Gabriella Ilonszki

MPs in Post-Communist and Post-Soviet Nations: A Parliamentary Elite in the Making

This article examines the formation of a new representative elite in nine post-communist parliaments through data on the composition of the parliaments and processes of professionalisation. Both inter- and intra-parliamentary differences in Central and Eastern Europe are identified. There is partial parliamentary elite convergence between the new and the more established European democracies. Developments among the members of parliament provide strong indicators of the stability of the new parliaments and the new institutional order.

From Minimal to Subordinate: A Final Verdict? The Hungarian Parliament, 1990–2002

Despite impressive surface stability, the Hungarian parliament has gone through several transformations. Most importantly, the coordinate legislature after systemic change has become a subordinate legislature. While in its structural attributes the Hungarian parliament demonstrates considerable stability, fundamental transformation can be observed in its operation, performance and relationship to other institutions and actors, especially the government. The diminished law-making functions were not counterbalanced by scrutiny functions. The changing role and place of the parliament can be explained both by the requirement of effectiveness and the development of political institutions towards majoritarianism.

National Discontent and EU Support in Central and Eastern Europe

AS THE EUROPEAN UNION (EU) IS BEING CONSTRUCTED increasingly as a political entity more attention is being paid to how its institutional evolution corresponds to national demands. It is necessary to understand how political responsibility patterns are structured (MacMullen 1999), and moreover how they are related to accountability, policy and transparency considerations (Bovens 2007). We want to know whether the extension of direct democracy (Binzer Hobolt 2007) challenges the EU polity. Quite naturally, the question of how representation is taking place on the European level is a significant issue, and most importantly, how the party vote at the national level is being transposed to the European level (Reif & Schmitt 1980; Marsh 1998; Hix & Marsh 2006). All these issues and considerations are part of and belong to the democracy deficit debate and they influence the evaluation of European unification. However, before the question of party stances and participatory or representation opportunities can be addressed, the first question to be asked concerns how the national polity affects citizens’ views about the EU—and thus probably about the integration process itself. This essay argues that the opinion of voters of their home country’s democratic performance will influence their views about the EU. It asks whether people are more pro-EU when they are satisfied with their national political environment or, on the contrary, whether they are more sceptical about the EU when their own country performs well according to democratic criteria. This question can be raised about citizens’ views and indirectly about political elite views as well, and this leads in turn to a further question of whether citizens’ and elite views are structured similarly or differently: do mass views and elite views about Europe correspond to the health of the national polity in the same way, or does the elite think more positively about the EU irrespective of the national political scene? Are the political elites in the countries whose performance is undervalued by their citizens more pro-EU? Views and opinions about the EU appear in more than one dimension. In the broadest sense they express a general sympathy concerning integration. On a ‘lower level’ they reveal what people think about the operation and about the politics of the EU, and even more concretely they reflect views about EU policies. In the following EUROPE-ASIA STUDIES Vol. 61, No. 6, August 2009, 1041–1057

Two Decades of Divergent Post-Communist Parliamentary Development

Post-communist parliaments have become increasingly different from one another over their first two decades. This two decade review considers seven parliaments: four in Central Europe (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovenia) and three in the former USSR (Moldova, Russia, and Ukraine). They have evolved over four dimensions of change: context of constitution and party system, rules and organisation, members, and civil society. At the end of the second decade, parliaments may be placed on two dimensions, of autonomy from the executive, and of party polarisation. Three background factors of transitions, legacies of communist era legislatures, and of international contacts are identified as sources of their divergent trends.

From party cartel to one-party dominance. The case of institutional failure

The article assesses dynamics of regulation on parties in Hungary by distinguishing between periods of consensus characterised by a cartel-party effect and periods of conflicts characterised by a dominant-party effect. The relative stability of the party system until 2010 makes Hungary a good case to study the growing rigidity of regulation along with increasing disregard for legal constraints. The resulting loss of credibility along with the changing political logic gave way to the emergence of self-centred party regulation, which could not address the main caveats of the regulatory framework and could easily undermine the party systems stability.

Fraktionsprofile nach den Wahlen 2010 in Ungarn: Abschottung der parlamentarischen Elite?

2009 mit drastischen Verlusten der Linken als Vorboten für den unaufhaltsamen Sieg der rechten Parteien bei den Parlamentswahlen von 2010 klar abzeichnete . Ungarn hat also eine Regierung mit sehr breiter politischer und damit vermeintlich stabiler Unterstützung . Aber die Wirkungen der Wirtschaftskrise, die Verschuldung, die sozialen Probleme, Spannungen und Ungerechtigkeiten sind destabilisierende Faktoren geblieben . FIDESZ/KDNP hat große Ziele: Stabilisierung der Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, Umformung des Sozial-, Gesundheitsund Bildungswesens, Stärkung der nationalen Einheit, ein starkes Ungarn mit europäischer Ausstrahlung im Jahr seiner Ratspräsidentschaft 2011 . Diese können aber viele schwierige und zweischneidige Entscheidungen mit kontraproduktiven Wirkungen erzwingen, so dass es doch zu einer politischen Destabilisierung kommen könnte . Und: Stabilität ist nicht alles, Ungarn braucht auch eine „Demokratisierung der Demokratie“ . Der ungarische Parlamentarismus und die demokratisch-politische Kultur bedürfen langfristiger weiterer Entwicklung . Es fehlen effiziente institutionelle Lösungen und kulturelle Muster der Vergangenheitsbewältigung und Konfliktlösung, wegen des fehlenden „Konsenses der Demokraten“ .

Introduction: A Europe Integrated and United—But Still Diverse?

THE CHAPTERS IN THIS VOLUME GIVE AN OVERVIEW of some research findings of a European project, called Intune. The project (with the title ‘Intune’ or ‘IntUne’, standing for ‘Integrated and United? A Quest for Citizenship in an Ever Closer Europe’) has been financed by the European Union within the 6th Framework Programme, Priority 7, ‘Citizens and Governance in a Knowledge Based Society’. The project started in September 2005, spans for four years, covers 18 European countries, involves 29 European institutions and more than 100 scholars across Eastern and Western Europe. These sheer numbers themselves indicate the ambition of the main organisers: the project has been coordinated by the University of Siena and headed by Maurizio Cotta and Pierangelo Isernia and the participants have included sociologists, political scientists, policy analysts and linguists. One major aim of the project has been to explore the views of elites and the wider population on the European Union with the help of questionnaire surveys in two waves: in the spring of 2007 and in the spring of 2009, respectively. The contributions to this volume all analyse the survey results of the 2007 wave. This can be regarded as one of the first systematic comparative surveys, which covers both old and new member states. Out of the new member states Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria—and Serbia as a potential future candidate— are included. The project’s academic value is enhanced by the fact that the population and elite questionnaires were a joint effort of academics working in the two fields of elite and mass opinion; thus as a result the mass views and the elite views can be easily compared. The mass survey was built on a national sample of 1,000 in each country while a selected group of the national elites (120 respondents per country) were asked to answer structured questions on their perceptions of identity, representation and scope of governance mainly in relation to the European Union (EU) and to their

Variations in the Expert Ministerial Framework in Hungary and Romania: Personal and Institutional Explanations

The chapter explores the ‘ministerial condition’ in two new democracies that represent dissimilar cases in terms of their pre-democratic legacy, party institutionalization patterns and constitutional framework. The hypotheses formulated on these grounds have been partially confirmed. In Romania, after the troubled first years of democratization, the stabilization of parties resulted in the diminishing number of expert ministers, which only slightly increased during the crisis years, while in Hungary, despite the seemingly well-cemented parties, expert ministers prevail in large proportions. Despite the semi-presidential constitutional framework presidents in Romania have had to face and increasingly acknowledge evolving party interests and prime ministerial ambitions to control ministerial nominations. At the same time, in the Hungarian parliamentary system, the prime ministers used the constitutional opportunity to nominate ‘her ministers’ thus gaining independence from her parties often connected to policies as well. These conditions resulted in much higher dependence and dismissal levels of expert ministers in Hungary than in Romania, as well as in their different portfolio profiles. The chapter confirms the impact of the pre-democratic legacies: Expert ministers often connect to how things operated in the past in the educational system or in state bureaucracy.