A Post-accession Crisis? Public Sector Modernisation and the Role of CSOs in Hungary Working Paper György Jenei EGPA conference, Rotterdam, 3-6 September 2008

Nowadays Hungary exists in a post- accession crisis (Ágh, 2007) her crisis is an ongoing process in economic, social, and political terms. In the economy Hungary is far away from accomplishing the EU criteria for entering the Euro zone. In social terms the deepening poverty, the instability of the middle class have of growing concern.

In political terms – it is the core topic of the paper – the crisis has the following symptoms: the emergence of liberal democracy has been frozen at the representative stage consensual democracy was replaced with a confrontative democracy. The competition among the parties has been sharpened and has led to a fragmentation of the system the mechanisms of social dialogue have been emptied out and the integrative political institutions can not counterbalance the impacts of fragmentation

civil sector organizations are not enough strong for pushing the political system in a participative direction. The lack of civil dialogue and the emerging political patronage resulted in a duality in the civil sector in service provision and an underdog position of CSOs in public policy making the legal-institutional framework of the rule of law (Rechtsstaat) functions with deficiencies in the separation of legislative, executive and judicial institutions. Partisan state, political patronage, clintelism have resulted in a shift from democracy to “democratura”. The consequences are deficiencies in the reliability and predictability of the politicians and civil servants

public management reforms have been coupled with the ideology of the downsizing the state. The application of market type mechanisms was basically a transfer process not taking into consideration the value-orientation and the accountability-openness-transparency requirements, which are evident in the public policy making and public services in a liberal democracy.

People are losing confidence in the political parties and in the public institutions. On the central level they make no difference between parties and the government. A party-state view has been restored. The situation is better at the local level, because the impact of the parties is not dominant as in the central level. People look for opportunities to express their interests and to influence public policy making. But institutional mechanisms for interest articulation and representation are not enough anymore and their criticism is expressed in a non-institutional way, which results clashes with the government. Oppositional parties do not provide convincing alternatives.

What are the alternatives in the current situation? Do we have alternatives at all? In principle there are two alternative: a new-patrimonial state a new-weberian synthesis.

Now were at a cross road. Civil society is the key factor in making choice between the two alternatives. Can civil society influence the events in the direction of the implementation of the administrative principles of the EAS and in the enforcement of the public administration and the political parties to establish genuine reforms, when reforms have a meaning which is acceptable in the EU? It is the topic of the paper and the conclusion is that it has been not decided yet.