Hungary. Basic facts The development of the quality of democracy in Hungary. The overall quality of democracy

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1 Hungary Basic facts 2007 Population GDP p.c. (US$) Human development rank 43 Age of democracy in years (Polity) 17 Type of democracy Electoral system Party system Parliamentary Mixed: single-member constituencies: two rounds of voting are normally held. Territorial constituencies: proportional representation in a single ballot, unless voter participation falls below 50%. Parties polling less than 5% of the popular vote do not gain a parliamentary seat through this system. Multi-party system The development of the quality of democracy in Hungary The overall quality of democracy Hungary s democratic quality shows an interesting evolution over time. Starting its transition from an authoritarian to a democratic regime at the beginning of the 1990s, the country s quality of democracy increased rapidly beyond the mean of all 30 countries studied in the Democracy Barometer until This was followed by a downturn, which brought the democratic quality of Hungary down to just below the average standard before rising again to its 1992 level in In the 21 st century, however, Hungary s quality of democracy seems to have been continually declining once more. The following discussion 1

2 of the three democratic principles and their constituent functions will shed light on the reasons for these developments. Freedom As the graph shows, Hungary scored exceptionally well with regard to the principle freedom in all years studied. Up to 1998, the country actually ranked among the top five performing countries in terms of this principle and despite its young democratic tradition even best in However, although it always exceeded the mean of all countries, freedom was gradually decreasing after This trend seems to be attributable to the function rule of law, whose graph exhibits a similar, continuous downturn beginning in the early 1990s. Starting from a relatively high but compared to other countries mediocre level of 71 scale points in 1990, Hungary s rule of law increasingly fell behind and ended up at 61 scale points in This development can be explained by a constantly dwindling independence and impartiality of the legal system, accompanied by a sinking degree of public confidence in the judiciary. This could be related to the generally considered slow and inefficient legal system as well as poor standards of the public defender system (HRR, all years). In addition, the judiciary has been criticised for treating members of the Roma minority unequally before the law (HRR, all years). The reason for the generally strong performance of freedom obviously is the function individual liberties, which is fulfilled to very high degrees throughout the 18 years analysed. For the most part, this function constantly scored between 90 and 94 scale points. This is a reflection of high values with regard to almost all aspects of this function. If anything, some room for progress exists with regard to the effective freedom of movement as well as the practice of political terror and torture by the authorities. However, two temporary dips of individual liberties in 1993 and 2001 stand out, both of which are caused by reported incidents of torture and especially restrictions of religious freedom in these years. The first of 2

3 these might be related to a 1993 reform proposal giving courts the right to prohibit churches or religious groups to register whose principles are in conflict with mainstream values (HRR 1993). In 2001, another legal reform initiated by the government wanted to further impose restrictions regarding which religious groups could register as churches and thus receive tax breaks and other benefits (HRR 2001). Although this plan was rejected by the parliament, the government s mere intention probably resulted in the downturn of the freedom of religion indicator. Moreover, the number of reported cases of ill-treatment and physical abuse of members of the Roma minority as well as immigrants and asylum-seekers by the security forces was especially high in the respective two years (AI 1994; 2002; HRW 1994; 2002). Similar to the rule of law, the public sphere declined slowly but steadily as of the mid-1990s. However, the function also increased sharply between 1990 and 1992 so that the score at the beginning and the end of the period under study are almost the same. Moreover, despite the seemingly moderate performance of 43 to 52 scale points, Hungary belongs to the countries with the highest degree of fulfilment of the public sphere within the Democracy Barometer sample. This is mostly owed to the full and unlimited constitutional guarantee of the basic freedoms of expression, i.e. the freedom of association, assembly, speech and the press. The observed improvement of the function in the early 1990s is related to an increasing neutrality and ideological balance of the press system as a result of the lifting of state control over media operations and the liberalisation of the press market in light of the democratic transition. The slight downtrend in all the following years, however, can primarily be attributed to a sinking density of trade union membership. Control The control principle slightly scored above average in the first five years of observation but fell considerably below the mean of all 30 countries, in By 1999, the principle had caught up with and almost 3

4 reached the overall mean again. Control more or less remained constant thereafter even though a marginal regression brought it back to the average level in the later These developments are closely mirrored in the function competition, where they are primarily related to election results. For example, the sharp drop from 1993 to 1995 is a consequence of the electoral victory of the Hungarian Socialist Party in 1994 which succeeded in growing from the fourth largest to the strongest party, leaving its competitors far behind, and in gaining an absolute majority in the parliament. Accordingly, the competitiveness and closeness of the elections decreased in Hungary. In terms of the relative seat difference between the largest and the second largest party, Hungary actually received the minimum value of 0 within the Democracy Barometer country sample between 1995 and Competition improved following the 1998 elections, in which the Hungarian Civic Union stepped up as the Socialists main challenger and even exceeded their seat share, thus establishing an approximate balance between the two parties. In the 2002 elections, they could expand their joint vote and seat shares (the Hungarian Civic Union in coalition with the Hungarian Democratic Forum) at the expense of smaller parties, which not only led to lower competitiveness due to a larger concentration of votes and seats but also a lower openness of the elections because of the decreasing number of parties with a significant impact. The 2006 elections, finally, somewhat improved this latter situation. The function mutual constraints scored comparatively low in the country. Whereas the formal checks between the executive and legislative branches as well as judicial review are well institutionalised in Hungary, the degree of federalism is very low, explaining this pattern together with the absence of bicameralism. In addition, election results slightly affected mutual constraints as well, again particularly after the ones of 1994 and After those elections, we observe a small decrease of this function. While the ratio of opposition and executive forces had been quite balanced before 1994, it sharply shifted in favour of the government after the already mentioned overwhelming victory of the Socialist Party, which assumed power for the next four years. The same applies for the 1998 elections (see the discussion above). All of the other factors determining mutual constraints did not vary much over time. The last of the three control functions, governmental capability, fluctuated considerably over time. The increase between 1994 and 1995 is related to the indicators measuring the stability of the government. While the executive had changed in 1994, the Socialist government under Prime Minister Gyula Horn remained largely stable during the whole following legislative term. By contrast, the repeated change of government in 1998 accounts for another temporary dip in governmental capability. Moreover, the decline in the function between 1999 and 2002 can be attributed to a sinking independence of the public service from political and of the government from religious pressure groups on the one hand. This might be due to reports that the larger religious organisations were treated favourably by state regulations and received more government benefits, as already discussed with regard to individual liberties. Moreover, 4

5 in 2002 religious affairs were transferred from the Ministry of Cultural Heritage to the Office of the Prime Minister (HRR 2002). On the other hand, the stability of the new government inaugurated after the 2002 elections was considerably lower than the previous one s since the prime minister changed halfway into the legislative period. As of 2002, the function governmental capability experienced several ups and downs, combined with an overall downtrend. The former can be explained by repeated cabinet reshuffles, such as the one just mentioned, whereas deteriorating assessments of bureaucratic quality and of the effective implementation of government decisions are responsible for the latter. Equality Quite obviously, the principle equality represents the so-called weakest link of Hungary s quality of democracy. Despite considerable variation and especially the impressive progress that was made in the first three years studied, equality performed below average during most of the period of analysis, which is reflected in the seemingly mediocre to low degrees of fulfilment of the principle s constituent functions. Moreover, a rapid and continuous decline of equality is visible after the turn of the century. The function transparency most notably accounts for the huge leap forward of equality. Both the introduction of more or less unrestricted and efficient freedom of information legislation in 1992 (extended to ICT solutions in a 2005 Act) and the abolition of severe legal as well as political restrictions of media freedom in the course of the Hungarian democratic transition lifted transparency from 4 to 65 scale points. However, increasing corruption and more importantly relapses in terms of media freedom, especially regarding political interferences, brought transparency down again in This is most likely related to the prevalence of a pro-government bias in the news content of state broadcasters, which had a monopoly in Hungary during that time and whose budget was controlled by the prime minister, during the election campaign (HRR 1994). Moreover, 129 journalists were dismissed from the official radio 5

6 station in March 1994, allegedly for political reasons (HRW 1995). After these teething troubles of the young democracy, political interferences into media news production were waning, of course also due to the on-going revision of the media market and the state broadcaster s organisational structure. At the same time, the government s willingness to openly communicate steadily improved. All of this caused a continuous rise of transparency up to its highest level in The last of the factors mentioned, however, is also responsible for the renewed downtrend in the ensuing years. As of 2002, the function s score remained stable on a level of more or less 60 scale points. The function participation experienced a sharp, though less pronounced growth in the first two years of the study as well. This can be explained by a popular initiative that Hungarian citizens voted on in 1990 regarding the question of whether the president of the republic should be elected by the people (C2D). Turnout in this vote was only 13.9 per cent, which dragged the indicator measuring the participation rate in elections and direct democratic ballots down significantly in the respective year. After 1997, participation was continuously declining from 51 to 24 scale points in These developments strongly affected the aggregate principle s score. Some of the decrease in participation can again be attributed to the turnout indicator being dampened by low engagement in direct democratic votes. In 1997 it was the referendum on Hungary s accession to the NATO. Since electoral turnout was considerably lower in the 1998 elections compared to 1994 as well. Popular votes which were not met with much enthusiasm among Hungarians also took place in 2003 and In addition, alternative forms of participation, i.e. demonstrations and petitions, were less frequented in the new millennium and the disproportionality of voters in terms of gender, age, income and education grew stronger after This might be related to a simultaneous decrease in the share of registered voters compared to the voting age population. Finally, the reason for the temporary and moderate peak of the participation function in 2005 is once more variation in some of the discussed indicators. Representation, the third of the equality functions, does not exhibit as dramatic changes as its two counterparts. Nevertheless, fluctuations over time can be observed. Similarly to the function transparency, representation took a turn for the worse in the mid-nineties, but had recovered by Both trends were caused by the Gallagher index (gallagindex), which measures the congruence of vote and seat share distributions. Due to Hungary s complex electoral system, respective distortions are not uncommon but played particularly strongly in the country s second legislative period under the new democratic regime. In addition, a sharply growing share of women in government after the 1998 election contributed to the reconstitution of representation. The same factor, however, is responsible for the function s moderate decline until

7 The democracy profile of Hungary Legend: (Principles and Functions) Principle: Freedom: RL (Rule of Law), IL (Individual Liberties), PS (Public Sphere). Control: GC (Governmental Capability), MC (Mutual Constraints), CO (Competition). Equality: TR (Transparency), PAR (Participation), REP (Representation). The spider charts above give insight into the democratic profile of Hungary by showing the scores of the nine functions in comparison to the mean scores of all 30 countries in the sample at three different points in time. They confirm what has already been found in the preceding discussion of the three principles. Hungary seems to perform best with regard to the freedom functions since in all three years individual liberties and the public sphere exceeded the average of all countries while the rule of law scored about or slightly below average. By contrast, all of the equality functions lagged behind the overall mean in Hungary regardless of the year studied even though impressive progress was made in terms of transparency. Thus, in sum, Hungary might be considered a rather libertarian than egalitarian democracy. As for the principle control, finally, the corresponding functions mostly scored about or slightly above average. 7