless they characterize the fragility of the still-young party system in Hungary. Finally, mention should be made of a new trend of the behaviour of independent MPs: many of them have tried to organize new parties of their own. For example, János Palótás, formerly of the HDF, became president of the new Party of the Republic; Zoltán Király, also from the HDF, became leader of the Hungarian Social Democratic Party, and Imre Pozsgay, formerly of the HSP, headed the National Democratic Alliance. Also, some MPs who changed their allegiance joined other parties outside parliament. By the end of the parliament in 1994, no fewer than 16 parties could claim some representation in parliament, and among the 28 members of the ‘independent’ faction only 12 were really not representing any party. Most of these small parties were able to nominate candidates for the 1994 parliamentary election but none of them won a seat.13 In Place of a Conclusion The Hungarian parliament finished its first four-year cycle in May 1994. While the government—and the governing coalition in general—were making efforts to strengthen the coalition, the divergent elements within it became increasingly dangerous for its survival. The party which gained support with the slogan of ‘calm power’ four years earlier had lost its popularity, and the opposition parties had reorganized their ranks and were able to make an increasingly strong challenge. At the end of its four-year term the first democratic parliament bequeathed a number of problems to its successor. The year 1992 seemed


to be the turning-point in the life of the parliament. First of all, the central role of the parliament began to diminish in relation to other institutions of interest representation. Because of this, the party factions had to start paying much more attention to the trilateral talks between government, employers and unions, and to recognize the growing importance of the work of the Council of Interest Reconciliation. Secondly, the long-running and unsuccessful debates on the media law, which needed a two-thirds majority to be passed, suggested that current requirements for the passage of laws of this kind are almost totally unrealistic. The pile of delayed proposals and bills had increased enormously by the end of the parliamentary term. As a ‘learning parliament’ a number of mistakes were made, but, on the other hand, its success in the numbers of laws and decisions passed is notable. Moreover, despite the instability of party faction membership discussed above, the arrangement and place of the party factions inside the parliament conforms to European norms and can be classified as basically democratic. NOTES 1. L.Szarvas, ‘Pártfrakciók a magyar parlamentben’ (Party factions in the Hungarian Parliament: Results of research), paper of the Hungarian Centre for Democracy Studies Foundation. 2. A.Ágh, ‘The Year of the Structural Stalemate’, in S.Kurtán, L.Sándor and L.Vass (eds.), Magyarország Politikai Évkönyve (Political Yearbook of Hungary) (Budapest: Hungarian Centre for Democracy Studies, 1992), p. 29. 3. See Table 1 for detailed figures. 4. See I.Hanyecz and J.Perger, in Kurtán et al., op. cit., 1991 and 1992. 5. The introduction of the Hungarian electoral law and the results of the first free elections have been discussed in several books and periodicals, among them Roger East, Revolutions in Eastern Europe (London: Pinter, 1992); J.Batt, East Central Europe from Reform to Transformation (London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1991); Kurtán et al., op. cit.; G.Szoboszlai (ed.), Democracy and Political Transformation (Budapest: Hungarian Political Science Association, 1991). 6. A.Körösényi, ‘Revival of the Past or New Beginning?’ (The Nature of PostCommunist Politics), in Szoboszlai (ed.) op. cit., pp. 173–4. 7. For example, János Simon, writing in the Magyar Hírlap, 19 March 1992. Classifying parliamentary parties on a ten-point left-right scale, his published values were: HDF 6.4; ISHP 7.2; CDPP 6.7; AFD 5.1;; AYD 5.6; HSP 3.2. 8. Mihály Bihari, ‘Changing of Regime and Power in Hungary (1989–1990)’, in Kurtán et al. (1991), p. 38.


9. G.Márkus, ‘Pártok és törésvonalak’ (‘Parties and cleavages’) in Társadalomtudományi Szemle (Social Science Review), Nos. 1–2 (1991), pp. 89, 90–91. 10. Jerzy Wiatr, ‘Fragmented Parties in a New Democracy: Poland’ (unpublished paper). 11. J.P.Olsen, Organized Democracy (Oslo: Universitets foorlaget, 1992), p. 62. 12. S.Kurtán, ‘Parties and Laws’, Budapest Papers on Democratic Transition, 1991, No. 5. 13. For further details, see Szarvas in Kurtán et al., op. cit., 1993 and 1994.

136

Representational Roles in the Hungarian Parliament GABRIELLA ILONSZKI and DAVID JUDGE

The first democratically elected Hungarian parliament, which served from 1990 to 1994, enjoyed a term of office that was exceptionally busy, yet it was one in which the newly elected MPs were learning their role. The results of the first systematic survey of their perceptions reveal how far Hungarian MPs adopted role orientations similar to those found in AngloAmerican democracies. An examination of legislators’ roles in the Hungarian parliament sheds light on both the comparative and the analytical utility of ‘representational role’ in the study of legislatures. The Concept of Representation The problem of representation is central to all discussions of the functions of legislatures or the behavior of legislators.1 Over 30 years ago these words opened the seminal study of representational roles by Heinz Eulau and his associates, prompting in successive decades innumerable studies seeking replication in a variety of countries,2 and these words still provide an impetus for the study of representational roles in the 1990s. Over the years, however, the emphasis within this sentence has increasingly been directed away from the ‘function’ towards the ‘problem’ of representation. In this analytical odyssey, the initial conception of representative roles along bipolar lines of ‘style’ (‘trusteemandate’) and ‘focus’ (‘nation-district’) has attracted much criticism, not least from one of its original proponents.3 As the complexity of modern legislative representation, both as an analytical construct and as empirical reality, came to be acknowledged, so further western studies sought ‘to understand how [representatives] make choices when conflicts arise on policy questions’.4 The centrality of


representation, both as a concept and as political practice, has thus been widely acknowledged in studies of western parliamentary democracies. A new parliamentary democracy offers a comparative perspective from which to consider the wider development of the concept and the practice of representation. ‘Representation’ provides an analytical focus capable of illuminating how actors in a transitional political system ‘learn’ concepts and how they are socialized into new forms of political behaviour. It also allows the extent of continuity or discontinuity between the old and new regimes to be examined, and provides a perspective on how political roles become embedded in a new democracy. The basic questions posed in such an examination are: whether established representative roles are simply reproduced in ‘new’ parliaments; or whether the conception of a role is mediated by past representative practices and present realities of the process of democratization. With these questions in mind, this study seeks to examine the ‘centrality’ of conceptions of representation to the behaviour of legislators by examining the role orientations of members of the first democratically elected parliament in Hungary after the transition of 1990. In so doing, the article seeks to examine the degree to which standard ‘western’ conceptions of representation have developed in a context where alternative conceptions of democratic centralism had for most of the postwar period provided the parameters of representation, and one in which a mixed pattern of ‘eastern’ and ‘western’ representational roles had emerged immediately before transition. Moreover, the study seeks to assess the continuing analytical utility of ‘representational role’ in the study of legislatures. Representative Roles in the Hungarian Parliament before 1990 Comparative studies of ‘communist’ legislatures credited Eastern European parliaments with several important political functions.5 By their very presence, parliaments in communist countries conferred legitimacy, however limited, upon the political regime. They also fulfilled a vital contact function between the governed and the governors. In some cases,

David Judge is Professor of Politics at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK. Gabriella Ilonszki is an Associate Professor in Political Sciences at the University of Economic Sciences, Budapest, Hungary. The research on which this study is based was conducted under the auspices of the Centre of Democratic Studies at the University of Economic Sciences, Budapest, and was facilitated by a HALP link between Strathclyde and Budapest financed by the British Council.

REPRESENTATIONAL ROLES IN PARLIAMENT 139

most notably Poland and Yugoslavia, they also exerted some policy impact as well. In Hungary, it was the contact function that was particularly pronounced, and became ever more so as a result of institutional changes effected before 1990. This growing ‘linkage’ function met a quiet, but persistent, public demand; but it also reflected the sensibility of the political elite. Indeed, it was this sensitivity that made Hungary, for decades, a ‘more acceptable’ version of communism for its inhabitants than for those in surrounding East-Central European states. Admittedly, the Hungarian parliament itself often functioned merely as a rubber stamp for the party state. Parliament met on only a few days a year, and until the 1985 elections members of parliament were returned in uncontested elections and voted as they were expected to do by the party. The emphasis was clearly, therefore, upon representativeness rather than upon representation. Parliament was a ‘representative’ institution in so far as it was based upon a microcosmic representation of the demographic characteristics of Hungarian society (always, of course, within the overarching confines of party membership). As such, representation could be characterized as a ‘contact function’ whereby, literally, contact between governors and governed could be sustained. Within this limited conception of representation, however, linkages between constituents and representatives became increasingly important. Moreover, this contact function was ‘improved’ and regularized through several important institutional changes made over the course of two decades. The first step came with the enactment of Law III of 1966. After this date national elections were based upon geographical constituencies and a trend was established whereby MPs came to be expected to act as constituency promoters, as ‘lobbyists’ for their constituents. Of course, the communist party still claimed that it alone served to integrate and embody the interests of the entire political community; nonetheless, the 1966 law made a parallel and ‘unofficial’ focus of representation manifest —that of the constituency. As a second step, Law III of 1970 further increased the importance of locality by enabling individual constituents to nominate candidates, and it also allowed for votes at constituency meetings to determine party nominations. Law III of 1983 advanced this process still further by implicitly acknowledging the significance of the constituency focus. This constitutional law introduced a compulsory multi-nomination system, so that at least two candidates had to stand for election. In addition, a national list of 35 MPs was established. The people on this list were freed from ‘constituency work’, being high-ranking party members, trade unionists, church dignatories or even representatives of the ‘cultural elite’. Some optimistic critics of the regime saw in this step a possible distinction between the representation of corporate and constituency


interests in the long run, and envisaged the potential for ‘meaningful’ representation within the framework of a ‘communist legislature’. However, the ‘competitive elections’ in 1985 did not change the composition of the new parliament to any great degree.6 One explanation was that independent candidates faced significant difficulties in getting themselves nominated. None the less, some reform-minded individuals were elected; and, overall, parliament underwent its largest renewal since 1956. Indeed, as the destabilization of the communist party regime progressed, representatives felt increasingly obliged to dissociate themselves from the party and to associate themselves more with the constituency. The growing importance of the performance of constituency roles can be gauged, in part, from the fact that most of the interpellations in the 1980s concerned local affairs.7 Moreover, the Hungarian public came to expect greater ‘responsibility’ from their representatives. In a survey conducted in March 1988 by the Hungarian Public Opinion Research Institute it was found that 84 per cent of respondents agreed that MPs should be recalled from office if their constituents were dissatisfied with their parliamentary performance.8 Indeed, this notion spilled over into political practice, leading several MPs to be recalled by their constituents in the transition years. This ‘quasi-representation’, and its positive linkage function, did much to sustain the positive public perceptions of the last communist parliament in Hungary. In fact, in the years immediately preceding transition, reform-minded critics, more often than not, advanced their general criticisms of the regime by reference to specific local problems and grievances. In return, reformists within parliament enjoyed positive public evaluation as individuals, which came to be reflected in the high popularity indices of the Hungarian parliament as a whole. Parliament, for a precious historical moment, appeared as a ‘missing link’ between the governed and the governors, with a part of the political elite undertaking to act in a ‘representative’ and ‘responsible’ manner. The New Hungarian Parliament The new Hungarian parliament met for the first time on 2 May 1990, after the first free elections since 1945 and following a ‘negotiated revolution’— a process of constitutional discussion between the state-party and opposition groups between March and October 1989. What made the process of transition in Hungary so different from that in other EastCentral European countries was that parliament was at the centre of constitutional debate.9 Most of the laws concerning the new, democratic constitutional structure were in fact enacted by the ‘old’ parliament. Perhaps not surprisingly, the new parliamentary system, as a negotiated settlement between old and emerging political elites,


displayed both continuities and radical departures from the pre-1990 parliament. Nowhere was this constitutional duality better illustrated than in the hybrid electoral system adopted for the first democratic elections. A compromise was eventually negotiated which profoundly affected the representative function and the performance of representational roles. The new electoral system was a hybrid based upon single-member constituencies, but also incorporating MPs from both regional and national lists. Of the 386 MPs, 176 were elected in individual constituencies, a further 152 came from regional party lists organized on the basis of 20 regions, and the remaining 58 MPs were drawn from national party lists.10 Consequently, two distinct bases of representation—‘geographical constituency’ and ‘party’—characterized the new parliament. These two dimensions contended with each other on the practical plane of representation. Not only does this duality reveal itself in the findings of the present study, but it is equally apparent in the wider political development of Hungary. On the one hand, parties have become relatively well established, with the same six parties qualifying as ‘national parties’ and gaining parliamentary representation in both the 1990 and the May 1994 elections. What is more, virtually all candidates ran as members of a party. On the other hand, however, there is growing public scepticism with regard to parties—a trend acknowledged by representatives themselves in frequent changes of party allegiance, or in distancing themselves from party leaders, or even in cultivating contacts with ‘imaginary’ constituencies, even when their own mandate was derived from a party list. This latter tendency was undoubtedly reinforced by the practical experience of representation before 1990, which emphasized personal links and the geographical dimension of representation. A dichotomy thus exists within the Hungarian parliament whereby the representational focus of a constituency can be called upon as a legitimate countervailing force to the ‘party’. A characteristic of parliament since 1990, therefore, has been the volatility of party allegiance. There has been a significant movement of MPs from one party faction to another caused either by factional splits and expulsions or individual defections (see Table 1). One consequence has been that the three-party government coalition decreased from 59.6 per cent of seats in May 1990 to 50.7 per cent of seats (and a majority of only two) in December 1993. In this process it was evident that those members elected in individual districts had changed party allegiance most frequently.11 In part this was because the party identification of constituency MPs had often been only recently acquired or was politically expedient at the time of the first elections, but party list MPs also broke with their faction, and in these circumstances the individuals concerned retained their membership of parliament but the


TABLE 1 PARTY COMPOSITION OF THE HUNGARIAN PARLIAMENT, 1990–93

Notes: the increase in the number of independents is due primarily to MPs changing faction and to a split within the FKGP in 1992. The ISHP was formed after expulsions from the HDF. The 1993 total of 385 members reflects the existence of one vacant seat at the time.

party effectively ‘lost’ a seat.12 As the number of party-sensitive issues processed by parliament increased after 1990; as the demand for party cohesion increased within parliament; as the number of occasions when the majority coalition bloc voted against the three-party opposition bloc almost doubled (from 14.4 per cent of votes in 1990 to 28.3 per cent in 199313); as party loyalty became the norm amongst the governing parties, with CDPP and HDF MPs voting together 95 per cent of the time: as all this happened, so party identification became crystallized. In these circumstances, as party allegiance came to be more starkly defined, those MPs with weak party identification came increasingly to dissent, or indeed defect, from party faction. Representative Roles in the New Hungarian Parliament Given the conceptions of representation pertaining in the pre-1990 Hungarian parliament, and also given the fact that only six per cent of candidates in the 1990 election and four per cent of MPs had previously served in parliament, it is of some significance to discover how ‘new’ Hungarian MPs conceived of their representative role. This significance is twofold: first, to what extent do Hungarian MPs think in terms of linkage’ and representational ‘styles’ and ‘foci’; and, second, to what extent are


conceptions of representational roles ‘universal’ to representative bodies across time and across representative systems? As part of a larger survey conducted in March 1992, members of the Hungarian parliament were asked how they conceived of their representa tional roles. Questions were, as far as possible, replicated from established Anglo-American surveys, and adapted where appropriate to specific Hungarian circumstances. The purpose of this replication was twofold. First, it aimed to establish whether Hungarian MPs could identify conceptions similar to those found in ‘western’ representative democracies. In this sense negative responses—to the effect that the questions posed in the survey were ‘meaningless’ or of little significance to Hungarian MPs— would have been indicative of the limited utility of the concept of representational role in developing legislatures. Second, if common conceptions were identifiable, the aim was to establish the extent to which the pattern of Hungarian legislators’ conceptions corresponded to those of ‘western’ legislators. It was important to gauge conceptions of legislative roles at a time when MPs would have had sufficient experience of their new job to make reasoned assessments and also sufficient time to have accumulated practical experience of linkage with their various ‘constituencies’. Yet it was equally important to investigate representatives’ own ideas before the novelty of their experience had worn off, or before they might begin to ‘reinterpret’ the performance of their roles in the glare of increasing western academic attention. To this end a postal questionnaire was sent to all 384 sitting MPs in March 1992.14 As Tables 2A and 2B illustrate, respondents were broadly representative of the party composition of parliament and of the type of electoral mandate. Focus of Representation The work of Wahlke and his associates was of importance in distinguishing between the style and the focus of representation. In simplifying Edmund Burke’s argument, almost to the point of caricature, they were able to maintain that ‘Burke’s linkage of a particular representational style constitutes only a special case in a generic series of empirically possible relationships between different foci of representation and appropriate styles of representation’.15 However, a refinement needs to be made to their initial distinction inasmuch as what is of importance in the determination of style is not the focus (in its location in a geographical constituency, or in the nation or in party) but the homogeneity of interest or opinion encompassed within the ‘focus’.16 In this sense, Wahlke et al. are correct in their contention that a ‘representative may base his decisions on his own conscience or


TABLE 2A HUNGARIAN MPs BY PARTY FACTION

* Total of respondents declaring a party allegiance TABLE 2B HUNGARIAN MPs BY TYPE OF ELECTORAL MANDATE

* Total of respondents declaring source of mandate

judgement, but the cause he promotes may be parochial. Or he may follow instructions, but the mandate may be directed towards the herefore, they realization of the general welfare’.17 Analytically, contended that style was neutral as regards area. A trustee need not necessarily adopt a nation-wide focus, nor a delegate a constituency focus. Moreover, a bipolar conception of focus simply in areal terms (of constituency or nation) is largely regarded as inappropriate for modern


TABLE 3 FOCUS OF REPRESENTATION BY TYPE OF ELECTION MANDATE Whom do you think you primarily represent?

legislators. As Malcolm Jewell observes, studies that extend beyond areal foci are ‘particularly pertinent in political systems where parties are strong and where legislators are elected by proportional representation and list systems’. Indeed, Jewell predicts that in systems in which party loyalties are strong or which do not have single member districts we would not expect strong loyalties to district.18 To identify conceptions of representative focus, Hungarian MPs were asked initially which, if any, of the following they thought they primarily represented: the nation (all citizens of the country); a particular social stratum; an ethnic group; a political party; an organized or interest group; a city or region; or a specific electoral constituency.19 Of the 117 respondents, the primary focus of representation was identified as the nation by nearly one-third (32.5 per cent, n=38), electoral constituency by 22 per cent (n=26), and party by 17 per cent (n=20). Ten per cent regarded themselves as representatives of a particular social stratum, and a further nine per cent (n=11) identified a city or region as their primary focus of representation. Seven MPs specified other foci—including ‘young people’ and the ‘Hungarian nation’ (in this sense ‘nation’ has a symbolic meaning different from ‘all citizens of the country’). Table 3 reveals the differences between MPs returned in a constituency and those drawn from a party list. Not surprisingly, MPs drawn from


lists identified party, region or nation (the bases of the party lists themselves) as their primary foci of representation. However, nearly as many constituency MPs (41 per cent compared with 42.6 per cent) also identified with the wider geographical areas of nation and city or region. What distinguishes the former from the latter more clearly, however, is the emphasis placed upon electoral constituency (42.9 per cent compared with 3.3 per cent). Even so, two MPs drawn from party lists still identified a specific electoral constituency as their primary focus of representation. This is perhaps indicative of a wider strategy whereby party list MPs associate with, and promote themselves in, a particular constituency in an attempt to enhance their future electoral prospects. When MPs’ responses are analysed by party grouping,20 notable party differences emerge. Nearly one-third of government MPs in the sample (32.3 per cent, n=21) had as their primary focus their constituency—the overwhelming majority of whom (n=18) had a direct mandate. This is over twice the proportion of opposition members (14 per cent, n=6, all of whom had a direct mandate). In contrast, opposition MPs were twice as likely to identify party as their primary focus as government MPs (25.6 percent, n=11, compared with 13.8 per cent, n=9). However, the most pronounced difference emerged with 40 per cent (n=26) of government MPs in the survey claiming the nation as their primary focus, while only 18.6 per cent (n=8) of opposition MPs identified this as the area they primarily represented. In other words, 72.3 per cent of respondents in the government coalition identified respectively with either of the two poles of constituency or nation identified by Burke. In contrast, only 32.6 per cent of opposition MPs had these areal foci as their primary representative orientation. Party and social stratum were far more pronounced as representational foci for opposition respondents (25.6 per cent, n=11, and 16.3 per cent, n=7, respectively). In part, this is a reflection of the fact that opposition MPs were drawn primarily from the lists and had only 48 constituency-based MPs. In part also, it is a reflection of the ideological diversity amongst opposition MPs—ranging from ‘old’ socialists to neoliberals. In contrast, the ruling parties in the 1990–94 parliament were more cohesive in their national orientation and their essentially conservative stance. In order to gauge the significance of representational foci for decision making in parliament, MPs were asked to rank in order of importance the impact of various foci upon their voting behaviour. Table 4, in contrast to the findings of many Anglo-American studies, reveals that conception of representational focus does appear to translate into decision cues in the legislature. The national interest, followed by constituency opinion, was identified as being of greatest importance in influencing legislators’ voting decisions in the Hungarian parliament. Areal foci clearly were of more


TABLE 4 VOTING CUES BY TYPE OF MANDATE In reaching a decision on a vote in parliament which of the following factors are the most important?

Note: On an eight-point scale, with ‘most important’ scored 1, and ‘least important’ scored 8.

significance than party allegiance, opinions of organized groups or the views of particular social strata. And this was so for all MPs, whether directly elected by a constituency or drawn from a party list. Indeed, the historical importance of the representation of ‘constituency’ in the transitional period, noted above, may account for the continued positive identification of MPs with this areal focus, irrespective of the source of their own electoral base. Style of Representation Of all the legislative roles identified by Wahlke et al., none has attracted more attention or replication than the stylistic dimension of the representational role.21 Representational style has variously been conceived as a dichotomy: delegate-trustee; a trichotomy: delegatepolitico-trustee; or a continuum: from delegate to trustee. However categorized, it remains true that the distinction between trustee and delegate remains ‘most fundamental’ to the theory of representation, and, equally, that neither is ‘adequate to explain representation in the modern Anglo-American tradition’.22 It remains fundamental in so far as successive studies have revealed that legislators themselves identify representational role as a meaningful concept.23 Representatives remain willing to conceive of their role in terms of a distinction between mandate and independence. The distinction has, therefore, a continuing conceptual utility. This does not mean, however, that representational practice corresponds closely to this conception. In a sense it cannot, for


each style encompasses a variety of ideas of how a representative should act in practice. Indeed, this point was made forcibly by Wahlke et al.24 but has often been forgotten in subsequent studies. Similarly, the delegate orientation involves a variety of conceptions of representation. Empirically, however, the delegate style is widely acknowledged to be largely untenable when separated from all but the most homogeneous of ‘constituencies’—whether functional, social or geographical.25 In failing to remember the complexity associated with the different styles of representational role, and in continuing to link style to focus in a simplistic manner, it is all too easy to stereotype responses and to argue that such conceptions are inappropriate guides to action, but they always were. Hence, the conception of the trustee advanced by Burke was a defence and legitimation, and not necessarily a description, of action.26 Representatives can thus identify respectively with a trustee or delegate orientation whilst pursuing practical strategies of decisionmaking seemingly at variance with their conceptual choice. This does not make conceptions of representation obsolete, but reveals more perhaps about the relatively unsophisticated manner in which these conceptions have been translated into research hypotheses. Bearing these analytical points in mind it is intriguing to find that the overwhelming majority of Hungarian respondents (86.3 per cent, n= 101) believed that their activity in parliament was driven by their own judgement of the national interest. Only 13.7 per cent (n=16) regarded themselves as bound by instructions from party or constituency, and there are no statistically significant differences when responses are analysed according to whether the electoral mandate is direct or indirect or according to party membership. Hence, these findings correspond to the orthodoxy of western studies that the trustee orientation is generally stronger and more pervasive than that of the delegate.27 However, such general orientations give no indication as to how powerful the holding of a trustee style is as a predictor of actual activity. When asked how important their ‘own conscience’ was in reaching a decision on a vote in parliament respondents scored ‘trusteeship’ above all the other factors identified above in Table 4. The mean score (on an eightpoint scale) for independent judgement was 1.81, with a standard deviation of 1.48. Thus ‘own conscience’ and the ‘national interest’ were deemed to be the most important factors influencing decision-making by individual representatives. Correspondingly, when conflict was identified with the party faction line, 90 per cent (n=103) of respondents claimed that their own conscience had been a very important consideration in prompting dissent. Hence, to test the strength of party allegiance, respondents were asked to estimate how frequently they voted against the party faction line (as a proportion of their total votes). The average estimate of dissent was on 12.


5 per cent of votes, but with significant variations around the mean. In a separate question MPs were also asked whether they regarded party discipline as binding. In reply, only nine per cent of respondents believed party discipline to be a ‘very important’ factor in determining their vote, while 38 per cent maintained that discipline was ‘of little importance’. On the occasions when MPs had dissented they were asked to weight the importance of a variety of influences upon their vote. Of the respondents 38 per cent (n=42) claimed that the opinion of their constituents had played a very important part, while 47 per cent (n=53) held political conviction to be ‘very important’ in determining a dissenting vote. This makes all the more striking, therefore, the finding (noted above) that 90 per cent of respondents claimed that their own conscience had been a very important consideration in prompting dissent from the faction line. However, in interpreting these findings it is important to bear in mind that there were several dimensions to voting in the 1990–94 Hungarian parliament. The first was that many bills were ‘practical laws’ or technical legislation and as such were accepted almost unanimously by the House. Secondly, some issues—such as the budget, welfare benefits and privatization—tended to produce a bipolar division between governing factions and opposition factions. Within these overall patterns, however, it should be noted that voting cohesion among opposition factions was often notably less pronounced than within the governing coalition.28 Conclusion The objectives of this study have been twofold. First, to describe the representative role orientations of members in the first democratically elected Hungarian parliament after 1990. This objective, though simple, has its own significance in discovering the extent to which Hungarian MPs have adopted role orientations similar to those found in AngloAmerican democracies. Clearly, ‘trustee’ styles were pronounced in the Hungarian legislature with a representative’s own conscience deemed to be of most importance in influencing voting decisions in the chamber. The fact that voting within the 1990–94 parliament was primarily along party lines, with average party cohesion at levels averaging 90 per cent in this period, seems to point to a disjunction between the perceptions and activity of representatives. While displaying high levels of voting cohesion, respondents none the less considered the opinion of their party faction generally to be of less importance than either ‘national interest’ or ‘constituency opinion’ in deciding their vote. In part, this reflected the weak development of formal faction ‘discipline’, with MPs not seeing their votes ‘bound’ to their respective leaderships.


Yet also in part, Hungarian representatives may very well have subscribed to the view that there was a close congruence between their own party faction’s policies and the national interest or particular constituency interests. However, the correspondence between party policies and popular opinion, as measured by opinion polls, reveals the distance between political elite and public perceptions of what is in the national interest. Increasingly the belief gained ground that parliament concerned itself excessively with ideological disputes, or that it spent too much time seeking redress for the sins of the Kádár regime, or, indeed, that its consideration of legislation was inadequate (with legislation on compensation and redress being declared unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court, and many other measures having to be significantly modified because of inadequate parliamentary drafting). One consequence was an increase in the level of public scepticism towards parliamentary activity, with the level of public confidence placed in parliament as an institution falling from 61 per cent in November 1989, through 50 per cent in February 1991, to 30 per cent in October 1993. In examining representational roles in Hungary some insight can thus be gained into the comparative utility of conceptions of representational role. This first attempt at measuring such roles in Hungary underscores the point that asking legislators what they think they do reveals different and often discordant answers concerning what they actually do in parliament. This does not make the conception of representative role redundant, but simply points instead to the need to examine the legitimatory and prescriptive purposes of representative theories alongside their descriptive potential. Hungarian parliamentarians obviously felt the need to espouse their independence of thought and to emphasize their own conscience in decision making, but equally they recognized the need for linkage with their constituency, where appropriate, and for the articulation of a national interest.29 The fact that these perceptions do not align themselves neatly along the two parallel continuums of trusteedelegate and nation-constituency points to the unrealistic model first articulated in the pioneering studies of representational roles. Predictably, perhaps, this study concludes therefore with a double call for greater clarification of representative roles and continued analysis of representative behaviour in the Hungarian parliament elected in May 1994. NOTES 1. H.Eulau, J.C.Wahlke, W.Buchanan and L.C.Ferguson, ‘The Role of the Representative: Some Empirical Observations on the Theory of Edmund Burke’, American Political Science Review, Vol. 53, No. 4 (1959), p. 742.


2. For an overview see M.Mezey, Comparative Legislatures (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1979); M.E.Jewell, ‘Legislator-Constituency Relations and the Representative Process’, Legislative Studies Quarterly, Vol. 8, No. 3 (1993), pp. 303–37; M.E. Jewell, ‘Legislators and Constituents in the Representative Process’, in G.Loewenberg, S.C.Patterson and M.E.Jewell, Handbook of Legislative Research (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985). 3. See H.Eulau, ‘Changing Views of Representation’, in H.Eulau and J.C.Wahlke, The Politics of Representation: Continuities in Theory and Research (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1978). 4. M.E.Jewell, Representation in Legislatures (Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 1982), p. 14. 5. D.N.Nelson and S.L.White (eds.), Communist Legislatures in Comparative Perspective (London: Macmillan, 1982). 6. A.Róna-Tas, ‘The Selected and the Elected: The Making of the new Parliamentary Elite in Hungary’, East European Politics and Society, Vol. 5, No. 3 (1991), pp. 362–3. 7. Zs. Kerekes, ‘VáIaszúton az Országgylés’, Medvetánc, Nos. 3–4 (1987), p. 132. 8. S.Kurtán, P.Sándor and L.Vass, Political Yearbook of Hungary (Budapest: Hungarian Centre for Democracy Studies, 1990), p. 449. 9. G.Ilonszki, ‘From Systemic Change to Consolidation: The Hungarian Legislature: An Institution in Search of Roles’, in L.D.Longley (ed.), Working Papers on Comparative Legislative Studies (Appleton, WI: Research Committee of Legislative Specialists, IPSA, 1994). 10. Gy. Szoboszlai, ‘Political Transformation and Constitutional Changes’, in Gy.Szoboszlai (ed.), Democracy and Political Transformation (Budapest: Hungarian Political Science Association, 1991), pp. 207–9; G.Ilonszki, ‘Traditions and Innovations in the Development of Parliamentary Government in Hungary’, Journal of Theoretical Politics, Vol. 5, No. 2 (1993), pp. 253–65. 11. See L.Szarvas in this collection. 12. On 1 December 1993, however, Gábor Fodor—one of the founders of the Young Democrats—resigned his seat after he left the Young Democrats (AYD) in parliament. This was the first occasion when a ‘defector’ left parliament as a result of a change in party allegiance. 13. See I.Hanyecz, and J.Perger, ‘A Magyar Parlament Tevékenysége Számokban’, in S.Kurtán, P.Sándor and L.Vass (eds.), Political Yearbook of Hungary (Budapest: Hungarian Centre for Democracy Studies, 1993), pp. 140–65. 14. The survey was conducted under the auspices of the Centre of Democracy Studies at the University of Economic Sciences, Budapest. A major problem in administering the survey (the first of its type at the time, as far as the authors know) was open suspicion on the part of MPs regarding the political purposes to which the results might be put. Despite assurances by the authors that the questionnaire was exclusively for the advancement of academic knowledge, a response rate of only 31 per cent was secured. Indeed, in view of MPs’ suspicions, and their unfamiliarity with the very


15.

16. 17. 18. 19.

20. 21.

22. 23. 24. 25. 26.

27. 28. 29.

idea of such an academic survey, it was decided not to send a follow-up survey and so risk the possibility of antagonizing MPs. E.Burke, ‘Speech to the Electors of Bristol’, in B.W.Hill (ed.), Edmund Burke on Government, Politics and Society (Glasgow: Fontana, 1975); J.C.Wahlke, H.Eulau, W. Buchanan and L.C.Ferguson, The Legislative System (New York: Wiley, 1962), p. 270. D.Judge, Backbench Specialisation in the House of Commons (London: Heinemann, 1981), pp. 32–4. Wahlke et al., op. cit., p. 271. Jewell, ‘Legislator-Constituency Links’, pp. 312–13. The question was phrased in this manner to take account of Hungarian society: ‘social stratum’ is a more exact and neutral term than ‘social class’, ethnicity is of considerable importance, and city or regional identification is pronounced. Three broad party groupings were identified: ‘government coalition’ (HDF, ISHP, CDPP), the ‘opposition’ (AFD, HSP, AYD) and ‘independents’. Wahlke et al., op. cit.; for overviews of the literature on representational role, see E.J. Alpert, ‘A Reconceptualization of Representational Role Theory’, Legislative Studies Quarterly, Vol. 4, No. 4 (1979), pp. 587–92; Mezey, op. cit., pp. 170–73; G.Loewenberg and S.C.Patterson, Comparing Legislatures (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1979), pp. 178–82; Jewell, Representation, pp. 95– 6; Jewell, ‘Legislators’, pp. 104–6. J.R.Pennock, ‘Political Representation: An Overview’, in J.R.Pennock and J.W. Chapman (eds.), Representation (New York: Atherton Press, 1968), p. 15. Jewell, ‘Legislator-Constituency Links’, p. 311. Wahlke et al., op. cit., p. 276. See Judge, Backbench Specialisation, pp. 33–4. See Pennock, op. cit., pp. 15–16; R.H.Davidson, The Role of the Congressman (New York: Pegasus, 1969), pp. 114–16; Judge, Backbench Specialisation, pp. 25–7. See Mezey, op. cit., pp. 171–3; Jewell, Representation in Legislatures, p. 120. See L.Szarvas in this volume. See D.Judge and G.Ilonszki, ‘Member-Constituency Linkages in the Hungarian Parliament’, Legislative Studies Quarterly, Vol. 30, No. 2 (1995; forthcoming).

Civil Society and Interest Representation in Hungarian Political Development TERRY COX and LÁSZLÓ VASS

During its first four years of parliamentary democracy Hungary has quickly developed many aspects of a stable functioning liberal democratic political system, and at the level of formal politics it can be argued that an effective system has begun to emerge. However, doubts remain over how deeply the new democratic institutions are rooted in Hungarian society more widely. Civil society is not yet firmly in place, although there are signs of the development of solid interest representation, particularly among disadvantaged groups, which may presage positive evolution of the democratic institutions of the formal political system. Developments in Civil Society before 1989 For the first two decades of communist party rule in Hungary, civil society was severely restricted to the realm of private life and was clearly separated from formal political activity. Economic activity was subordinated to central bureaucratic management, and consumption and collective social life came under the general regulation of the state. After 1968, however, the situation changed slightly as a result of various economic reforms. Within the state-managed economy a gradual trend took place towards more decentralized forms of decision-making, giving greater influence to enterprise managers in relation to ruling party and state officials. At the same time restrictions on small-scale private economic activity were gradually relaxed, leading to the development of what became known as the ‘second economy’. However, although the economic changes expanded the scope for civil contracts, they did relatively little to expand the scope for citizens to engage in political activity outside the confines of the party and the institutions under its control. As Szoboszlai has commented, in this period the ‘so-called second economy and an aborted civil society seemed to substitute for political society’.1 Nevertheless, compared with the period before the


TABLE 1 CIVIL ASSOCIATIONS IN HUNGARY 1932–89

1970s, there were significant developments in civil society. These lay first in a slight relaxation of restrictions on independent forms of association, and in the evolution of a peculiar form of interest reconciliation mechanism aimed at channelling social interests into the central decisionmaking process. As far as civil associations were concerned, at the beginning only local and non-political organizations were possible and there was strong pressure on them to affiliate with state organizations. Nevertheless, as shown in Table 1, there was a rapid growth of such associations and by 1970 there were more than 8,000 in existence. Thereafter, in the mid-1970s, there was a fall in numbers resulting from a rapid integration and reorganization of economic interest organizations in order to decrease fragmentation and increase their effectiveness. Also, during this period, the state umbrella organization, the Patriotic People’s Front, strengthened its own interest-representation functions and incorporated several previously unattached small groups into its structure. Even so, by 1989 the total returned to a level approaching that of 1970. While the number of associations was significantly less than during the 1930s, in terms of membership the figures for 1970–89 were comparable to those of the prewar period. As can be seen in Table 2, the vast majority of associations were concerned with sport, cultural pursuits and leisure activities. However, even among the groups in these categories there were growing signs of spontaneous and autonomous organization. In 1989 the 75 environmental associations, 105 student organizations and 198 sports fan clubs included in the ‘miscellaneous’ category, and the architectural protection groups Terry Cox is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Strathclyde. László Vass is Associate Professor in Political Sciences at the University of Economic Sciences, Budapest.

CIVIL SOCIETY AND INTEREST REPRESENTATION 155

TABLE 2 NUMBER AND TYPE OF ASSOCIATIONS IN 1989

For further details see L.Vass, ‘Europeanization and Interest Groups in the New Hungarian Political System’, Sudosteuropa, No. 5 (1993).

included among the 616 cultural associations, were all genuine civil groupings whose popularity presented problems for the authorities. In addition, in 1989 there were 161 associations concerned with economic and professional interest representation, with a total membership of 693, 000. At the time, this represented 1.9 per cent of all the registered interest groups. Apart from various organizations representing the professions, included among the economic interest groups were associations representing the self-employed and private employers. Following the nationalizations and the introduction of a command economy after 1948,


these groups of owners and entrepreneurs had either dissolved themselves or been disbanded by the authorities. At the same time, the interest representation of the co-operatives had become integrated into the new centrally controlled social order, and eventually co-operatives completely lost their independence. During this period the agricultural smallholders did not have any kind of representation, while the organizations of the artisans and retailers were required to work under close governmental and political control in order to coordinate the activities of their members with the system of the planned economy. However, by the late 1960s significant changes were beginning to take place in this field, and with the start of economic reform in Hungary the concept of interest reconciliation became more acceptable to the political leaders. A major lesson of 1956 for the ruling party had been they they needed to make compromises with the main groups in society. At this stage it was a hidden, silent form of ‘social contract’. ‘Kádár…provided constantly improving living standards in a relaxed ideological climate in return for acceptance of the legitimacy of the communist regime.’2 In the first development, based on a recognition of the peculiar and diverse interests of the agricultural co-operatives, the National Council of Co-operatives was launched in 1967. This was a quasi-independent organization vested with the right to represent the interests of its members, and as such it had no parallels in the rest of eastern Europe at the time. Thereafter, as the reforms brought about a strengthening of the professionalism of economic managers, and state enterprises became more independent, enterprise managers made every effort to manifest and represent their peculiar interests. As a result, the Hungarian Chamber of Commerce became a relatively independent representative of the interests of the state enterprise managements. This development was again unparalleled in the Comecon states. After the 1970s, the organizations of the artisans and retailers also gained a say in the economic decision-making processes. When the independent business ventures began to mushroom in 1980s, the representation of their interests fell to the already existing organizations. While this development threw the interest-representation bodies into a state of confusion, it also prompted the emergence of a relatively homogeneous group of small entrepreneurs under the umbrella of the Chamber of Commerce. The re-emergence of groups representing business and employer interests during this period was influenced by wider aspects of the context of Hungarian society in two main ways. First, the revival took place under the influence of Hungary’s pre-communist traditions and structures. Under the prevailing legal traditions, it was possible for two types of business interest groups to emerge in Hungary. The first was the chamber system, which followed German and French patterns. The chambers were official bodies defined under public law. They prescribed


compulsory membership, and their sphere of authority (administrative, licensing, etc.) was determined by the state. The structure and tasks of the chambers were patterned on the state’s decision-making mechanisms. The second type was represented by the associations, which organized themselves in a more autonomous way, functioned on the basis of voluntary membership, and were free to determine their own specific goals. In the period before 1945, the strong powers of the state had favoured the chamber type of interest representation in Hungary. However, the chambers had to pay a political price for this because, by involving them in policy discussions, the state also integrated them to some extent into its own structures. Secondly, when business interests surfaced again with the economic reforms of 1968, in addition to their inherited traditions they had to operate in the context of a much more centralized state and the absence of established democratic forms of interest representation. As a result they could appear only in distorted forms. Within the bounds of the ‘soft dictatorship’ the interest groups had no choice but to organize themselves into ‘non-autonomous’ entities. The state made every effort to control and ‘license’ the interest groups through the existing system of institutions, and primarily through organizational channels. In response, these groups used every available organizational form to articulate their interests, irrespective of whether these forms were fit for that purpose or not. A wealth and variety of interest groups representing the most diverse sections of the economy evolved under the umbrella of the large and ‘legal’ interest representations. This development contributed to the erosion of the state socialist system, but it also prevented the business and employers’ groups from developing themselves into democratic, wellorganized, efficient and stable organizations with appropriate ties to the government.3 Similar problems were faced in the pre-transition period by the trade unions. Although they enjoyed a clearer legal status and their role was officially recognized by the ruling party-state, their independence was also severely limited by the state. As elsewhere in eastern Europe, the unions formed virtually the welfare and personnel management arms of the administration of state enterprises. As Hughes has noted, under the old regime, ‘many managers were members of…[the old official trade union organization]…and participated in its activities to the extent of holding union office and chairing workplace committees’.4 Until 1988 the Hungarian trade union movement was organized into 19 federations dealing with different sectors of the economy. In 1988 these then broke up into more than 140 professional trade unions. Some unions remained within the successor organization to the old official movement, the National Confederation of Hungarian Trade Unions, while others joined smaller federations which were splinter organizations from the old


federation. There were also several newly formed unions which combined to form new federations, the largest of which was the Democratic League of Independent Trade Unions. Also in 1988, now that the unions and employers’ organizations were able to operate more independently, the government introduced new machinery as a means of coordinating their activities. This mechanism, the Interest Reconciliation Council (IRC), legitimized bargaining among the ruling party, its state bureaucracy, and the various social organizations whose rights to participate in the decision-making processes were laid down in laws and decrees. According to Kovács, the government decision to initiate tri-partite negotiations may be interpreted in different ways. The [one-party] state was forced more and more into a social dialogue, and it seemed easier with economic actors than with the political opposition. The continuously worsening economic situation also made the government want to draw all its social partners into the responsibility of decision making. However, as Kovács also points out, the role of interest-representation groups was also limited. ‘True, the government implemented selfimposed limitations, but the scope of the IRC was itself also limited to some local areas (minimum wage, wage tariffs, granting of exemption from wage regulation).’5 In general, the ruling elite’s main inclination was still to restrain the interest groups’ demands in order to prevent them from stretching the limits of the existing political system. In the short run, the relaxation of restrictions on the second economy and the state’s attempt to incorporate some forms of interest representation had seemed to be a stabilizing influence, distracting people from the kind of political opposition that was emerging in Poland. However, as time went on and the economic problems of the state sector grew, it became clear that gaining legitimacy through improving the consumer economy would not be sufficient to maintain the position of the ruling group. The decentralizing reforms within the state sector were creating increasing divisions of interests and outlook between different groups at all levels of society. First, as Szalai has described, there were increased differences between the political elite and the managers of state enterprises.6 Secondly, in creating a second economy the elite was creating a new long-term problem for itself in the form of a group of small entrepreneurs interested in expanding their commercial activities to a point where they might eventually become incompatible with the interests of the state sector. Gradually a more differentiated society was emerging ‘in which latent but distinct group interests could not find political expression, or benefit


from equitable interest adjudication by the powers that be’.7 By the late 1980s the problems of political control were becoming clear. Growing concerns regarding the feasibility of managing the country’s economy and governing its society resulted in an open struggle between various groups within the party elite. During the 1980s managers of large state enterprises—the so-called Red Barons — declared war on the government a number of times. State apparatus bureaucrats fought the party apparatus, reformers struggled with conservatives, and so on. Division within the party elite prepared the ground for the emergence of…an alliance between reform communists on the one hand, and organized forces of civil society on the other.8 Eventually, in the last years of the old regime, on the basis of the increase in informal group activity, independent civil organizations began to take on a more fully autonomous existence of their own, especially in the fields of student politics and environmental issues. In the mid-1980s various unofficial opposition groups were set up to campaign on these issues. For example, on environmental issues groups such as the Danube Circle and the Blues formed to protest at plans to block the Danube and build a dam for hydroelectric power at Nagymáros. In student politics various tendencies developed in the 1980s, some concerned with discussing alternative views on political and social issues, others, also in opposition to authority, on issues of the self-management of student hostels.9 To some extent such groups received support from, or even had overlapping membership with intellectual dissident groups. In the 1970s and 1980s there had been various dissident groups, mainly made up of students and intellectuals from the Budapest area. In themselves they exerted little influence on policy makers, although because they were drawn from the same social and educational backgrounds as people in decision-making positions in party and government, some of their ideas may have seeped into mainstream political discourse. Several of the dissident groups began on the critical Marxist Left but by the mid-1980s most had moved to left-liberal or radical views. Alongside them, mainly in the smaller towns and countryside, there also developed groupings with a more national-populist outlook. As Körösényi has noted,10 ‘the division of the Hungarian intelligentsia into “urbanist” and “populist” groups has an historical origin… These two tiny sub-cultures have deepseated roots and some continuity since the 1930s.’ By the late 1980s, as the restrictions on opposition political activity were increasingly relaxed, these groups moved from political discussion groups and the production of pamphlets to the formation of new political parties. The liberal


intelligentsia was largely behind the formation of the liberal Alliance of Free Democrats (AFD) while the populist professional groups formed the bedrock of the Hungarian Democratic Forum (HDF). Towards the end of the 1980s the then opposition groups and the reformists within the ruling Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party (HSWP) began to move closer to an agreement on the necessity of the regeneration of a pluralistic system of interest representation which would lead to the elimination of bureaucratically managed ‘state socialism’ and its monolithic political structure. The economic reforms since 1968 had brought forward the need for economic autonomy, and that in turn had made the conflicting social interests impossible to conceal. On an ideological level, the elite had to admit that the diverse demands and interests that manifested themselves within society could not be ignored. However, while their solution was to attempt to incorporate them, the reformists within the ruling party gradually won the argument that an eventual failure to incorporate social group interests in the decisionmaking processes would result not in the authorities’ failure to control the spontaneous social movements, but instead in the country’s loss of the dynamic force provided by these interests.11 In practice it was very difficult to secure agreement on this. The crucial issue was the right of association. Until 1989 the Hungarian Constitution had formally ensured unlimited rights of free association but in practice the ruling party controlled every action aimed at establishing new social organizations. Also, before the foundation of the HDF in 1987, there had not been any serious attempt to form independent organizations. Ideologically the ruling party rejected the concept of independent organizations, asserting that independence from the ‘state of the people’ was a meaningless idea. In practical terms, there was no official procedure to register independent organizations. Any new organization could exist only within the confines of an official umbrella organization. During the 1980s, and mainly in the second half of the decade, strong claims were made for a real right of free association and, in reponse, in the autumn of 1988, the government submitted to parliament its so-called ‘democracy package’, including a new law guaranteeing rights of free association. In parallel, the Ministry of Justice began the preparation of various proposals in co-operation with new opposition groups, and the government also introduced some interim regulations allowing new groups to register as non-political organizations. However, the procedures adopted made any registration a very slow procedure, depending ultimately on police inspection of the list of group members. Furthermore, during the preparation of a new permanent Law of Association, the ruling party apparatus tried to build in various obstacles: for example, requiring supervision of groups’ activities by


government ministries and rigorous financial controls. Finally the new law was passed in January 1989.12 In this way developments allowing the emergence of independent social groups preceded the formation of political parties which could emerge only after the 1989 ‘round-table’ agreement for a radical reform of Hungary’s political institutions in general. However, the participants in the round-table negotiations can themselves be traced back to informal groups that had begun to emerge in the preceding period. Along with the ruling party these groups and the emerging parties to which they gave rise formed two of the three ‘sides’ participating in the round-table discussions which led eventually to the change of regime. Thus, although the reforms of the late 1960s and 1970s did not lead directly to the promotion of a civil society and independent civil associations, they nevertheless began a process which in the long term developed into the transition to more pluralist forms of politics at the end of the 1980s, in which independent civil associations played a significant part. The Political Transition and Its Impact on Civil Society For many observers a major irony in the Hungarian political transition has been that, although civil movements and groups played an important role (along with the fracturing of the old elite) in bringing about Hungary’s uniquely peaceful negotiated transition, they have been revealed as relatively weak in the new context of democratic parliamentary politics. Various reasons have been offered for this. First, for Mate Szabó, Hungarian movements of the 1980s were comparable to the ‘new social movements’ of the West in that they were concerned with ‘post-material and post-industrial issues which built up loosely organized networks in Hungary’. In relation to the state, however, the Hungarian movements were subject to greater pressure than their western counterparts and therefore were more transient and less secure. Forced to take on an oppositional character in relation to the pre1989 state, ‘their very identity, existence and strategic-ideological character was rooted in the “ancien regime”. The political change of regime redefined the conditions of existence of all social movements and not all survived the changes.’ Comparing the fate of the environmental and youth movements in the transition, Szabó argues that the different outcomes experienced by the two illustrate two different reasons why such movements found it hard to remain effective in the new political environment. On the one hand the environmental movement lost its focus after a drain of support as its activists moved to join new political parties, all of whom were sympathetic to the Nagymaros dam issue. On the other hand the youth and student movement was more successful at


surviving, but only because its central focus ceased to be as a youth movement as it transformed into the Young Democrats political party.13 The peculiar feature of the role of social movements in Hungarian politics, according to Szabó, was that all types of mass mobilisation were led and controlled by the old and the new elites, and the non-conventional political activity of the masses had a really marginal importance in the whole of this process. This means that the relevance of social movement activity was more or less a sign of the crisis of the old system, but not an active force in the building up of the new one. The fate of different movements was different depending on their ability to cope with opportunities for mobilizing on their particular issue and their capacity to mobilize resources. Collapse of the old administrativebureaucratic structure only led to the replacement of one kind of constraint (direct political control) by another stemming from ‘free competition on the basis of the resource mobilizing capacities and of the political opportunity structure’.14 Secondly, a different focus is offered by Tökés, who argues that, as the negotiated transition proceeded, the opposition round-table participants came less to resemble informal civil groups and more to assume the role of a new ruling group-in-waiting. As Tökés has noted, the change of regime should be understood mainly as a process of elite replacement where the above-mentioned groups drawn from professional and intelligentsia circles moved into elite positions to join or replace the party and state elites. This meant that neither of the two main ‘sides’ was interested in a major role for the ‘third side’ representing trade unions and other groups consisting of ‘representatives of the old regime’s transmission belt organizations’. The result was that they also excluded non-intelligentsia and non-elite sections of the population in general. According to Tökés, ‘their decision to deny the trade unions the right to form a political party… though eliminating a dangerous political competitor, left the man in the street without an effective representative in the new parliament’.15 As a result, for Tökés, there has been a general problem since the change of regime of a growing gap between the parties in parliament and the interests in society. This is threatening the cohesion of party organizations: ‘The mushrooming of new platforms, single issue groups and regional caucuses may be seen as healthy signs of intra-party pluralism, but also of fragmentation.’16 The arguments of Szabó and Tökés seem to suggest a similarly pessimistic conclusion concerning the vitality of Hungarian civil society. This view is confirmed by other writers. In a survey of a wide range of discussions of the new political systems in Hungary and


elsewhere in Central Europe, Körösényi has noted a common theme running through much of this work: Most of these concepts emphasize the ambiguous character and the instability of the emerging party system. They point out the peculiar trait of Post-Communist societies, that since civil society was destroyed by the communist regime, there are only a few weak civil associations, unions, interest organization and autonomous communities. Therefore the emerging party system does not have strong roots in civil society.17 Furthermore, for many observers it is ironical that until 1989 there were signs of growing popular political activity and the emergence of various social movements and interest groups, but, with the establishment of a parliamentary structure and the foundations of new political parties geared to competitive elections to the new parliament, many well-known movement and group activists turned their support and energies to working for the parties and in some cases taking on new responsibilities in government or as MPs. There is, therefore, an impression that, in addition to the effects of communist rule, the result of the transition itself has been a further weakening of the prospects for the development of civil society. Drawing on various discussions in the Hungarian press, Bozóki has summed up the feelings of many civil movement activists concerning the effects of the growth of party politics on civil society: A new pluralistic political elite has developed after the [1990] elections. The civil movements have increasingly identified themselves as parties and have become political organizations working like a factory in a hierarchical structure. The remaining representatives of ‘civil society’, an essential concept of opposition in the eighties, or those who were left outside the parties felt that civil society had been ‘robbed’, its values looted by the process of rapid party formation.18 A similar picture is presented in local politics by Navracsics. He argues that despite new legislation in 1990 to democratize local government, so far this has not created conditions either for the effective representation of local interests at national level or for interest groups to operate effectively at local level. First, he suggests, since local governments still tend to be financed to a large extent from central government subsidies, interest groups have to focus on decision making at national level in order to have any influence. Secondly, because local party organizations are mainly controlled from the centre there is little scope for local parties


to interconnect with interest groups at local level. Finally, although there have been attempts by local authorities to set up mechanisms through which they can represent local interests, these ventures have not achieved much success so far. The main problem is that such organizations are divided amongst themselves (there are eight main federations of local authorities at the moment) and there is no central organization to coordinate their efforts.19 In addition to the above-mentioned constraints of a structural nature, a further important factor which limited the possibilities for the emergence of effective interest representation was the attitude of the new HDF-led government elected in 1990. Ágh has described their outlook as ‘based on the absolute priority of the national interests represented by the government itself… In this paternalistic state model there has been no place for organized interests.’20 Civil Society and Interest Representation in the 1990s While there is clear evidence, therefore, of powerful constraints on the development of effective interest-representation mechanisms in presentday Hungarian society, there are also signs of greater vitality than might be expected from the points discussed above. This section offers a review of some of the main developments at contrasting ends of the range of groups making up Hungarian civil society. On the one hand we examine civil associations as examples of groups with few direct links to formal politics, and on the other hand, organizations representing economic interests such as trade unions and employers’ associations which need close links with the formal political structure in order to pursue their ends. The Representation of Economic Interests In spite of the government’s antipathy to interest groups, a succession of events forced them to concede ground and allow a formal mechanism of interest representation gradually to emerge. The first episode occurred within months of the government’s election when taxi drivers and other transport workers went on strike and held dramatic street demonstrations to protest against the government’s decision to raise fuel prices drastically in October 1990. It quickly attracted wide support and the government had to back down from its first reaction to threaten force against the movement, withdraw the price increases and agree to activate the national Interest Reconciliation Council which they had hitherto shown signs of ignoring.21 After the 1990 elections the new government had introduced temporary regulations governing the IRC, but because they would not


accept the trade unions as legitimate partners it was impossible for it to operate effectively. Then after the taxi and lorry drivers’ demonstrations the government started to pay more attention to the IRC and to finalize new regulations governing its role and composition. This job took oneand-a-half years of discussion before the government overcame its reservations towards trade unions and the uncertainty of employers’ organizations. Thereafter, following initial reluctance, the government agreed to conclude a pact, initially with nine employers groups and seven unions22 within the Interest Reconciliation Council in November 1992. After much debate, legislation on trade unions followed in February 1993, leading to elections, first to determine the way the property of the old union movement should be distributed among the new federations, then for seats on the council which administers the social security system and on works councils in May and June 1993. As Ágh has noted, these elections ‘have legitimised the whole meso-system of organized interests’ in Hungary.23 However, although the context became more conducive to interest representation at the political level, both unions and employers have continued to face structural problems that have inhibited their effectiveness as interest-representation organizations. I. The Trade Unions Currently there are about 360 independent trade unions registered in Hungary.24 They represent a range of different political outlooks and have varying backgrounds and relations to the old trade union movement, and, reflecting these differences, are organized into the following eight trade union confederations; the first six are members of the government organized Interest Reconciliation Council: (a) The successor organization of the ‘old’ state socialist union confederation (1) National Confederation of Hungarian Trade Unions (NCHTU) Founded on 4 March 1990, this is the largest confederation, established by 20 regional and about 100 professional trade unions, and is social-democratic in ideology and affiliation. (b) New confederations founded by ‘old’ unions (2) Confederation of Autonomous Trade Unions (CATU) This was founded on 10 April 1991 by 11 unions, the largest of which is the Trade Union of Chemical Workers. Also represented are


the unions of transport and commercial workers. In terms of ideology it is social-democratic in outlook. (3) Confederation of Unions of Professional Workers (CUPW) Founded on 20 September 1990 by seven ‘old’ unions from the fields of higher education and scientific research, it is generally neutral and non-partisan in terms of political affiliation. (4) Forum of Trade Union Cooperation (FTUC) Founded on 8 June 1990 by 19 unions representing public employees, it is neutral and non-partisan in terms of political affiliation. (c) New confederations founded by ‘new’ trade unions (5) Democratic League of Independent Trade Unions (The League) Founded on 19 December 1988 as a broad-based confederation with nearly 200 member organizations, it has no links with unions under the old regime and is liberal in ideology and political outlook. (6) National Confederation of Workers’ Councils (NCWC) This was founded on 14 July 1990, by 15 regional and four professional unions. It is based on the model of the Workers’ Councils of the 1956 Revolution and, after an initial period when it contained very different political wings, it now has a generally Christian outlook. (7) Solidarity Workers’ Alliance (SWA) This was founded in 25 February 1989 by 12 newly formed local unions as a radical representative of the workers general interests. Initially it co-operated with the other confederations, but since then it has become a rather marginal and extremist political organization with a nationalistic-populist approach, and has withdrawn from the process of interest reconciliation. (8) National Alliance of Christian Social Trade Unions (ChSTU) The youngest confederation, it was established in the spring of 1993 by ‘new’ trade unions. The prime aim of its founders, who are closely associated with the governing coalition’s ideology, was to set up an organization whereby they could increase the influence of national-Christian thought on the trade union movement and the interest-reconciliation process, although so far it has not done so through the formal channels of the Reconciliation Council.25 A number of problems confront the trade union movement as a whole in its role of representing the interests of workers and employees. Some arise from the partial breakdown of the old trade union infrastructure following the fall of the old regime and the break-up of the old official trade union movement. For example, the elimination of the old union


structures has wiped out research and support institutions which are indispensable for the operation of a successful and efficient system of interest representation. However, recent months have witnessed favourable developments in this field, thanks primarily to the help of the western trade unions and the German Friedrich Ebert Stiftung. Alongside the infrastructure inherited by NCHTU, a new institution was established by the Autonomous Unions. Their Research and Training Centre holds the country’s leading trade union data base, maintaining direct electronic contact with the other European trade union data bases. The Workers’ Councils are also about to set up a trade union research centre with the help of the Swiss Christian unions. More intractable problems arise, however, from the fragmentation of the union movement and competition between different trade union confederations. A major line of division is between the successor organizations to the trade union movement of the old regime, which had become integrated into the government and relinquished their independence, and the organizations that were newly formed by opposition tendencies during or since the change of regime. The leading representative of the newly formed organizations, the League, has always emphasized its independence and democratic nature, in contrast to the ‘old’ state socialist formations, and has been especially critical of the leaders of these ‘old’ trade unions, on the ground that they were members of the party-state’s nomenklatura. Over the past four years the League has waged an active propaganda war against the ‘successor trade unions’. Similar to the League, the National Confederation of Workers’ Councils is also free from connections with the old regime. Ever since its establishment, the Confederation has emphasized its anti-communist stance, its commitment to the national values, and its roots in the Workers’ Councils of the 1956 revolution. The process of institutionalization, and especially the influence of the domestic structure of interest reconciliation and of the international trade union movement, has brought the organizational structure of the Workers’ Councils closer to that of the other trade union confederations. By 1993, their original stance, peculiarly national and democratic, had become replaced by a distinctly Christian orientation. Besides this ideological shift, the Workers’ Councils also had to redefine their relationship with the government coalition in parliament, because their leader was also a parliamentary deputy of the HDF, and this created recurrent tensions. To begin with, in the face of attacks not only from the two new confederations but also by those ‘old’ trade unions which have set up new neutral organizations, the main successor organization, the National Confederation, faced a considerable challenge to its legitimacy. It was attacked, especially by the League, for using coercion and for


TABLE 3 RESULTS OF ELECTIONS TO THE SELF-GOVERNING SOCIAL SECURITY ORGANIZATIONS

(Turnout 38.62 per cent)

perpetuating closed-shop agreements with its management allies from the old days in order to retain its high levels of membership. The League also gained credibility by its prominent role in finding a resolution to the taxi drivers’ strike.26 In general, however, the new trade unions have not been able to sustain their challenge to the legitimacy and past record of all the ‘old’ unions. The new unions have proved unable to become genuine mass movements or to win over the bulk of the ‘old’ unions’


TABLE 4 RESULTS OF ELECTIONS FOR WORKPLACE COUNCILS (PER CENT)

members. Moreover, as shown in Tables 3 and 4, in the various elections mentioned above the NCHTU was a convincing winner. The electoral victories of the National Confederation, along with growing experience of inter-union co-operation on the Interest Reconciliation Council, have tended to bring about a greater cohesion in the union movement over the past year. Although inter-union competition still occurs the unions are now much less fragmented in their approach than their counterparts in the employers’ associations. II. The Employers’ Groups Following the revival of business and employers’ organizations in the late 1980s there has been a further proliferation of new groups in the early 1990s. By 1992 the combined figure for economic and employers’ interest groups and economic development associations was 656, and there were also 298 professional chambers and federations. Taken together, these 954 organizations represented 15.7 per cent of all interest groups. These bodies, nearly 1,000 in number, now serve to fill the following roles: (1) to promote economic, business and professional activities; (2) to represent professional interests and also those of the employers; and (3) to function as professional authorities (chambers). However, despite their impressive growth, the employers’ and business groups face several problems in establishing effective and coherent forms of interest representation. One of the most important characteristics of the present situation is that the employers’, business and professional organizations have not yet been able to define themselves clearly. They have major organizational disorders to cope with, and the conditions for


their operation are not settled yet. A spectacular example of this problem is provided by the 50 chambers, which exist and function simultaneously, and which include genuine chambers as well as professional federations, social organizations and even cultural associations. Their efficiency is radically weakened by their fragmented state, which can be accounted for by a combination of historical, functional and political factors. However, as with the trade unions, the requirement of participating in the Interest Reconciliation Council has had some effect on the consolidation of the movement. There are nine organizations representing the employers’ interests: (1) National Federation of General Consumer Co-operatives (NFCC); (2) National Association of Industrial Corporations (NAIC); (3) Hungarian Chamber of Agriculture (HChA); (4) Federation of Hungarian Industrialists (FHI); (5) Hungarian Industrial Association (HIA); (6) Hungarian Chamber of Traders and Caterers (HChTC); (7) National Federation of Agricultural Co-operators and Producers (NFA); (8) National Association of Employers (NAE); (9) National Association of Entrepreneurs (NAEN) The history and current problems of these nine organizations reflect the problems and contradictions that mark the activity of all the other similar organizations today. Some of these problems are discussed below. (i) Preservation or transformation?

A major problem for many business associations in defining themselves and their relations with other organizations and the government is that they have inherited a mixture of role and characteristics from the pretransition period and not all of these are compatible in current conditions. The majority of the organizations (six of the nine listed above) had predecessors in the state socialist era and only three can be considered ‘absolutely free’ from any kind of ‘communist influence’. These are the Hungarian Chamber of Agriculture, the Federation of Hungarian Industrialists, and the National Association of Entrepreneurs. The ‘old’ organizations went through radical changes in the years between 1989 and 1991. They all approved new statutes, installed new leaders, and defined new goals. Initially, the public was slightly wary of them, but by now this lingering cloud of distrust has by and large evaporated. These organizations, having broken free from political subjection, have been making every effort to emphasize their non-political nature, and also to furnish guarantees to that effect. They


are strongly opposed to even the mildest attempt by either the government or the governing parties to exert political influence on them. They focus their attention on economic policy and other professional issues, and in general they tend to ignore the problems of interest reconciliation on labour issues. Their involvement in the work of the Interest Reconciliation Council is a matter of prestige for them, but even in economic policy debates in the Council they tend to confront not so much the employees’ representatives as the government. Probably the most important player in the field of business interest representation is the Hungarian Chamber of Commerce (HCC). Since the mid-1980s, interest representation has become a major part of the HCC’s profile. Indicative of the influence of the HCC is the fact that in those years it functioned as the sole representative of the Hungarian employers at the International Labour Organization (ILO), and that it played a key role in the drafting of the Interest Reconciliation Council’s statutes. The HCC incorporates 16 regional chambers, 46 professional associations, and four associated professional organizations. Through the professional associations, the HCC represents some 5,000 companies, which employ around half of Hungary’s total active workforce. In the wake of the change of system the HCC found itself confronted with the need to set its chamber-like activities apart from the functions of interest representation. In its capacity as a chamber, it came under increasing pressure from the government to yield to its control. However, in the absence of clear-cut legal regulations, in its capacity as an organ of interest representation, it could not but reject these attempts. The HCC considered it equally important to develop its structures and activities as a ‘chamber’ and also as a representative of the employers interests, and so, when the government announced its draft bill on economic chambers, the HCC’s members set up a new ‘associated’ organization, the National Association of Employers (NAE), specifically for the purpose of representing the interests of the employers on the Interest Reconciliation Council. A different approach to the problem of adapting to the new situation has been taken by another ‘old’ business group. The National Federation of Agricultural Co-operators and Producers (NFA) is the successor of the representative of the agricultural co-operatives under the old regime. The NFA’s predecessor gained distinction in the 1970s and 1980s in making agriculture the ‘success story’ of socialist Hungary’s economy. The political influence of this interest-representation body was so significant that in the late 1980s some analysts described it as a kind of ‘peasant party’. It was no accident that this organization eventually became the target of the fiercest political attacks. Today, the NFA openly undertakes to represent the interests of its members and it defines itself as an interestrepresentation body and not as a chamber. In this sense, the NFA has


taken a lead on the HCC, which is still bogged down in defining its profile as a chamber. A different path again has been taken by two of the new employers’ organizations, the National Association of Entrepreneurs (NAEN) and the Federation of Hungarian Industrialists (FHI). Both the NAEN and the FHI assume clear-cut interest representation functions. They are critical of the chamber-like organizations on the grounds that the latter maintain close ties to the government. For a brief while, the FHI’s president was also member of the HDF Presidium when it was in power, but this did not result in the government gaining a controlling influence over the FHI. Nevertheless the FHI seeks to maintain relatively close ties with the government because it considers its priority task is to speed up the privatization process and to strengthen the role of private capital, and in these fields the government has the final say. Characteristic of the new employers’ interest representations is that they have clear-cut objectives and organizational structures, and so, unlike the older groups, they do not have so much trouble with a confusion of identity and functions. At the same time, their role is relatively smaller in the interest-reconciliation process. Chambers, Associations or Both? A major issue concerning the effectiveness of business and employers’ groups and their relationship with the government is the question of how to resolve the confusion some groups are experiencing between their roles as business chambers and as interest-representation groups. In order to regulate the operational conditions for interest representation, new legislation was passed by parliament in the spring of 1994. The legislators started from the premise that, under the law on associations passed in 1988, numerous interest-representation groups had emerged in Hungary, but the structural and functional disorders of these groups presented a major obstacle to the development of the whole sphere of economic interest representation. In 1989 and 1990 the old interest groups finally shook off the state’s repressive hold, but their renewal entailed chaotic developments in their organizational system. The law on chambers has the potential to settle these problems, and to speed up the evolution of a modern and democratic system of economic interest representation. Although there may be opposition from some business groups, the government’s intention was that the law would promote the integration of the chamber organizations and thereby pave the way towards a clearer understanding of how interest representation should really function. Under the law, the term ‘chamber’ will regain its original, registered meaning after 1995, and from then on the chambers will have to accept the established definition of their role. The legislators’


ultimate aim was to see the emergence of three chamber systems: those of agriculture, of commerce and industry, and of the artisans. Parliament’s legislative efforts have not been accepted without reservations by the business interest groups. The effects of the newly approved chamber law on the structure of the employers’ interest representations is unpredictable as yet. Meanwhile, the fact remains that the employers’ side of the Interest Reconciliation Council is bound to be transformed, as the law entitles the interest-representation groups to become directly involved in the interest-reconciliation process, while the chambers’ role is limited to organizing the employers’ side and delegating officials. The expectation that significant changes are ahead in the sphere of the employers’ interest representation is supported by the fact that, in the wake of the approval of the chamber law, the largest stateowned companies have launched an initiative to organize a new chamber. Behind this initiative was the HDF government’s intention to exploit the situation before the new law entered into force, and to organize a strong chamber in order to increase its influence on the employers’ organizations. Civil Associations According to the Hungarian Central Statistical office there were in total 19,950 non-profit associations registered in August 1992. Most of them had been established after the 1989 law on the right of association allowing the existence of autonomous groups. Unfortunately little is known so far about their membership or whether many of them have an active existence in addition to a formal registration. Also, the records do not reveal how many ‘old’ associations have survived from the communist period. More detail is provided on 6,066 associations in the emerging civil sphere in the Register of Associations published in October 1992.27 The register classifies associations according to the categories shown in Table 5. Table 5,28 which covers about one-third of all the country’s associations, reveals the existence of groups covering a wide range of activities and interests, including economic interest-representation groups, traditionalist and patriotic circles, youth organizations, artists’ associations and legal aid groups. Although the 6,066 associations included in the register are not a representative sample, the method of compilation makes it likely that only active associations have been included and that those missing are mostly small and local ones. The breakdown of the 6,066 associations reflects developments pointing in different directions in terms of social outlook. On the one hand, a number of associations seems to be turning towards the historical past and the national traditions. At the same time, the proportion of the interest-


TABLE 5 CIVIL ASSOCIATIONS IN HUNGARY IN 1992

representation groups and legal aid bodies is also relatively large, suggesting a more contemporary orientation. More research is needed on the growth of civil associations in Hungarian society but tentative evidence suggests many of them are small and very localized, and in many cases they are not part of any developed networks, even at a local or regional level. It seems unlikely therefore that they are part of any effective mechanisms of interest representation, or that they can have much influence on decision-making. However, the fact that most registered associations have been set up since 1989 provided evidence of a public that began to exercise its democratic rights immediately after its autocratic government began to lose power, and suggests considerable dynamism in the civil sphere.


Conclusion From our review of some of the main developments over the past four years, we would conclude that the situation of Hungarian civil society, and the possibilities for effective links between it and the more formal political structures, are complex and somewhat contradictory. First, in the face of some commonly held assumptions, there is evidence of a highly active civil society where large numbers of autonomous voluntary associations have been formed in the past few years, catering for a wide range of activities. On the other hand these groups seem to be mainly very small and localized in their activities. Even at the more formal level of groups linked with local government issues, the networks of such groups seem rather fragmented and their links to government and parliament very weak. Among the more purely voluntary associations there is little evidence so far of many effective links at all. Secondly, in relation to groups whose central aims include interest representation and influencing policy, there is evidence that they have succeeded to some extent in overcoming the HDF-led government’s reluctance to set up mechanisms to enable them to pursue their activities. They have also diminished some of the structural constraints arising from characteristics inherited from their role in the old political system and from the confusion of the transition period. On the other hand, in the case both of unions and business associations, their effectiveness remains limited by the fragmentation of their movements and rivalries among particular organizations, and also by continuing debate about the appropriate roles and organizational structures that different organizations should adopt. Thirdly, during the first four years of the multiparty system the overpoliticized character of the public and (to some extent) private spheres hindered the development of civil organizations. As noted above, the activists and leaders of civil groups became involved in party politics. In that situation, where parties have access to power and the civil groups are weak, such ‘overlapping’ of personnel contributes more to party influence on civil society than to influence on macro-politics by civil organizations. The questions remains, however, what the main trend will be in the future. The implication of some of the arguments discussed above was that the constraints on Hungarian civil society were more than contingent factors connected with government policies and interorganizational competition, but were inherent in the structure of Hungarian society. A possible inference, for example, from the discussions offered by Szabó, Tökés or Körösényi was that there is an embedded tendency towards centralism and a strong elite in Hungarian society which will limit the possibilities of establishing strong links


between civil associations and formal politics and will constrain the effectiveness of interest-representation organizations. From our research so far, we would doubt the validity of such inferences. Our objections to the idea of an inherently elite dominated and undeveloped civil society in Hungary follow a similar line of reasoning to the objections stated by Keane to the ideas of theorists such as Giddens and Giner that civil society was necessarily weak and the distinction between state and civil society had been eroded in western Europe. Keane summarizes a composite argument drawn from several authors: (1) civil society was independent of the state only in the earlier ‘liberal’ phase of modernity: in the current world boundaries between public and private, state and civil society have been dissolved; (2) welfare state agencies intervene in personal and family life and redefine it while private companies are regulated by the state; (3) trends towards corporatism erode divisions between state and civil society. He then puts the case against such arguments. First, he suggests, such arguments overlook the effects of the restructuring of capitalism in recent years which has led to a reversal of post-war ‘state organised processes of decommodification’ and a crisis of employment, and which ‘challenges the assumed “naturalness” of the separation of household and labour market and prompts consideration of the production and socializing potential of civil organizations situated between these two domains’. Secondly, the assumed trends towards the pervasive regulatory state have been challenged in increasingly bitter disputes over the future of the welfare state in the face of neo-conservative critiques of the inefficiency of public bureaucracy and the superiority of market. Thirdly, the growth of new social movements which are often very informal and suspicious not only of state but also old-style trade union and left party organizations, has provided a challenge to ‘the dominant codes of everyday life’. Thus, the persistence of (ailing) representative mechanisms, the concrete possibilities of legally established independent associations and movements, and the ongoing tensions between capitalist and state bureaucracies…ensure that these systems do not converge with their Soviet-type counterparts. Western European civil societies are threatened constantly by the activities of states and private corporations, yet they survive, and even display a remarkable capacity to deepen and extend their reach. Under


western European conditions…social fermentation does not have to begin anew, as it does under totalitarian regimes.29 Similar arguments can be applied in favour of the distinctiveness of the current situation in Hungary and the reality of its civil society in the face of arguments that it has remained undeveloped. First there is the question of the impact of marketization and privatization. Although we would suggest that there remains an important degree of continuity in the basic patterns and principles on which Hungarian economic life is organized, and the old elite has retained a significant influence over public affairs, partly by transforming itself into an emergent private ownership class;30 has been a significant degree of ‘re-commodification’ from which we should expect similar results to those suggested by Keane for the West. In turn this has already had consequences for employment patterns and the incidence of unemployment, and graver consequences are predicted. Secondly, Hungary is undergoing partial dismantling of welfare state institutions with the decline of enterprise provision of social and consumer services and restitution of property affecting schools and children’s homes, and in general local authorities are facing difficulties in providing sufficient cover. Moreover, we can see in general terms both preconditions for, and some evidence of, the self-sustaining quality of civil society mentioned by Keane which distinguishes liberal democratic forms of polity from party dictatorship of the classic model of state-managed societies. The imposition of the classic Soviet model in eastern Europe marked an almost successful attempt to suppress civil society. The result was a different form of politics where civil society went underground and was no longer self-sustaining. Kádár’s reforms, the Prague spring and perestroika, in different ways marked attempts to revive aspects of civil society within the framework of state-managed society, seeking a revised role for the party in economic regulation, political rule or both. Post-1989 developments, however, marked the abandonment of such attempts and the creation of conditions for the re-emergence of civil society. This is not necessarily to argue that a transition to capitalism has fully occurred or is even likely. Nevertheless the current situation is radically different from the old Soviet-type model or even the reformed version of the 1980s. In terms of the conditions that made the West different from the East, according to Keane, there are now in Hungary: (1) (ailing or adolescent?) representative mechanisms; (2) the concrete possibilities of legally established independent associations and movements; and (3) continuing tensions between state and private bureaucracies operating with different forms of property ownership and different


mixes of administrative and commercial criteria on which their management decisions are based. Although this is not necessarily the same as capitalism it does at least go part of the way towards ‘ensuring that this system does not converge with its Soviet-type predecessor’, and it may also provide sufficient opportunity for groups representing civil society to establish some resilience in the face of either hostile governments in the future, or any tendencies towards elitism inherent in the social structure. NOTES 1. G.Szoboszlai, ‘Political Transition and Constitutional Changes’, in G.Szoboszlai (ed.), Democracy and Political Transformation: Theories of EastCentral European Realities (Budapest: Hungarian Political Science Association, 1991), pp. 196–7. 2. G.Swain and N.Swain, Eastern Europe since 1945 (London: Macmillan, 1993), p. 196. 3. Adding to the confusion that prevailed in this field was the fact that the various groups could not be openly identified by their appropriate name: there were associations that called themselves chambers, while the chambers were functioning as if they were associations. The professional federations of the day brought together a hodge-podge of chambers, associations and companies. 4. S.Hughes, ‘Living With the Past: Trade Unionism in Hungary Since Political Pluralism’, Industrial Relations Journal, Vol. 23, No. 4 (1992), p. 295. 5. G.Kovács, ‘Employers’ Organizations in Hungary and Their Co-operation’, Budapest Papers on Democratic Transition, No. 80 (1994), p. 4. 6. See the contribution by Szalai in this collection. 7. Csaba Gombár quoted by R.Tökés, ‘Hungary’s New Political Elites’, in Szoboszlai (ed.), op. cit., p. 240. 8. L.Bruszt, ‘1989: The Negotiated Revolution of Hungary’, in Szoboszlai (ed.), op. cit., pp. 224–5. 9. See M. Szabó, ‘Changing Patterns of Mobilization in Hungary Within New Social Movements’, in Szoboszlai (ed.), op. cit., pp. 314–18; on environmental groups, see also Hajba’s contribution (below). 10. A.Körösényi, ‘Revival of the Past or New Beginning? The Nature of PostCommunist Politics’, in Szoboszlai (ed.), op. cit., p. 171. 11. Péter Sándor: A magyarországi egyesületek rendszere és néhány hazai érdekképviseleti szerv (The System of Hungary’s Associations, and Some of This Country’s Interest Representation Bodies) (Budapest: Institute of Social Sciences of the Central Committee of the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party, March 1982), p.16. 12. Law II 1989, the Law on the Right of Association. 13. M.Szabó, ‘Changing Patterns of Mobilization in Hungary Within New Social Movements’, in Szoboszlai (ed.), op. cit., pp. 310–11.


14. 15. 16. 17.

18.

19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27.

28. 29. 30.

Ibid., pp. 313–14, 319. Tökés, op. cit., p. 254. Ibid., p. 262. A.Körösényi, ‘Stable or Fragile Democracy? Political Cleavages and Party System in Hungary’, in G.Szoboszlai (ed.), Flying Blind: Emerging Democracies in East Central Europe (Budapest: Hungarian Political Science Association, 1992), p. 349. A.Bozóki, ‘Democrats Against Democracy? Civil Protest in Hungary Since 1990’ (paper presented to the Annual Conference of the British Sociological Association, Canterbury, April 1992), p. 3. T.Navracsics, ‘Local Governments and Interest Representation’, Budapest Papers on Democratic Transition, No. 73 (1993). A.Ágh, ‘After Four Years: The General Situation in Hungary in 1994’, Budapest Papers on Democratic Transition, No. 88 (1994), p. 15. For a detailed discussion see Bozóki, op. cit. As noted below, one union, the Solidarity Workers’ Alliance, subsequently withdrew from the IRC. Ágh, op. cit., p.16. The actual number of the trade unions may be slightly higher than that, since there have been regular attempts to form new unions recently. During our research so far we have failed to locate this organization or to find out details of its membership or support. See Hughes, op. cit. This volume was compiled and edited by a team of experts on non-profit organizations, who worked under the auspices of the Budapest-based Economic Research PLC. The team drew on the database of the Central Statistical Office and the registers of the courts, but the bulk of the research was conducted directly by themselves. Missing from the list are trade unions and political parties. J.Keane, ‘Introduction’, in J.Keane (ed.), Civil Society and the State (London: Verso, 1988), pp. 5–12. See E.Szalai’s contribution in this collection.

180

The Rise and Fall of the Hungarian Greens ÉVA HAJBA

Environmental politics was an issue in Hungary even before the collapse of communist rule, and some of the leaders went on to become active in post-communist politics. Yet this concern has not been reflected in the legislative output of parliament. ‘Green’ issues were adopted by all parties, and the green movement splintered, thereby reducing its impact, particularly in conditions of economic distress. Competition with the advanced capitalist countries may further erode the political impact of environmental issues in the striving for economic advantage. Before the political changes of 1989 there were a number of environmental pressure groups in Hungary that were committed to the introduction of ‘greener’ policies. Although some of the key individuals from the ‘green’ movement went on to become active in mainstream political parties after 1989, this concern with the environment was not reflected in the sorts of policies introduced in the post-1989 era, nor in the party composition of the first democratically elected parliament. Indeed, the first parliament failed to introduce any effective environmental protection policies despite an initial commitment to do so. In this study I explore some of the reasons why environmental issues moved towards the periphery of the new political agenda given their apparent importance prior to 1989. I argue that while single-issue pressure groups were one of the few ‘safe’ avenues for the expression of political dissent in the Kádár period, once people were able to participate in a broad spectrum of political activity, green issues came to assume a less significant role. Furthermore, I argue that a lack of political consensus among ‘green’ politicians and the existence of powerful economic constraints has led to a situation in which environmental politics are unlikely to thrive in the foreseeable future.

182 THE RISE AND FALL OF THE HUNGARIAN GREENS

Environmental Pressure Groups in the pre-1989 Period András Bozóki1 has argued that the revitalization of civil society was an important first stage in the political transformation of Hungarian society. Central to the process of revitalization was the emergence of social movements outside the communist Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party. As Hungarian citizens were unable to play a full part in the political process at this stage, involvement in single-issue pressure groups was one of the few ways in which people could have a public voice. As members of single-issue pressure groups, they were able to debate issues affecting their country in a relatively safe context. Prior to 1989, movements which were seen as posing a challenge to the dominance of the state were either crushed or their influence diffused through a process of incorporation. Bozóki has argued that, in order to survive, single-issue pressure groups had to present their ideas and goals as politically neutral, as ‘beyond politics’, and it is in this context that we need to study the growth of green politics in Hungary before 1989. During the 1960s and 1970s, the ecological impact of industrial policies tended to be ignored by the communist government: it gave priority to stimulating economic growth and paid little attention to the environmental consequences of its policies.2 In this period, a concern for the environment was articulated by Hungarian scientists attending various international conferences3 and these specialists began to examine ways in which ecological damage could be reduced. The early ‘green’ agenda was therefore largely a product of scientific concern and developed without state involvement. The first significant environmental pressure group to emerge in Hungary was the Danube Circle which was founded in 1984 to protest against the building of the Gabchikovo-Nagymaros dam which many scientists thought would have serious ecological consequences. The initial aim of the Danube Circle was therefore to prevent the building of a hydroelectric dam in this region so as to protect the Danube and its local tributaries and maintain the rich natural resources of an environmentally sensitive area. The Danube Circle was organized by a small core of between 15 and 35 persons, but at its peak had a following of around 10,000 supporters who were mostly professionals and intellectuals. In 1985 the Danube Circle were awarded the Alternative Nobel Prize in recognition of their achievements and their important contribution to environmental protection. While the Danube Circle was successful in its aim of

Éva Hajba is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science, Budapest University of Economics.


preventing the building of the Gabchikovo-Nagymaros dam, its main significance can be regarded as symbolic. As the first organized group to challenge policies of the communist government, it attracted members who had broader political objectives. Significantly, the leadership of the Danube Circle was divided over the most effective means to achieve their aims. Some of the leaders (represented by János Vargha), and perhaps the majority of the membership, hoped to achieve their aims through constitutional means. Others (led by András Szekfü) thought that a solution would be possible only through more radical means and would involve the overthrow of the ruling party. While the Danube Circle can be seen as the first significant environmental movement in that period, other groups with more limited environmental aims and achievements existed in the 1970s. In 1978, a group called ‘Green Future’ was founded by residents of the Nagytétény district of Budapest who were outraged by the impact of lead contamination from the Metallokémia firm on the health of the local population. The firm, which manufactured car batteries, emitted high levels of lead dust into the atmosphere. Residents complained that this dust contaminated their homes, gardens and neighbourhood. Lead dust could be seen in local streams, it covered their washing and got into their food. Like the Danube Circle, Green Future also had quite narrow aims. At first it specifically targeted the local lead factory (which was eventually closed), but subsequently it focused on other firms whose activities had a detrimental effect on the environment. They also began to challenge planning decisions which were thought likely to effect adversely the quality of local life, such as the proposed circular expressway which was to have cut across the area. Significantly, Green Future existed in a strongly workingclass area; however, like the Danube Circle, Green Future was managed by professionals and intellectuals and had a core of eight to ten permanent activists. The group used a wide variety of methods in order to try to secure its aims, from gathering petitions to establishing an information centre and having two delegates elected to the local council (one of whom, Péter Mészáros, was subsequently elected to the new parliament and served on the Environmental Protection Committee). Green Future also tried to have existing environmental protection measures enforced through an action raised in the Court of Justice. Unlike the Danube Circle, the leaders of Green Future were united in their commitment to a strategy centred upon constitutional means, and the organization continued to exist after 1989 as a successful environmental pressure group. Another important environmental group which became one of the most active non-governmental organizations in the late 1980s was the Air Work Group, established in 1988. Its goal was to reduce air pollution in


towns and cities, and although it had between 60 and 80 key participants it had no registered membership. The Air Work Group had strong international connections; it produced a monthly journal, Breath, and actively lobbied for a ‘green’ budget. In their different ways, each of these early movements can also be seen as providing a channel through which local conflicts and political grievances could be expressed. Indeed, many of the ‘single issue’ pressure groups emerging in east European countries at that stage had to fight simultaneously for basic values and democratic institutions in order to attempt to fulfil their key objectives. In that period, there were no formal mechanisms through which people could express their concerns and single-issue pressure groups provided an avenue through which such concerns could be articulated.4 In the pre-1989 period there was also strong grassroots support for green issues, especially among the professionals and intellectuals, but we can link the development of a public interest in environmental issues in eastern Europe to a desire for a radical alternative both to state socialism and to western capitalism. The need to seek a new balance in the relationship between the individual and the political system has been central to the green political philosophy and this was something which was particularly attractive to east Europeans in the late 1980s. Green politics were seen as a force with the potential to increase the scope for individual autonomy which had been lacking under the previous regime, yet it was also seen as a movement which would build on the longstanding concern to minimize the exploitation of both people and resources. During this period, environmental movements were also attracting widespread interest in much of western Europe, and Hungarians were beginning to become concerned that, by comparison, environmental conditions in their country were poor. Although there is a lack of information concerning the environmental impact of policies followed in the Kádár period, there is some evidence that investment in environmental protection was low in comparison with other developed countries. In the 1980s, western governments were investing about two per cent of their gross domestic product in environmental protection, whereas the Kádár regime invested in the region of one per cent. Furthermore, while western governments were starting to become concerned about air pollution caused by traffic in the cities, state-owned firms in eastern Europe were mass-producing cars that failed to meet western emission standards. Indeed, the green movement in western Europe was bringing pressure on governments to make private companies more responsible for their impact on the environment and to maintain certain standards in their quest for profit, while in the east damage to the environment tended to be the result of the state’s own


activities. Because the state controlled economic activity, the ruling party had little incentive to introduce measures to curb its own attempts to create wealth and improve living standards. There were no formal mechanisms in Hungary through which environmental issues could be placed on the agenda, and green pressure groups tended to emerge in response to strong public concerns. Yet while the environmental record of the Kádár government was poor, improvements in the post-1989 period were minimal and actually resulted in a reduction of spending on environmental protection to between 0.5 and 0.6 per cent of the gross domestic product. This lack of improvement was a consequence of economic difficulties, the electoral failure of the Greens and differences in the political allegiances of ‘green’ politicians who were successful in the first elections. Environmentalism as a Political Umbrella While we can explain the development of single issue pressure groups in pre-1989 Hungary as being a consequence of a system in which there were no other avenues through which alternative political ideas could be promoted, we still have to explain why a pressure group which was so successful in attracting the support of influential sections of the population had so little impact after 1989. The environmental movement may have survived in the Kádár era because of its success in presenting its aims as ‘beyond politics’, but it can be argued that, because environmental groups were becoming a focus for political dissent, they were attracting members who had other priorities which were overtly political. In other words, people were attracted by the political opposition implicitly represented by the green movement and their main aim was to secure broad political change rather than to implement ‘greener’ policies. Indeed, some of those who were active in the green movement went on to hold influential positions in the new parliament, yet subsequently lent their support to policies which had a negative impact on the environment. After the passing of the Law of Association in 1989, a new framework was established which put political parties, interest groups and social movements on a legal footing. The Danube Circle was one of the first groups to take advantage of these changes by registering itself as an official association. However, rather than providing the conditions under which established environmental groups could thrive, the new legislation effectively weakened the green movement. Where once a common front had existed, the Law of Association helped bring about a fragmentation of the Greens. Activists from former opposition groups, including those who identified with the environmental movement, joined a number of different political parties and found themselves on different sides of the


government-opposition cleavage in parliament. For example, the current vice-president of the Hungarian Democratic Forum, Gyula Kodolányi, is a former Green activist, while the president of the Danube Circle, János Vargha, is a member of the Alliance of Free Democrats and has been influential in developing its environmental programme. After 1989 there were two parties with a primary concern for green issues, the Independent Green Party of Hungary and the Biosphere Party, but neither of these parties was represented in the new parliament. In addition, four parliamentary parties had ‘green’ sections: the Hungarian Democratic Forum, the Alliance of Free Democrats, the Alliance of Young Democrats and the Hungarian Socialist Party. In view of this it may be argued that green interests became fragmented and that, within the different parties, members with environmental concerns had to operate within party political frameworks which encompassed contrasting sets of priorities. Some of these former green activists believed that they could work effectively to help protect the environment from within one of the newly established parties, which, in turn, were pleased to encourage new supporters. Others who had been active within the green movement seemed to adopt a new set of priorities in which environmentalism assumed a less significant position. In this respect we can perhaps treat the Hungarian green movement as a political umbrella: while supporters may have been sympathetic to environmental issues, many members had overriding political objectives. Indeed, former green activists frequently found themselves in positions where they had to support legislation which would have a negative impact on the environment. For example, as deputy state secretary of the environmental ministry, Zoltán Illés had excellent green credentials and had previously advised several environmental groups. He subsequently joined the Alliance of Young Democrats. During his first year in office, he opposed a number of proposals which would have had adverse effects on the environment, including a proposal which would have led to increased traffic near a kindergarden. He subsequently resigned his ministerial position because of the negative environmental impact of the Government s legislative programme. Other former green activists, such as László Sólyom, who became president of the Constitutional Court, are no longer active in the environmental cause. However, even those who remain committed to ‘green’ policies often find themselves frustrated by economic and political constraints. As a minister for the environment who remains committed to the ‘green’ cause, János Gyurkó often found himself unable to ensure the safe passage of environmental Acts through parliament. It can also be argued that individual politicians often tried to use their notoriety in the green movement to further their political careers within


mainstream parties after 1989. Peter Mészáros, for example, who had been active in the Green Future group and represented them on the district council, was able to secure a place in the new parliament as a member of the Hungarian Democratic Forum. Within the parliament he has continued to pursue environmental interests through his membership of the Environmental Protection Committee. Similarly, as mayor of Ófalu, Ferenc Wekler had opposed the building of a nuclear reprocessing plant and this is thought to have won him votes in his successful parliamentary election campaign. Furthermore, the newly established parties were not slow to recognize that they could capitalize on the grassroots concern for environmental issues, and they tried to present themselves as the natural choice for an environmentally concerned electorate. During the 1990 election campaign, all the parties made public commitments to oppose the building of the Danube Dam, yet during the course of the first parliament, opposition parties frequently tried to bolster their positions by casting doubt on the government’s opposition to the dam. Although a number of MPs used their ‘green’ credentials to help them gain seats in the new parliament as members of different political parties, some subsequently became disenchanted with the environmental credibility of their respective parties. Nándor Rott, for example, often found himself in conflict with his party, the Christian Democratic People’s Party, in his capacity as president of the Environmental Protection Committee and eventually resigned the party whip. Another environmentally concerned MP, András Jávor, recently left the Hungarian Democratic Forum as a result of disagreements over policy and stood in the 1994 election as a member of the newly formed Green Alternative Party. While a number of MPs in the new parliament have a background in green pressure groups, there is evidence that green interests are not truly integrated into the decision-making framework of their parties. It is certainly the case that green ideas have not been incorporated into a policy agenda, and, while green representation within parties is strong, environmental ideas are often seen as associated with specific individuals rather than being perceived to be integral to party policy. For instance, while the Hungarian Democratic Forum did have a strong reputation for environmental protection which was reflected in its political agenda, once it attained political office few of these policies were implemented. This is perhaps symptomatic of a more general political phenomenon whereby parties without political power are able to adopt idealistic policies which subsequently prove difficult to implement as they try to work within a wide range of constraining forces. With their incorporation into the formal political process, former green activists were forced to address a much broader set of issues, some of


which conflicted with their environmentalist principles. While they had previously been able to promote green issues in isolation from other items on the political agenda, increasingly they found themselves having to address economic problems that posed conflicting interests. One source of conflict has been an Environmental Act which the government promised to pass at an early stage in the life of the first parliament. After the seventh draft of the Bill was approved by the government, it subsequently failed to win parliamentary approval owing to the delaying tactics used by some MPs. Delays to the introduction of this Bill have led to something of a crisis of confidence between the environmental movements, non-governmental organizations with environmental responsibilities and the environmental ministry. While the government had made specific promises to introduce measures to deal with the safe disposal of hazardous waste and to introduce forestry protection, no protective legislation has been passed. The failure to implement environmental protection legislation is perhaps more surprising when one considers that there is an active allparty environmental protection committee in parliament. However, while several committee members had been active in the pre-1989 environmental movement, leading ‘green’ parliamentarians were serving on more powerful committees and it could be argued that many members of this committee lacked a true commitment to environmental protection; indeed, some members were co-opted on to the committee as they would otherwise have had a low administrative commitment. Unlike other parliamentary committees, the environmental protection committee established working relationships with non-governmental organizations at an early stage and held regular consultation exercises. It invited members of non-governmental organizations to its sessions and more than 200 environmental associations and clubs received invitations, including such diverse groups as the Environmental Club of Eötvös Loránd University, the Environmentalist Association of the town Dorog, the Independent Ecological Centre, the Hungarian Federation of Friends of Nature and the Reflex Environmentalist Association. It also sought the views of representatives of the political parties, including the Hungarian Green Party and the green section of the Hungarian Socialist Party, and held round-table sessions as a way of canvassing support and seeking the views of non-governmental organizations whilst drafting the Environmental Bill.5 While government policy is not always environmentally friendly, the environmental protection committee has managed to retain the respect of green interest groups for its efforts to keep green issues on the political agenda. One of the impediments to the introduction of green policies in a parliament in which environmental interests were represented in a number of parties was the pact between two of the largest parliamentary


parties, the Hungarian Democratic Forum and the Alliance of Free Democrats. In this pact, the concept of ‘constructive distrust’ was introduced in order to help smooth the democratic transition: motions of ‘no confidence’ against individual ministers are disallowed so that the government could be overthrown only collectively. Consequently, departmental ministers, including those with environmental portfolios, tend not to be responsible to parliament as a whole and maintained their positions through the strength of their relationships with the prime minister. This situation has led to several conflicts in the field of environmental protection. In one case, the minister responsible for environment protection failed to support a motion raised by the environmental protection committee which would have increased the budget of his ministry. However, it has been argued that during this transitional stage, conflicts over issues are sometimes ‘over-politicized’,6 Another serious impediment to the introduction of green policies in the new parliament is the sheer weight of legislation being dealt with during this important transitional period. Indeed, the Hungarian parliament has been described as a ‘law factory’.7 Between May 1990 and 31 December 1992, 134 new laws were passed, 128 amendments were tabled, 220 resolutions made and five opinions recorded. Between May 1990 and 31 October 1992, plenary sessions of the parliament were held on 238 days, lasting a total of 1,643 hours.8 Other issues on the political agenda have also suffered as a result of an overworked legislature: privatization legislation, for example, has been characterized by inefficiency and poor quality preparation leading to the need for a constant stream of amendments.9 The Economic Crisis and the Green Movement While the marginalization of green politics in the post-1989 era can partly be explained as a legacy of political developments within the Kádár period and as a consequence of the work-load and political pressures facing the new parliament, the failure to introduce evironmentally friendly policies was strongly affected by the collapse of the economy. The economic crisis facing the state in the early 1990s led to a decline in environmental consciousness among the public: faced with a severe threat to their living standards, the public were understandably more interested in improving their family’s material circumstances than they were in the way these improvements were to be achieved or to the environmental costs of maintaining higher standards of living. While there is still a public concern for the environment, this support for green issues is still concentrated among the middle classes who are somewhat insulated from the economic pressures facing those on lower incomes.


By the end of 1991, 10 per cent of the adult population were unemployed, inflation had reached 37 per cent while the gross domestic product decreased by five per cent.10 These public concerns over the state of the economy were addressed by politicians in the new parliament. While environmental sympathies may have existed, the electorate was demanding improved economic performance and they were not convinced that these economic problems could be solved in such a way as to incorporate environmental considerations. Hungary’s economic problems have a long history and are likely to be difficult to solve. Such problems make it difficult to channel scarce resources into environmental protection as well as having a more direct detrimental impact on the environment. During the 1970s, the government took advantage of the availability of credit from foreign banks to increase industrial output, yet industry remained inefficient and the country had a recurrent trade deficit. Heavy industries which used energy inefficiently dominated the economy. Air pollution was high, causing serious respiratory health problems among the population. Since 1975, bronchitis has increased by 250 per cent and asthma by 500 per cent.21 Deaths from lung cancer have tripled since the mid-1950s. As a consequence of this, male life expectancy has failed to increase and female life expectancy has decreased slightly. The average life expectancy for males in 1990 (65 years) is significantly lower than that in western Europe. The air is seriously polluted in nine per cent of the regions of Hungary, and while this represents a mere eight per cent of the Hungarian land mass, four million people or 40 per cent of the population live in these seriously polluted regions.12 Despite these problems, Hungary still lacks a real environmental policy to guide the development and regulation of industry during this period of transition. While a recent government report on economic development included a chapter on the environment, it did not include a programme for implementation.13 Indeed, it can be argued that the government has more pressing short-term priorities that need to be resourced and that it is unlikely to consider putting scarce resources into projects which will have no immediate economic pay-off. In a democratic system, governments are keenly aware of the electoral implications of their policy agenda and tend to concentrate on areas where they expect to produce short-term results. Conclusion Despite the existence of a strong environmental movement which attracted widespread public support in the pre-1989 period, the Hungarian green movement has been fragmented and pushed into the periphery of Hungarian politics. Given the economic problems facing


Hungarian society, perhaps this is inevitable. The public has demanded greater economic efficiency and improved standards of living and this will has put pressure on politicians to give a lower priority to environmental protection. It is also likely that mass support for environmental pressure groups prior to 1989 reflected a dissatisfaction with the politics of the Kádár era rather than a true commitment to green issues. The same may have been true of the green activists who became involved in mainstream political life after 1989. They developed their political skills within the green movement, but sometimes adopted other priorities as they became involved in broader political circles. As Hungary takes its place within a segmented capitalist world, it is unlikely that environmental politics will thrive in the near future. Green politics are a luxury which carry economic costs, and even among the richer nations environmentalism is subject to the constraints of the capitalist world order as governments fight to attract investment from multinational corporations whose activities may carry environmental costs. NOTES 1. See András Bozóki, ‘Party Formation and Constitutional Change in Hungary’, in the present collection. 2. A.Vári and P.Tamás (eds.), Environment and Democratic Transition: Policy and Politics in Central and Eastern Europe (Dordrecht, Boston and London: Kluwer, 1993). 3. János Szlávik, for example, presented a paper on the environmental impact of industrial policies to a UN conference at the Institute for World Economy in Stockholm in 1974 and also to a Comecon conference at Karl Marx University, Suzdal, USSR, in 1976. 4. See Éva Hajba, ‘The Overweight Political System and the Greens’, Budapest Papers on Democratic Transition, No.3 (Budapest: Budapest University of Economics, 1991); V.Szirmai, Social Movements in Eastern Europe: The Case of Hungary (Budapest, 1993). 5. Éva Hajba, ‘Negotiated Rule-Making: The Case of Hungarian Environmental Protection‘, Budapest Papers on Democratic Transition, No. 52 (Budapest: Budapest University of Economics, 1992). 6. See Bill Lomax ‘Obstacles to the Development of Democratic Politics’, in the present collection. 7. Attila Ágh, ‘The Bumpy Road to Europeanization: Policy Effectiveness and Agenda Concentration in the Hungarian Legislation (1990–93)’, Budapest Papers on Democratic Transition, No. 50 (Budapest: Budapest University of Economics, 1993). 8. Ibid. 9. Ibid.


10. Environment and Development in Hungary: A Blueprint for Transition (Budapest and Minneapolis, MN, 1992). 11. Hungary: Economics and the Environment (Report by the Hungarian Delegation to the United Nations Economic and Social Council, 1993). 12. Environment and Development in Hungary, op. cit. 13. G.Bándi (ed.), ‘Environmental Law and Management Systems in Hungary: An Over-view of Perspectives and Problems’ (Budapest: Budapest University of Economics, 1993).

Index

Act of Association, 40–41 Áder, János, 92 Ágh, Attila, 118, 163, 164 Agrarian Association, 96 Agricultural smallholders, 155–6 Air Work Group, 183 Alliance of Free Democrats, 30, 42, 43, 45, 50, 64, 65, 91–3, 103, 104, 107, 109, 112, 114, 118, 122, 124, 132, 142, 160, 185, 189 Alliance of Young Democrats, 30, 41, 43, 45, 50, 64, 65, 81, 85, 89, 92–5, 103, 104, 108, 109, 112, 142, 186 Alternative Lifestyle Movement, 38 Antall, József, 42, 86, 103, 106 Arendt, Hannah, 37 Authoritarian renewal, 31

British Liberal Democrats, 110 Burke, Edmund, 143, 146 By-elections, 132 Chamber of Commerce, 66 Christian Democrats, 87 Christian Democratic Peoples’ Party, 41, 43, 45, 49, 65, 87–8, 90, 103, 120, 142, 187 Civil associations, 154 and environmental issues, 159 and environmental movements, 160–2 and private employers, 155–7 and student politics, 159, 161 Cleavages: theory of, 122 Communist legislators: comparative studies of, 138 and ‘contact function’, 138–40 Communist Party, 139, 140, 156 and the ‘social contract’, 156 Communist Political Leadership, 37 Company formations, 60 Confederation of Autonomous Trade Unions, 164, 166 Confederation of Unions of Professional Workers, 166 Conservative Party, 91, 96 Conservative Smallholders’ Party, 90 Constitution: amendment of, 45–8 Constitutional Court, 44, 45, 46, 53, 104 Constructive distrust, 189

Bajcsy-Zsilinszky Friendship Society, 45, 49 Bankruptcy, 73 Barankovics, István, 87 Bermeo, Nancy, 25 Bihari, Mihály, 122 Biosphere Party, 186 Biró, Zoltán, 86 Böröcz, István, 90 Boross, Peter, 86, 107, 113 Independent, Bulgaria), 156, 163 Bourgeoisie: client, 74 domestic, 64, 65, 73 nomenklatura, 65 Bozóki, András, 162, 179, 182 British Conservative Party, 104

193

194 INDEX

Council for the Defense of Workers’ Interests, 62 Council of Interest Reconciliation, 133 Csépe, Béla, 87 Csurka, István, 74, 87, 91, 94, 113, 123 Czechoslovakia, 36 Danube Circle, 38, 39, 159, 182–2, 185 Debrecen Conference, 93 Debreczeni, József, 95 Democratic League of Free Trade Unions, 64, 158, 166, 166 Democratic Opposition Movement (1980s), 91 Democratic Party, 96 Democratic Peoples’ Party, 87 Democratic tradition: invention of, 24–6 Democratic Youth Alliance, 49 Democratization: forced democratization, 16–19 Greek democratization, 18 Dénes, János, 95 Deutsch, Tamás, 95 Dialogue Peace Group, 38, 39 Dicházy, Bertalan, 66 Dissident groups, 159 Dornbach, Alajos, 114 Dutch parties, 104 East Germany, 36 European Community: East Central European Integration into, 20 Economic interests: representation of, 163–73 Elections: 1985, 139 1990, 142 Election campaign (1990), 187 Electoral Law, 45–7 Electoral system: for the new Hungarian Parliament, 140–41 Elek, István, 95 Elites, 22, 23, 24, 25–7, 27, 28, 30, 32, 158

cultural elite, 139 economic elite, 37, 61 elite replacement, 161 new elites, 25–7, 51 Party elite, 159 ruling elite, 158 Elitist democracy, 27 Embourgeoisement, 73 Employers’ groups, 168–72 Enterprise Councils, 58 Entrepreneurs’ Party, 96 Environmental Act, 188 Environmental Club of Eötvös Loránd University, 188 Environmental pressure groups, 179 pre-1989, 179–84 Environmental Protection Committee, 187, 188 Environmentalism, 185 and capitalism, 190 Erhard, Ludwig, 86 Europeanisation, 22, 26, 29 Evlac, Heinz, 135 Federation of Hungarian Industrialists, 169, 171 Fodor, Gábor, 92 Formal democracy: facade of, 17–28 Formalist democracy, 27 Forum of Trade Union Cooperation, 166 Friedrich C. and Brzezinski Z., 37 Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, 166 Für, Lajos, 113 Füzessy, Tibor, 87 Gabchikovo-Nagymoros Dam, 182 Gáll, Zoltán, 88, 107 German Christian Democratic Union, 104 Germanization, 21, 28 Giddens, A., 175 Giner, S., 175 Göncz, Árpád, 94 Green Future, 183, 186 Green Movement, 184, 185, 186


and economic crisis, 189–9 and environmentalism, 186 Green politics, 184 and the middle class, 189 Gyurkó, János, 186 Haraszti, Miklós, 92 Horn, Gyula, 88 Hughes, S., 157 Hungarian Central Statistical Office, 172 Hungarian Chamber of Agriculture, 169 Hungarian Chamber of Commerce, 156, 170 Hungarian Chamber of Trades and Caterers, 169 Hungarian constitution, 34–6, 160 Hungarian Democratic Forum, 36, 41, 44, 45, 49, 52, 62, 64, 65, 67, 69, 86–7, 103, 104, 106, 109, 112, 118, 120, 123, 132, 142, 160, 185, 187, 189 nomination process of, 110 selection of president, 112 Hungarian electoral system, 105 Hungarian Federation of Friends of Nature, 188 Hungarian Green Party, 39 Hungarian Industrial Association, 169 Hungarian Interest Party, 95 Hungarian Justice Group, 95 Hungarian Justice and Life Party, 87, 91, 95, 123, 129, 142 Hungarian Justice Party, 95 Hungarian parties, 104 collective leadership of, 104–9 consolidating phase, 104 formative phase, 104–5, 105 informal behaviour of, 112 intellectual traditions, 104–6 Hungarian Peoples’ Party, 41, 43, 45, 49, 64 Hungarian Public Opinion Research Institute, 140 Hungarian Road Movement, 95 Hungarian Social Democratic Party, 41, 43, 45, 49, 95, 96, 132

Hungarian Socialist Party, 30, 51, 65, 72, 88–9, 96, 103, 107, 114, 122, 132, 142, 186 Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party, 59, 63, 88, 96, 104, 160 and socialist pluralism, 40 attitudes to multi-party system, 44– 5 Hungarian Way Circles, 123 Huntington, Samuel, 16 Illés, Zoltán, 186 Independent Ecological Centre, 188 Independent Green Party of Hungary, 186 Independent League of Democratic Trade Unions, 45, 50 Independent Smallholders’ Party, 41, 43, 45, 49, 85, 87, 89–91, 103, 106, 120, 129, 142 membership of, 89 Independent Social Democratic Party, 96 Independents, 142 Informal bargaining, 59 Intelligentsia, 159 Israeli Labour Party, 110 Japan’s Liberal Democrats, 111 Jaruzelski, General, 48 Jewell, Malcolm, 144–5 Kádár, János, 37, 59, 104 Kádár regime, 184, 190 and environmental protection, 184– 4 Kantian Liberals, 84 Keane, John, 175 Kemény István, 38 Keresztes, Sándor, 87 Kéri, László, 81 Király, Izabella B., 95 Király, Zoltán, 96, 104 Kis, János, 91, 107, 114 Kodolányi, Gyula, 185 Kónya, Imre, 86, 107, 113

196 INDEX

Körösényi, András, 120, 122, 159, 162, 175 Kovács, G., 158 Kövér, László, 92, 93, 108 Kulin, Ferenc, 86, 107, 113 Kuncze, Gábor, 91, 107, 108, 115 Kupa, Mihály, 66 Kurtán, Sándor, 127 Law on Association, 185 Law on Chambers, 171–3 Law on Parties and their Financing, 45– 7 Left Alternatives, 64 Left-Right Political Spectrum, 26, 120, 122 Left Wing Unity Platform, 88 Legislative roles, 143 Liberal Coalition, 124 Liberal Socialists, 88 Lukács, János, 61 Magyar, Bálint, 84 Market Party, 91, 95 Márkus, György G., 122, 123 Marxist Left, 159 Mass movements, 26 Mécs, Imre, 114 Members of Parliament: attendance of, 125 and constituency roles, 139, 140 and organisation of new parties, 132 party allegiance, 148 and ‘representative focus’, 145–6 surveys of, 142–3, 145–9 survey of opinions, 124–6 Metallokémia, 183 Mészáros, Péter, 183, 186 Michnik, Adam, 23 Middle class, 65–5, 74 Milan, Kundera, 38 Modern Peoples’ Parties, 84–5 Mouffe, Chantal, 83 Multi-actor system, 31 Nagy, Ferenc József, 89

Nagy, Imre, 43 Nagy, Tamás, 96 Nagyene Maczó, Ágnes G., 91 Nagymáros, 159, 161 Nagytétény, 183 National Alliance of Christian Social Trade Unions, 166 National Association of Employers, 169, 170 National Association of Entrepreneurs, 96, 169, 171 National Association of Industrial Corporations, 169 National Communism, 20 National Confederation of Agricultural Cooperators and Producers, 169, 170, 171 National Confederation of General Consumer Co-operatives, 169 National Confederation of Hungarian Trade Unions, 157, 164 National Confederation of Workers’ Councils, 166, 166 National Council of Co-operatives, 156 National Democratic Alliance, 132 National Democratic Association, 96 National-ethnic minority issues, 30–2 National identity, 122 National Liberals, 87 National Populists, 87 National Smallholders’ Party, 90 Navracsics, T., 162 Negotiated revolution, 34, 44, 140 Negotiated transition, 44–5 Németh, Miklós, 88, 114 Németh, Zsolt, 92 Neo-traditionalism crisis of, 23 Network of Free Initiatives, 42, 91 New technocracy, 59, 63, 65 New technocrats, 53 Nineteen Fifty Six (1956) League, 91 Nomenklatura, 94 Nyers, Rezsö, 88, 107, 114 Offe, Claus, 17 Opposition:


moderate, 49 new, 53 radical, 49 Opposition Round Table, 45–6, 46, 48, 50, 51, 52–4, 63, 64 Orbán, Viktor, 43, 81, 92, 93, 97, 108 Ownership Reform Committee, 63 Palkovics, Imre, 70, 71, 72 Palótás, János, 96 Parliamentary elections: March–April (1990), 64 May (1994), 73 Partay, Tivadar, 90 Parti Québécois, 111 Party elites, 84–5, 110 Party factions: differences of opinion between, 126– 30 distribution of seats, 129–34 formation of, 118–21 ideological identity, 124–6 internal organisation, 125–7 political orientation, 120–5 rules of the house and, 118–21 voting behaviour, 125–7 Party list electoral system, 103 Party of the Republic, 132 Party system: role of personalities, 101, 105 Party leaders: selection process, 101–3, 108–13, 116 tasks of, 103–4 Pasztor, Gyula, 90 Patriotic Peoples’ Front, 64, 154 Patriotic and Progressive Socialists, 88 Penal Code: amendment of, 45–7 Pensioners’ Party, 96 Pet , Iván, 91, 107, 114, 115 Pluralism, 83–4 Poland, 36 Polish Opposition, 48 Political blocs: Liberal Westernized National Christian, 123

Political class, 26, 28, 30 Political culture, 23 Political parties, 26–8, 30 typology of, 26–8 Political party formation, 40–41, 94–8 Political transition, 34 Populists, 41–2, 51 Pozsgay, Imre, 41, 44, 48, 49, 88, 96, 107, 114, 132 Post-communist transition: theories of, 36 Pre-modern values, 81–3, 97 President of the Republic, 45, 46 Pressure groups: single issues, 182, 184, 185 Privatization, 65, 66, 73 Privatization Law, 68 Property relations, 55–7, 65 Publicity and information policy, 45–7 Rácz, Sándor, 62, 69, 91 Radical Smallholders’ Party, 90 Rawls, John, 84 Reflex Environmentalist Association, 188 Reform Communists, 49, 52 Religious Socialistss, 88 Re-nationalization, 67–8 Representation: focus of, 143–7 and geographical constituency, 141 and party, 141–2 style of, 146–9 Representational roles: concept of, 135 in Hungarian Parliament before 1990, 135–40 in new Hungarian Parliament, 142– 3 Re-privatization, 89 Republic Party, 96 Revolution of 1956, 53 Rokkan S. and Lipset S., 122 Rott, Nándor, 187 Round Table Pact, 51 Ruling Party, 160 and the Democracy Package, 160

198 INDEX

and the Law of Association, 160–2 Rustow, Dankwart, 25 Safeguards for a non-violent transition, 45–7 Samizdat journals, 42 Schmitt, Carl, 83 Schöpflin, George, 81 Second economy, 65, 152, 158 Self-management, 64 Single issue movements, 38–9 Small Investors Share Ownership Programme, 72–3 Social Democratic Peoples’ Party, 96 Soft dictatorship, 37, 53 Solidarity Workers’ Alliance, 166 Sólyom, László, 186 Speaker of the National Assembly, 46 Spontaneous privatization, 58, 59, 61, 63, 64, 66 Stark, David, 97 State bureaucracy, 65, 73 State Property Agency, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67 State Property Handling Company, 68 Strikes, 163–5, 168 Sub-cultures, 38 Surján, László, 87 Szabó, Ivan, 113 Szabó, János, 90 Szabó, Mate, 160, 161, 175 Szabó, Tamás, 68 Szalai, Erzsébet, 158 Szayer, Jószef, 92 Szekfü, András, 183 Szoboszlai, G., 152 Tamás, Gáspár Miklós, 92 Tardos, Márton, 91, 107, 108 Thatcher, Margaret, 101 Third Way, 41 Thürmer, Gyula, 97 Tökés, R., 161, 175 Tölgyessy, Peter, 91, 107, 108, 114, 115 Torgyán, József, 85, 89, 95 Torgyán Party, 90

Torgyáni Hungarian Future Party, 90– 91 Trades Unions, 70, 157–8, 161, 164–9 closed shop, 168 elections to workplace council, 168 research centres, 166 Trade Union of Chemical Workers, 164 Trade Union Round Table, 69 Transformation, 29, 30, 32–4 Transformation Act, 59 Transition, 22–4, 25 paradoxes of, 23–5 Turkization, 21, 28 Tyrannical majorities, 27 Ugrin, Emese, 90, 91 Unions for a Social Democratic Hungarian Socialist Party, 88 United Smallholders Party, 90, 129 Urbanists, 41–2, 51 Vargha, János, 183, 185 Velvet revolution, 53 Vigvári, András, 73 Vitányi, Iván, 88 Vörös, Vince, 89 Voszka, Éva, 67 Wahlke et al, 143, 146, 147 Wekler, Ferenc, 187 Westernization, 122 Wiatr, Jerzy, 123 Workers, 60–61, 65 Workers’ Council Information Office, 62 Workers’ Councils, 60, 61, 62, 65, 68, 69, 70, 72 National Association of Workers’ Councils, 62 National League of Workers’ Councils, 68, 69, 70 Workers’ Guard, 49 Workers’ Ownership, 59, 64, 65, 69, 70 Workers’ Party, 85, 97 Workers’ Self-Defence Committee, 42 Young Communist League, 43


Young Democrats, 161 Yugoslavisation, 21–3, 29 Zwack, Péter, 96

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