Content area
Full Text
ABSTRACT
This paper tries to point out that the three consecutive crises (the triple crisis) in the New Member States (NMS) have claimed the heavy social price that has been responsible for the drastic "backsliding of the new democracies". These countries underwent a transformation recession in the early nineties and, once members of the EU, they fell into the post-accession crisis, followed immediately by the global crisis. Originally, their populations reacted to the collapse of the authoritarian rule with a "revolution of high expectations", so under the label of democracy they expected a Western welfare state "overnight", thus after Twenty Years the disappointment has been tragic. This paper approaches the crisis of democracy in NMS from the side of the triple crisis in general and from that of Hungary in particular. Although it would be very tempting to generalize on the NMS backsliding, the focus of this paper is on "the country I know best", i.e. on Hungary with its idiosyncrasies.
KEYWORDS: Hungary, triple crisis, democracy, rule of law, New Member States
Introduction: The triple crisis in the New Member States
In Hungary the crisis of the democracy has taken place most markedly in both aspects of democracy, i.e. in the formal democratic institutions (procedural democracy with rule of law and the checks and balances system) and in their public performance (quality of democracy with the criteria of good governance). Therefore Hungary may offer itself as a worst case scenario, even when looking back until 2010, but it is much more so, if the period the incumbent Orbán government has also been taken into account. The Democracy Index 2011 has put it clearly: "Some negative trends have recently got worse. Hungary perhaps the prime example among the EU's new member states in the region." (Dl, 2011: 21). The Freedom House Report, Nations in Transit 2013 has supported this view when it has evaluated the backsliding of democracy in the "New EU States": "the most prominent example of this phenomenon may be Hungary, whose Nation in Transit rates have weakened more since EU accession than those of any other member state, with the largest decline in 2010 and 2011. Under the leadership of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán the conservative Fidesz party has used its parliamentary...