Parties and Party-Factions in the Hungarian Parliament
by László Szarvas
The Hungarian Parliament elected by the first free
elections after the collapse of communist power has worked
continuously from its convening in May, 1990. It has passed
number of hundreds of laws, decisions, and declarations,
and due to its responsibility it is one of the centres of
the new, democratizing Hungarian Political system. The
parliament is composed of six parliamentary party-factions.
This paper aimes to show the basic characterization of
Hungarian parliamentary party-factions on the one side, and
to emphasis some changes that have taken place during the
two years of its existence on the other side. In this short
period of time is not passible to draw any conclusions for
the future, but, I hope, it shows some tendencies, trends or
facts worth considering.
I. Basic characterization of the Hungarian parliament by
party orientation
The results of the first free elections and its consequences
in the composition of the Parliament of Hungary are well
known. (See:Appendix 1st).
The sharing of the mandates, the forming of the governing
coalition show us the picture of moderate pluralism, with a
stable majority for the coalition.
The parliamentary experts have characterized the
internal composition of this. They have agreed in the
existence of a centre-right coalition, and a left and
liberal opposition, on the other side. But, the approaches
have differed in emphasis. One argument (1) shows the use of
left-right dimension in the Hungarian case. András Körösényi
argues: "The characteristics of the right can be attributed
more to the HDF, the CDPP and the ISH, while those of the
left rather to the AFD, FYD, HSP better. In fact, the
formation of the government confirms the relevance of the
left-right political scale, since it is based on a cetreright "minimal-range HDF-ISH-CDPP coalition" (2).
It is also true that he points to the distances between
the political and economic dimensions, emphasing the
distinct "deviantism" in economic aspects, and he
summarizes: that "...the economic and ideological left-right
scale cross-cut each other. The libertarian economic line of
the left-liberal AFD in on the right on the economic scale,
while the recent economic program of the centre-right HDF is
to the left of the AFD position". (3)
This analysis shows the difficulties of the adaptation
of the left-right scale in the Hungarian case. I do not want
to detail the reasons of this here, only to mention that
this problem is rooted in the social cleavages and into the
traditional political culture (or subcultures) of Hungary.
In spite of this, other experts also use the aformentined
scale, as a base of the "polarizational index` of the party
system. (4)
Mihály Bihari uses another approach. He states in his
analysis: "The six parliamentary parties were organized
around three political currents of ideas and ideological
centres. Thus in the tripolar system a multiparty
competitive and diverging party structure has taken shape.
The relatively clearly distinguishable political-ideological
centres and the parties organized around them are as
follows:
a, the national-conservative, Christian Democratic
political centre, made up of the Hungarian Democratic Forum
(MDF) the Independent Smallholders Party and the Christian
Democratic People`s Party,
b, the social-liberal centre, whose parties are the
Alliance of Free Democrats (SZDSZ) and the Alliance of Young
Democrats (FIDESZ)
c, the Euro-socialist, socialdemocratic centre to which
the Hungarian Socialist Party belongs" (5)
The third, very sharp approach is marked by György G.
Márkus. His approach is based on the theory of cleavages of
Rokkan-Lipset, adopted to the Hungarian case. He shows the
"underdeveloped cleavage" between employees and employers,
and emphasized the priority of cleavage between, national
identity and "westernization".
Let us outline these values:(6)
National identity Westernization
(historical continuity) (comformity to the West)
traditional community modern society
organic solidarity mechanical solidarity
inside control outside control
(guidance)
coalescence separation
order, productivity
particularism universialism
collectivism individualism
conformism non-conformism
He concludes, that the primary and secondary cleavages
are strengthening each other in Hungary, that they lead to
the construction of political blocks. He shows the two
blocks, opposing each other, based on the priority of values
the next:
National-Christian Liberal-Westernized
(Hegemon Party: HDF) (Hegemon Party:AFD)
populist style urbanist style
culture economy
religious ethic secularization
state control of the market free market
collectivizm individualizm
"authoriter democracy" competitive democracy
He also argues that the leading block-parties are
crosscut by social cleavages, and he expresses the necessity
of the "oppositional" internal groups -liberals within the
HDF and socialdemocrats, socialliberals inside the AFD- in
order to a balanced development.(7)
To the conclusion of this part of presentation we
should emphasize both the usefulness of Western standard and
approaches and the local-regional differences at the same
time. This conclusions is also reached by J. Wiatr in case
of Poland when he suggests a three-dimensional party
characterization, that of the economic aspect (strongly
monetarist vs. autimonetarist), that of secularism vs.
fundamentalism, and finally that aspect of decommunization
(against vs. for). These aspects are mutually uncolnnected,
and according to these, parties which are relatively close
to each other on one issue, stay poles apart on another. (8)
We described the parliamentary parties as a whole. But it is
quite obvious that all of them possess several groups with
different political orientation. The internal party unity
and cohesion are also needed for effective parliamentary
work. How could we characterize our parliamentary parties
regarding to their internal fragmentation?
The leading coalition party, the HDF as a center-type
party has declared itself as the harmonic alliance of three
political orientations: that of the populist nationalist, of
the Christian democracy and finally of the national-liberal.
The largest oppositional party group, that of AFD, also
has had et least two internal orientations within its ranks:
so called "Liberal Coalition" focuses on the values of the
traditional liberalism, and the Social-liberal orientation,
which emphasizes the social-sensitivity of the party.
II.Data analyses on the parliamentary factions.
These statements are backed empirically by politicalsociological interviews and analyses (9). Among them we can
find exact data on the MPs'' opinions. Thus, we can find a
general correlation between party-orientation as a whole and
its parliamentary faction-as a particular party group.
Look at the next table:
The political-ideological identification of the MPs:(10)
OrientationsMDF AFD ISH HSP FYD CDPPINDEPTOTAL
democrat 164 95 44 33 22 21 7 386
Hungarian 151 2 29 1 1 8 4 196
national
Christian 93 16 30 - 9 21 2 171
religious
liberal 40 69 1 2 22 - 4 130
leftist 3 4 1 20 1 - 1 30
socialdemocrat- 4 - 17 4 - - 25
radical 6 9 1 1 6 - 2 23
other 40 18 6 26 - - 2 92
The orientation of "democrat" proved to be totally
unanimous, so it is irrelevant for the analysis. But, the
other orientations can be analyzed, and show the following:
- among these seven orientations the "Hungarian
national" is showed the clearest correlation among the
parties, and it draws the clearest cleavage among the party
factions, according to their "governing" or "oppositional"
functions in the parliament.
- liberalism is shared by the two "liberal" parties,
and the greatest differences are between the ISH and HSP on
the one side and the FYD (FIDESZ) on the other. This value
also shows a definite cross-cutting in the governing and the
oppositional factions: the 24.4% of HDF-MPs identified
themselves to be liberals as well, but the 26.6% of AFD
didnot identify themselves with this value.
- inspite of the internal contradiction by the leftism
among the HSP-MPs, the clear distinction can be drawn
between the HSP and the other parties.
- party-differences by religious values also is clear
between HSP and the others but 71 MPs of HDF did also not
choose this value.
We can see, that the identities of the parties and the
identification of the MPs belonging to the given party are
strongly correlated. The MPs have accepted most of the
values that were suggested by their parties. At the starting
point, the interal cohesion looked much stronge among the
governing coalition parties than that those of the
opposition.
Looking back parliamentary work over the past two
years, the biggest result is the permanent existence of the
Hungarian parliament. According to the elections and to the
agreement between the HDF and the AFD parliament continues
in a stable manner, and even has become the major actor in
the political transition in Hungary.
This basic phenomenon is needs much more detailed
observations and analyses to compare it to European
standards.
1, The formal settlement of the Hungarian parliament
conforms to the democratic parliaments. The MPs have elected
the leading organs and authorities of the House, established
the permanent and temporary committees, etc. According to
the parties and factions, the Rules of the House order the
requirements and rights of the factions related to the
relations of the ...
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