By Andras Bozoki, February 3rd, 2012 The Hungarian political system for twenty years was a liberal democracy, characterized by a multiparty system, free elections, representational government, strong opposition, free media, strong, independent courts and credible institutions that protected the rule of law (i.e., the Constitutional Court and the Ombudsman Office). With a few striking exceptions, human rights and religious freedoms were respected. During the two decades after 1989, the incumbent governments had always lost the elections (except for 2006). The media criticized politicians. Democracy was consolidated, and in 2004, Hungary joined the European Union. Hungary remained until relatively recently (until the eve of 2006), a success story of democratic achievement. But more recently, Hungary took a serious autocratic turn, as I explored in my post last year. Here, I explore the problem of the transition from democracy more closely, as this transition has since escalated. Is it possible for my country to return to an authoritarian system as a fully-fledged member of the European Union?
Conceptual underpinnings of the regime
The policies of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his ruling Fidesz Party are based on the pillars of “national unification,” the “central arena of power,” the change of the elites, power politics and the era of “revolutionary circumstances.” This is more than just empty rhetoric. Prime Minister Orbán genuinely believes them to be true.
First: almost all of Orbán’s important messages are based on the notion of “national unification,” which has both symbolic and literal importance. He expressly criticizes the Trianon Peace Treaty that concluded World War I as well as the legacy of the Communist system and the forces of globalization, which he sees as the most important political issues of the day. Orbán suggests that the “nation” serves as the bastion to offer protection against these forces. The idea of national unification furthermore maintains that Hungarians living outside of Hungary are not minorities, but full members of the Hungarian nation with corresponding rights and privileges. As such, these Hungarians are now granted Hungarian citizenship upon request, regardless of where they live, and thus they are also automatically granted voting rights. Orbán believes that the civic rights to freedom, membership to the European Union, belonging to the political allies of the . . .
Read more: The Crisis of Democracy in Hungary, 2012
By Kacper Szulecki, January 13th, 2012 
Who would have thought that twenty-two years after the fall of communism in Hungary that György Konrád, the respected writer and one of the most famous Central European dissidents, would have to sign yet another open letter defending fundamental rules of democracy in his home country? And that the letter would be a strong accusation addressed to that young man with soot black hair whose hard-shell speech in 1989, at the symbolic funeral of the martyrs of the ’56 revolution, electrified Budapest – one Viktor Orbán?
The New Year’s appeal of Hungarian intellectuals including former key figures of the opposition such as Konrád and Miklós Haraszti is a democratic alert not only for Hungary. It echoes the dissident appeals of the old days. It does not attack Orbán’s regime for its ideological content, but rather for its form. Liberal democracy is, first and foremost, a set of rules, written down so that the game remains fair for whoever might be sitting at the table. That was the essence of the democratic opposition’s struggle in Eastern Europe – to overthrow the red dictatorship, because it is a dictatorship.
On the other hand, the anti-Communist opposition, of which Orbán is a descendent, wanted to overthrow the red dictatorship because it was red. Following this logic, one can treat human rights in an instrumental fashion. One can perceive torture as justified or not – for example justified in the case of Pinochet, and vicious in the case of Castro. One can also believe that authoritarianism can be built in the name of a just cause. If you disagree with this judgment, you should listen carefully to what the Hungarian democratic dissidents . . .
Read more: Hungarian Alert for Central Europe
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, January 12th, 2012 
I am concerned. There is a significant threat to democracy in Hungary and few are paying attention in this country. A member state of the European Union may be transitioning from democracy, as Andras Bozoki warned here months ago, but there has been almost no reporting about the developments in the serious press in the U.S., let alone in the popular media, even though it’s a big story in Europe.
I did hear a report on National Public Radio the other day about the economic problems Hungary is having in its relationship with the European Union, but not about the disturbing political developments that a distinguished group of former dissidents criticized in their public letter, which we (along with many other sites) posted last week. There have been reports of mass demonstration in Budapest. But these provided little explanation and no follow up. It just fit into the year of the protestor story line.
I suppose that this may just be an indication that Europe is becoming a small corner of the new global order, not necessarily demanding close attention. Am I being Eurocentric in my conviction that this is an important story? Yet, very important issues are on the line, important for the Hungary and the region, but also of broader significance. The slow development of authoritarianism is a global theme with local variations, which need to be deliberately considered.
I have been informed by a circle of young Polish intellectuals working at the on line weekly, Kultura Liberalna. They recently published a special issue posing the question: “Should Hungary be excluded from the European Union?” They provide different perspectives and insight. Here are some highlights. The complete pieces now can be read on the weekly’s site in English.
The European controversies started with changed media law, at the center of the anti-democratic developments. Dominika Bychawska–Siniarska in her piece, “Attempt on Democracy,” highlights the basic problem as seen from Poland:
“Freedom of speech is the fundamental element of democratic society. The post-communist states are particularly obliged to respect and . . .
Read more: Should Hungary be Excluded from the European Union?
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, January 2nd, 2012 
Minutes ago I received this open letter from prominent critical Hungarian intellectuals via Andras Bozoki (author of an earlier post on the transition from democracy, who will present an update in the coming days). The message speaks for itself, warning of a looming European political crisis. -Jeff
The decline of democracy – the rise of dictatorship
The undersigned, participants of the erstwhile human rights and democracy movement that opposed the one-party communist regime in the 1970s and 1980s, believe that the Hungarian society is not only the victim of the current economic crisis, but also the victim of its own government. The present government has snatched the democratic political tools from the hands of those who could use these tools to ameliorate their predicament. While chanting empty patriotic slogans, the government behaves in a most unpatriotic way by reducing its citizens to inactivity and impotence.
The constitutional system of Hungary has also sunk into a critical situation. As of the 1st of January 2012, the new constitution of Hungary along with several fundamental laws came into force. Viktor Orbán’s government is intent on destroying the democratic rule of law, removing checks and balances, and pursuing a systematic policy of closing autonomous institutions, including those of civil society, with the potential to criticise its omnipotence. Never since the regime change of 1989 when communist dictatorship was crushed has there been such an intense concentration of power in the region as in present-day Hungary.
Institutions with the authority to hold government activity in check have met a similar fate: Fidesz continuously deprives such institutions of their autonomy, blackmails them for survival, discharges professional management, takes unlawful decisions and moulds these institutions so that they can no longer control and correct government activity but, in sharp contrast to their original function, they serve to augment unbridled autocracy. With the removal of the checks and balances, the whole state has become subservient to the government, or rather to the prime minister. The Parliament and the president obediently comply with the dictates of the cabinet. By having their staff radically reshuffled and implementing laws curtailing their competence, the Chief . . .
Read more: New Year’s Message Sent by Former Hungarian Political Dissidents, Budapest, 2nd of January, 2012
By Andras Bozoki, February 1st, 2011 
As we are observing the great promise of the events in Egypt, I thought it might be interesting to consider another transformation that is not going so well. Here Andras Bozoki presents his troubling reflections. Bozoki is a Professor in the Political Science Department at the Central European University in Budapest. He is the author of many books on the transformations in Central Europe and the problems and promises of the emerging democracies. When Fidesz, the new ruling party, was a liberal opposition party, Bozoki was its spokesman and campaign strategist. He also served as Hungary’s Minister of Culture in 2005 and 2006. -Jeff
With all of its problems, Hungary after 1989 has been a success story, but now the success is challenged in ways that are very much unexpected. From the happy story of the transition from dictatorship to democracy, there is a looming potential tragedy, a transition from democracy. In the second part of 2010, we Hungarians have been witnessing something that I, for one, never expected.
We grew up in a soft dictatorship which slowly but surely opened up in response to the pressure of civic movements, the increasing weakness of the structure of the party-state and also external pressures. In the 1980s, the post-totalitarian regime slowly devolved, culminating in the dramatic democratic changes of 1989. Although the “negotiated revolution” of 1989 was elite driven, most people happily endorsed the new regime of freedom. They could travel, watch foreign movies, start their own enterprises and speak freely about their lives in public. Free elections and a representative government, a constitutional court, and democratic opposition were all firmly established. The last twenty years were far from being unproblematic, prime examples: a widening gap between the winners and losers of the regime change, between the living standards of the capital city, Budapest, and the rest of the country, and between the life chances of educated classes and the Roma population. But still, what we all experienced was a genuine liberal democracy. Governing parties lost elections. The media aggressively criticized politicians. Democracy was consolidated, and the country successfully joined the European Union.
But then there was . . .
Read more: The Hungarian Shock: The Transition from Democracy?
By Virag Molnar, October 21st, 2010 
I bumped into my colleague Virag Molnar the day before yesterday in our sociology department office, and asked her about the news coming out of Hungary. To my shock, she revealed that she had a special connection to the disaster. She also had telling insights about how the crisis is connected to major developments in the region and to particular struggles in Hungary. I thought it would be important for her to share her observations with DC readers. -Jeff
Frankly, I would have never thought that my home town – a non-descript place of about 30,000 people in Western Hungary that was established as a socialist new town in Hungary’s postwar rush to build up heavy industries virtually from scratch – would become front page news in the New York Times and other international media outlets. But two weeks ago, during my early morning routine of drowsily surfing the Internet for my daily dosage of news I was confronted with surreal images of a rust-red landscape that looked like a scene from Michelangelo Antonioni’s Red Desert or a sci-fi movie set on Mars but turned out to be pictures of the very region I come from.
My home town and the surrounding area became the site of Hungary’s worst environmental disaster when a reservoir containing toxic red sludge, the byproduct of aluminum production, burst and flooded several neighboring villages and small towns. The events are baffling and astonishing on multiple levels. The accident seemed unreal because in our quiet “Second-World” and EU-member complacency we have come to believe that this kind of environmental disaster occurs only in “less developed” regions where such disasters are enabled by a combination of cheap labor, lax regulations, disregard for the environment, outdated and dangerous technologies, complicit states and powerful multinationals.
The Bhopal gas tragedy in 1984 in India, the nuclear disaster in Chernobyl in 1986, or most recently the Baia Mare cyanide spill in Romania in 2000 that devastated the ecosystem of the River Tisza and parts of the Danube have all clearly exhibited most or all of these . . .
Read more: In Hungary: The Politics of Toxic Sludge
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