[spectre] Hungary in focus

[allan siegel]

http://www.eurozine.com/comp/focalpoints/hungary2013.html

Hungary in focus

In recent years, Hungary has been a constant 
concern for anyone interested in European 
politics and Eurozine has published extensively 
on different aspects of the Hungarian situation. 
Ahead of the Hungarian elections in 2014, we have 
collected some of those articles dealing with 
both recent developments and broader issues 
relating to Hungarian politics, history and 
culture.

This collection of texts puts into perspective 
how, after the fall of the Iron Curtain, 
Hungary's democratic reforms were held up as an 
example to the states of central eastern Europe. 
Twenty years later, the political process 
suffered a sudden reversal following the election 
in 2010 of the Fidesz government under Viktor 
Orbán. Now the dismantling of Hungary's political 
and constitutional system continues.

However, the focus also includes a series of 
responses to serious unrest on the streets of 
Budapest in September 2006 after the then 
Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány 
admitted to downplaying the scale of the national 
debt in the run-up to elections earlier the same 
year.

Gábor Attila Tóth: Power instead of law

As the Fidesz government dismantles Hungary's 
political and constitutional system, Gábor Attila 
Tóth considers the influence of international 
institutions and the efficacy of domestic, 
democratic resources far from exhausted. On the 
contrary, the role played by both will likely be 
decisive. [ more ]

Robert Hodonyi, Helga Trüpel: Together against Orbán: Hungary's new opposition

Amid international concern over government 
reforms that endanger democracy in Hungary, 
Hodonyi and Trüpel discover a political 
renaissance in Hungarian civil society. Ahead of 
elections in spring 2014, this may well be an 
antidote to the EU's "political 
half-heartedness". [ more ]

Gábor Halmai: Towards an illiberal democracy

Hungary's new constitution contradicts European 
standards on numerous counts: it sets in stone 
government policy; it is biased towards "ethnic" 
Hungarians; and it undermines the independence of 
regulatory institutions including the 
constitutional court and media. [ more ]


György Dalos, Miklós Haraszti, György Konrád, László Rajk
The decline of democracy -- the rise of dictatorship

In a "New Year's appeal", thirteen intellectuals 
and public figures who opposed Hungary's 
communist regime in the 1970s outline their 
concerns about Hungary's new constitution and 
call on Europe to help halt a slide towards a new 
dictatorship. [ more ]

Miklós Haraszti: Notes on Hungary's media law package

Hungary's media law could lead to a 
depoliticization of the media the likes of which 
exists in Russia and other post-Soviet 
democracies, writes the former OSCE 
Representative on Freedom of the Media. The 
alterations to the law will do little to this 
halt this tendency. [ more ]

etc.

etc.