Hungary: the Fidesz Project György Schöp$in

Fidesz successfully reconstructed the centre-right around its core ideas of conservatism and Christian Democracy, solidarity, family, nationhood and statehood

It is hard to !nd a political cleavage line as nity, even if this model was very partial and was deep as the one that divides left from right as quite incapable of solving the problem of the the one in Hungary. It has all the qualities of peasantry, of the non-Magyar minorities or of an ethnic polarisation, in the context of which developing something like a modern concept each side attributes the worst to the other and, of citizenship (cf. republicanism in France after consequently, there is no dialogue between 1871). The failed revolutions of 1918–1919, Trianon the two sides. At the deepest level, the divide is and the loss of empire shattered the pre-1914 ontological, about what constitutes good and model of modernity and saddled Hungary with evil, what is the meaning of democracy, what a minimally updated k.u.k model of elite rule. This is owed by members of society to one another. model was stable to stagnant and was de!nitively It is impossible to understand the dynamics of destroyed by the Second World War. There were Hungarian politics without recognising that it is stumbling attempts to relaunch the quest for a politically segmented society. The polarisation a Hungarian modernity after the war, but these is so far reaching that it can fairly be said to add were quashed by the communist takeover; and up to a cold civil war. At the time of writing, the much the same happened to the incipient model chances of a grand historic compromise look of modernity embodied in the 1956 revolution impossible, except that politics is the art of the (which was a revolution, despite the widespread possible, so the option should not be excluded preference for calling it an uprising, see Heller). The entirely. It is worth noting here that a sizeable post-1956 system was sustained by far-reaching section of Hungarian society has become entirely coercion and the threat of coercion, but did accept disillusioned with politics; this creates a possi- some limits to power thanks to the memory of the bility for both left and right to mobilise once failed revolution, which had, after all, scattered and future supporters by deploying an e#ective the Stalinist nomenklatura to the four winds in communications strategy. a matter of days. The cleavage has well-established historical What the Kádárist regime did was to entrench origins with its roots in the pre-First World War the power of the nomenklatura and to promote era when historic Hungary had taken major steps a kind of weak two-way relationship based on towards de!ning a national model of moder- consumerism. But the relationship was always

ASPEN REVIEW / COVER STORY 11 one of dependence by the many on the few and other history was, really, truly, law-governed after instead of overseeing the transformation of the all; and it was on their side. traditional peasantry into modern citizenship, it kept the bulk of the population in a status of The Rise of the Liberal Consensus tutelage. In some ways, Kádárism was an ironic The next step was the rise of the liberal reprise of the interwar system, in which a narrowly consensus in the 1990s (Mou#e). The post-com- based, traditionally legitimated elite (in the Webe- munist left in Hungary was looking for a home that rian sense) blocked the emergence of a modern reached beyond Hungarian society, which could civic-minded society. assure it a support base, because the left always Kádárism did much the same, except that it knew that its domestic support was insecure. was legitimated by reference to an increasingly It could win elections if a centre-right govern- unsustainable ideology, by the power of the Soviet ment had failed and (not or) if it was capable of Union as the ultimate guarantor of communism, mounting a convincing communications strategy, by Kádár’s personality and by consumerism. When relying on the confusion of the relatively unso- these failed, the system failed. And the failure phisticated Hungarian voter. The semantic and took place in slow motion, which allowed the cognitive skills of the latter were improving slowly, nomenklatura to regroup, preempt the chances of thanks to the change of generations and to expe- a revolution in 1989 (cf. Czechoslovakia or Estonia) rience, but were certainly low in the 1990s. Hence and to entrench as much of its power as it could support from abroad became crucial to sustain in the brave new world of electoral democracy, the left’s legitimacy and its self-legitimation by but without creating anything resembling an the 2000s. all-encompassing democratic infrastructure. It The encounter with the liberal consensus was, was with these antecedent processes that the thus, a fruitful one, at any rate in the short term Republic of Hungary was launched in 1989–1990. in giving meaning to a leftwing identity in the Perhaps nothing shows the extent and depth aftermath of the collapse of communism. But it of the carry-over from the previous system, the had its downside in the longer term—it made it absence of anything resembling a caesura, as the possible for the post-communist left to evade decision to amend the 1949 Stalinist Constitution having to rede!ne its identity, not to ask questions rather than write a new one. about what being leftwing meant in a democratic It was an inauspicious start to democracy that system in which it was competing with other was made worse by the lack of skills of the !rst currents and to re$ect on its responsibility for democratically elected government under the the communist years. prime minister, József Antall, and the success of This absence of a rede!nition, thanks to the the salvaging activity of the nomenklatura. The international context, had the consequence next crucial step was the recognition that the that the Hungarian left, aided and abetted by technocrats of the communist era, the democratic the remnants of the communist nomenklatura, opposition and many of the heirs of the nomen- inherited a great deal from the one party system klatura had a good deal in common, above all, intellectually and culturally, in terms of values maybe, their conviction that they and they alone and attitudes, as well as physically (in the form of had the right to rule the country. The 1990 election property, networks, money). Crucially, it saw itself result, which produced a centre-right majority, as a hegemonic elite endowed with a transcen- was—on this view—not just an aberration, but dental mission to transform Hungarian society $outed the will of history—the communist years according to its vision of modernity, a vision that had left many with the belief that somehow or was de!ned overwhelmingly by the leftwing elite’s

12 ASPEN REVIEW / COVER STORY understanding of what the West was and wanted. and statehood, with the underlying imperative Inevitably, given that this was an instrumental of (!nally) establishing a model of modernity endeavour, the West so constructed was narrowly that was in tune with historically inherited tradi- de!ned by the uses to which the elite in question tions, social aspirations and democracy (Oltay). It wanted to put it; in e#ect what we are looking at is crucial to understand that Fidesz has always had is an “imagined West” (in Anderson’s language). a clear commitment to Europe, but that this did And predictably it had less and less to do with not mean invariably accepting what the European actual Hungarian realities, whether in sociological Commission decided. terms (strati!cation, income distribution, poverty, gender roles, urban-rural cleavages, population Neo-conservatives vs. Neo-nomenklatura movements etc) or in the light of the aspirations of The task of the centre-right was always going Hungarian society, which while in no way post-ma- to be a hard one in the aftermath of communism. terial did include non-material elements, like the What, after all, did it mean that one was a conser- meanings and security of a collective identity. vative when the relevant past to be conserved was What is striking about this elite, which the communist one from which the conservatives continues to dominate Budapest cultural life, sought to distance themselves? Likewise, how though this is less true of the provinces (which could one (re)de!ne Christian Democracy when this elite rather despises anyway), is that it failed a sizeable section of society was secular and had (and still fails) to recognise that it has become rather negative associations with organised reli- a comprador elite. It has functioned in such a way gion, seeing that the churches had been heavily as to inhibit cultural creativity by its feigned or real penetrated by the communists? In a very real indi#erence to innovation, to the great diversity sense, post-communist conservatism had to be of the West, to the signi!cance of globalisation radical in order to re-establish itself as conser- (like Black Swans, cf. Taleb) and, maybe most vative—a paradox that haunted the 1990–1994 importantly, that in a democracy the role of the government. Fidesz regrouped the right around intellectual has changed irreversibly from its role a set of values that were not so strongly past-ori- as moral legislator to interpreter (Bauman). The entated, that took on the agenda of modernity left-liberal elite in Hungary performs none of these derived from Hungarian resources and which roles or only very marginally so at best. understood that it could be radical towards the One of the politically signi!cant features of the neo-nomenklatura and retain its centre-right Hungarian left has been its propensity to corrup- credentials. In one important respect Fidesz was tion. The 2002–2010 governments were widely helped by the left. The espousal of neo-liberal recognised as having come close to establishing market fundamentalism by the left allowed a rentier system, in which the resource was not Fidesz to proclaim the importance of the state a raw material, like oil or natural gas, but taxpayers’ as an instrument of solidarity, redistribution and money and whatever moneys could be siphoned security. o# from EU cohesion and structural funds. The left, given the polarisation, contested This is the cultural and political context of the each and every one of these values and did so last two decades. It is against this background that vociferously, all too often gravely distorting what the leftwing and centre-right governments of the Fidesz government was actually seeking the 2002–2012 governments should be assessed. to achieve. It is not unfair to suggest that the Fidesz successfully reconstructed the centre-right left’s concept of opposition was to aim at the around its core ideas of conservatism and Chris- destruction of the centre-right, to delegitimate tian Democracy, solidarity, family, nationhood it completely and somehow to secure a polit-

ASPEN REVIEW / COVER STORY 13 ical hegemony for itself to parallel the cultural administration may be competent and skilled hegemony that it believes that it already enjoys. technically, but what it administers is not what the It follows logically that in this belief system, the (elected) government instructs it to do. So from left can have no theory of a democratic centre- the outside, what one sees looks like a Weberian right and, likewise explains the widely propagated legal-rational bureaucracy, but the reality lies assertion that the centre-right was much the same elsewhere. The public servants are serving not as the far-right. the public, but their political masters from whom By 2010, the economic mismanagement they expect protection, advancement, status and by the Gyurcsány and Bajnai governments had access to state funds for private purposes. Note brought the country into a parlous situation. that the state machinery includes the adminis- Not only had Hungary become heavily indebted, tration of justice. but the machinery of the state was in complete A version of this deep state was constructed disarray—it barely functioned. So, for example, by the nomenklatura before and above all after the police had been very largely withdrawn 1989. The colour of the government could change, from rural areas, thereby providing the space but that did not mean that a politically indepen- for far-right vigilante activity. The taxation system dent public function would come into being. And had become wholly haphazard as a result of the as the years passed, new entrants were rapidly constant changes introduced by the government socialised into the norms of the deep state or they in a vain attempt to shore up its finances, and tax were excluded or were silenced if they remained morale hit new lows. Bajnai’s austerity package inside (Hirschman). brought new strata closer to the poverty line To that may be added the two central prob- and created fertile ground for far-right agita- lems of any modern state administration, its size tion. The unresolved Roma issue added to this, and its autonomy over society. Weber’s thinking especially in the north-east Hungarian rust-belt. was informed by his analysis of a relatively small Outmigration was on the increase, notably in the bureaucracy, but the modern state is much medical profession. EU membership facilitated larger and has a critical mass that makes it all this. In effect, whoever had won the 2010 elec- but impossible for political supervision to func- tions would have had to introduce major and tion e#ectively (Mann, Nordinger). This state of deep-seated reforms. a#airs enhances the ability of any bureaucracy to Fidesz won a two-thirds majority, and establish tacit targets of its own, its own survival Viktor Orbán, the prime minister, interpreted being the most important, that may be at odds this as a mandate for a radical transformation with both the political strategy of the government and proceeded to act along these lines. These and the bonum publicum. If we add the nomen- reforms should have been introduced after the klatura element to this mix, we can see that the regime shift of 1989, but were neglected by the Fidesz project had a formidable task if it wanted left because it would have been to their disadvan- to implement its radical reform programme. It tage; the Antall government lacked the capacity to would have to create an entirely new state appa- launch anything far-reaching; and the 1998–2002 ratus. Predictably this generated resentment and Fidesz-led government only began the reforms resistance on the part of those a#ected. but was unable to complete them. Fidesz’s task in 2010 was a major one. In e#ect, Hungarian solution to Hungarian problems what had come into being after the collapse of In brief, in 2010, a broad front transformation communism was a Hungarian version of the “deep strategy was elaborated by the new govern- state”, the Turkish derin devlet, in which the state ment. Its economic strategy, however, was less

14 ASPEN REVIEW / COVER STORY Robert Schuster

than successful. In sum, it was a growth strategy media. The Constitutional Court, which had been based on the assumption that by 2012 the Euro- supposedly emasculated, repeatedly declared pean and global economy would have recov- laws unconstitutional, thereby demonstrating ered sufficiently to pull Hungary along with it; that the checks and balances of the system were this turned out to be a misjudgement and that, working adequately. in turn, was further exacerbated by the unex- It was as if domestic and international pected harshness with which the Commission commentators were vying among themselves treated the Hungarian deficit, threatening to as to who could dream up the most extreme cut cohesion funds (this did not happen in the instances of these purported attacks by the Orbán end, but caused resentment especially as Spain government on democracy. The German-language was handled with kid gloves), only to accept press went furthest in this campaign. The Süddeut- grudgingly that the deficit would be within the sche Zeitung in its edition of the 1 May 2010, that required three percent for 2013. is, just a few days after Fidesz’s electoral victory, Government debt was still high, but was but before it actually announced any polices, brought down from somewhere over 90 percent declared that Hungary had a Fascist government. to below 80 percent—still high, but heading in the This demands an explanation. In brief, direction of manageability. It was a central tenet the Fidesz government offended against the of Orbán’s that austerity should fall not on the sacralised canons of the left-liberal consensus shoulders of the consumer, but the service sector in several ways. First, its two-thirds majority was and the multinationals. This was very unpopular in an intolerable affront to those who believed many circles, predictably. Other reforms targeted that history had ended in the victory of liberal the tax system, secondary and higher education, democracy (as they understood it). Second, the governance of religious establishments, small Fidesz’s reform programme directly contradicted and medium-sized enterprises, the justice system, conventional thinking and thereby threatened to local government and the public administra- revitalise the opposition to the liberal consensus tion. The last sought to breathe new life into the from the right, something that the consensus top-heavy, complex and frequently user-hostile believed was already on the scrapheap of bureaucracy which was all too often a drag on history. Thirdly, there were the generally leftwing entrepreneurialism, as well as being a seed-bed presuppositions and assumption-sets of the bulk of corruption. of the media, who were predictably predisposed Probably the two most controversial changes to believe the worst reading of whatever the were the new Basic Law and the media law. Fidesz government did. Fourth was and is Central They both attracted the most extreme and most Europe’s discursive deficit, that whatever was ill-founded criticism. Two examples. It was widely said in Hungarian (Czech, Polish, Estonian etc.) claimed that the new Constitution banned abor- carried much less weight than English or French. tion; it did not. Equally, it was claimed that by Fifth, the insights of postcolonial theory tell us changing the name of the country to “Hungary” that power relations within Europe are uneven from the “Republic of Hungary”, the new Consti- and that large polities, especially those with tution had thereby changed the form of the state; a colonial past, have a tendency to insist that line three of the Constitution reads, “the Hungarian only their way is correct and that smaller states state is a republic”. There were countless other are deviant when they behave differently. Finally, instances of ignorance and deliberate misinterpre- there is the half-explicit universalist ideology tation, aided and abetted by the opposition which of the liberal consensus, that there is a single had excellent connections with the international humanity and in so far as there isn’t, there

ASPEN REVIEW / COVER STORY 15 should be one—the slide from the descriptive for the consensus. Bauman’s moral legislation lives to the prescriptive is so slick as to escape the on. Hungary under Fidesz is a constant challenge eye. In effect, the consensus does not accept its to this project, hence the unremitting campaign own contingency, implicitly denies that it too to eliminate it. is a product of history and believes that its values cannot be challenged by a state that is in Europe and is a member of the European Union. Fidesz, G Y Ö RGY SCHÖ PFLIN by rejecting this universalism and insisting on is a Hungarian academic and politician. He is a Member of the a specifically Hungarian solution to Hungarian European Parliament for Fidesz problems, was guilty of the unpardonable sin and the European People’s Party. of going against the laws of history. Photo: The Fidesz reform programme is far from over. Whatever its fate, the challenges to it at home and abroad have nothing to do with constructive criticism, but are aimed at burying it, at treating it as dangerous anomaly and making the world safe

R EFERENCES Anderson, Benedict 1991 Imagined Communities 2nd edition, Mann, Michael, 1984, “"e Autonomous Power of the State: its (London: Verso). Origins, Mechanisms and Results”, Archives Européennes Bába, Iván, 2011 !e Hungarian Transition: Parties and Movements de Sociologie, Vol.25, pp.185-213 www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/ in the Political Regime Change in Hungary between 1987 and faculty/mann/Doc1.pdf (downloaded 15 December 2012) 1994, (Budapest: Demokratikus Átalakulásért Intezet). Mouffe, Chantal 2005 “"e ‘End of Politics’ and the Challenge Bába, Iván 2007 Békes átmenet? Adalékok a kialkudott of Right-wing Populism” in Francisco Panizza, Populism and rendszerváltoztatáshoz [Peaceful transition? Addenda to the the Mirror of Democracy (London: Verso). bargained system shi!] (Budapest: Argumentum) Nordinger, E. A. 1981. On the Autonomy of the Democratic State Bába, Iván, ed. 2011 Felgyorsult történelem: 18 beszélgetés (Cambridge: Harvard) a szocializmus bukásáról [Accelerated History: Eighteen Oltay, Edith 2012 Fidesz and the Reinvention of the Hungarian interviews about the fall of socialism] (Budapest: Center-Right (Budapest: Századvég). Demokratikus Átalakulásért Intezet) Schöpflin, György 2011 “Hungarian Realities”, http://schopflin- Bauman, Zygmunt 1987 Legislators and Interpreters (Cambridge: iroda.blogspot.hu/2012/03/hungarian-realities.html Polity). ((downloaded 15 December 2012) Heller, Ágnes and Ferenc Fehér, 1983 Hungary 1956 Revisited: the Taleb, Nassim Nicholas 2007, !e Black Swan: the Impact Message of a Revolution—a Quarter Century A"er (London: of the Highly Improbable (London, Penguin). Harper Collins) Weber, Max 2012 Collected Methodological Writings, (editors) Hirschman, Albert 1970 Exit, Voice and Loyalty (Harvard: Hans Henrik Bruun and Sam Whimster Translated by Hans Harvard University Press). Henrik Bruun. (London: Routledge.)

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