Hungary's Long Nineteenth Century: Constitutional and Democratic Traditions in a European Perspective
... See e.g. László, 2012László, , pp. 183-191. Čepulo, 2006aHeka, 2008, p. 160;Kolak Bošnjak, 2017, pp. ...
... 235-277;Gángó, 2001, p. 45;Molnár, 2001, pp. 172-183;László, 2012, pp. 203-204. ...
... Until the middle of the twentieth century, the issue of constitutionalism, the "'public law question"', was a defence of the privileges of the nobility against the foreign ruling house in Hungarian political and intellectual life. The division of power meant a balance between the king and the feudal orders (Péter, 2012). The country's form of government remained officially a kingdom after the dethronement of the Habsburgs and the short-lived republican era (1918-1920) until 1946. ...
This article discusses the thin socio-legal conceptualisation of the rule of law in Hungary. Employing a culturalist perspective, it first shows how the rule of law had a thin foundation prior to the Second World War in this country. Then, the contribution demonstrates how, contrary to previous understandings, even in the most advanced stages of rule of law building in Hungary, in the early 1990s, the resulting concept had been thin mainly focusing on institutional guarantees and legal certainty. The remaining part of the contribution then critically discusses whether and to what extent it is possible to use backsliding to frame the ongoing legal changes in Hungary.
... The crown in question was allegedly the one which the future king (later Saint) Stephen received from Pope Sylvester II as he laid the foundations of the centralised Hungarian Kingdom by converting to Christianity, but there is no reliable scientific evidence backing up this claim (Bak & Pálffy, 2020, p. 263). According to the doctrine, the crown is an ancient source of authority, a literal marker of the unity of the king and the noblemen (Péter, 2012). ...
Identity has long been a contested concept in the social sciences. In contrast, legal scholars have come late to the analytical discussion about the concept. It was only in the late 2000s that the concepts of national and constitutional identity became part of the European legal discourse. Today, national identity is a legal concept in EU law. Article 4(2) of the Treaty on European Union obliges the EU to respect the national identities of Member States. A literal understanding of this provision suggests that any domestic interpretation would be consistent with EU law. This paper challenges this view. It differentiates between national and constitutional identity. The former refers to identity that can be connected either to a community’s ethnocultural characteristics or to its political institutions and foundational constitutional values. The latter is often called constitutional identity. Yet, this article defines the term constitutional identity differently by concentrating on identity attached to a democratic constitution. Thereby, it offers a novel, constitutionalist approach. The article argues that the concept of national identity in EU law is a constitutionalist one and demonstrates, using the example of Hungary, how an ethnocultural national identity runs counter to this constitutionalist concept and how a new constitutional identity may be developed. The implication of having a constitutional identity that respects universal constitutional principles is that such a constitutional identity would be more compatible with values at the European level.
The author examines Ľudovít Štúr (1815–1856), the main representative of the Slovak national movement in the 1840s, and his personal ethos in the struggle for the rights and freedom of the Slovak ethnic group. Štúr paid great attention to the development of the ethnic, social, and political awareness of Slovaks. In this effort, the Slovenskje národňje novini ( Slovak National Newspaper ) played an important role, through which Štúr and the representatives of the Slovak national movement shaped and spread its social and political program, the aim of which was both the fight against the national oppression of the Slovaks, but also the achievement of equal rights for the Slovak ethnic group in Hungary and the Habsburg Monarchy.
This open access book asks whether there is space for particularism in a constitutional democracy which would limit the implementation of EU law. National identity claims are a key factor in shaping our times and the ongoing evolution of the European Union. To assess their impact this collection focuses on the jurisprudence of Czechia, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia, as they play an essential role in giving life to particularism. By taking particularism as the prism through which they explore the question, the contributors offer a new analytical scheme to evaluate the judicial invocation of identity. This requires an interdisciplinary approach: the study draws on comparative constitutional law, theory, comparative-empirical material and normative-philosophical perspectives. This is a fresh and thought-provoking new study on an increasingly important question in EU law.
https://www.bloomsburycollections.com/book/the-jurisprudence-of-particularism-national-identity-claims-in-central-europe/
The article presents an overview of the problem of fundamental rights during the First Czechoslovak Republic and focuses especially on the role played by the fundamental rights catalogue of the 1920 Czechoslovak Constitutional Charter. Section 2 presents the 1920 catalogue itself, methods of specification and of limitations of rights (usually by particular laws) and postulates continuity with pre-1918 Austrian and Hungarian law. Section 3 is dedicated to opinions of Czechoslovak legal doctrine (mainly Czech authors) on the role of the 1920 catalogue. Section 4 examines the case-law of the Supreme Administrative Court protecting fundamental rights and tries to show that some fundamental rights were applied directly by this Court and that direct application sometimes leads also to a limited form of constitutional review of pre-1918 law.
Through the course of the present work, will-making in Hermannstadt between 1720 and 1800 has been elevated as a canvass, upon which political, social, and economic trends intersected to leave a myriad of patterns. The present thesis has explored the collective profile of testators, as a group apart, by re-embedding it into a successive series of contextual frames.
In Hermannstadt, making a will, like any kind of engagement with authority after the Habsburg takeover at the end of the seventeenth century, indirectly reflected administrative renewal, state-building, as well as the entrenchment of political particularisms. Because will-making sometimes involved the devolution of property, and property rights were one of the essential, if not quintessential arguments in the arsenal of autonomy marshalled by the Transylvanian Saxon nation-estate, will-making was also politically potent.
An inquiry into the practices of probate and will-making showed how much variation existed within this field, compared to the rather sparse legislative framework. Because testaments were merely one potential conduit for the devolution of wealth at death, testators were examined as a sub-group of individuals whose estates were probated between 1720-1800. Among its major findings is the fact that 1 in 4 adult individuals of Lutheran or Roman Catholic faith who perished between 1753 and 1800 had their estates undergo probate. Restaments were not heavily used in Hermannstadt, as only a 3% yearly average of deceased disposed of their estate thusly. However, this share also varied significantly, reaching up to 8% in certain years.
A series of deeper but less transparent patterns largely determined the who, how, and why of testamentary behaviour: firstly, most testaments were made shortly before death, with one third written no longer than a week prior to an individual’s passing. Secondly, there was a clear class gradient to testation, as well as to probate. The elite group was under-represented among those who underwent probate, while within the testament group, the elite was slightly over-represented compared to the total decedent group. Thirdly, the thesis found that testators were much older than the overall decedent population, with most male testators still married, while most female testators widowed by the time a final disposition had been drafted. Moreover, the share of single women among female testators was nevertheless very high compared to the overall decedent group, signalling the priority of will-making for never-married women. Finally, slightly over 45% of all testaments were made by individuals (or couples) who had no bodily heirs, while only some 5% of testators had minor children. By comparison, among all probate events, only 10.5 % involved individuals without bodily heirs.
The article investigates explicit and implicit state language policies in Dualist Hungary (1867–1918), focusing on its eastern Romanian, Hungarian, and German-speaking parts. It sets the regulation and practices against the benchmark of the linguistic rights outlined in the 1868 Nationalities Act, the earliest modern, liberal language law on the continent. This document served as a central reference for contemporaries, an importance also bequeathed to historiographical accounts. Building on the applied linguist Janny Leung's analysis, the first half of the article engages with features that the Nationalities Act shared with most provisions enshrining legal multilingualism worldwide: a legitimating function, the under-specification of several key sections, and the fact that it referred to institutions on the move. Next, the article turns to more unambiguous paragraphs of the law, distinguishing between those that fit into the logic and were exploited for symbolic politics and those with more immediate, practical consequences for large sections of the citizenry. It further probes into the dispersed agency, ideological and pragmatic motives, and the center-periphery dynamics behind the (non-)implementation of the law.
Stosunki polsko-węgierskie pozostają czymś niezwykłym na skalę europejską. Choć w świadomości społeczeństw obu narodów dominuje pozytywne postrzeganie wzajemnych relacji, nie było to zjawisko stale występujące w historii. Najintensywniej zachodziło, gdy oba kraje opierały się dominacji pierwiastka germańskiego. Węgry jako pierwsze utraciły niepodległość, ulegając naciskom ze Wschodu. Również Polska podzieliła los Węgier, ulegając presji zarówno ze Wschodu, jak i Zachodu. Doświadczenia historyczne obu krajów pokazały konieczność współdziałania wobec zagrożeń płynących z obu kierunków. Warunki po 1886 roku nie sprzyjały realizacji tego założenia, choć w XIX i XX wieku Polacy i Węgrzy snuli wizje geopolityczne określające skalę możliwych przemian w Europie Środkowej. Zmiana nastąpiła po zakończeniu II wojny światowej. Niezależnie od naturalnie występujących rozbieżności w postrzeganiu własnego otoczenia, w XXI wieku trudno wskazać polską koncepcję geopolityczną, która nie uwzględnia regionalnej roli Węgier, czy też węgierską, ignorującą Rzeczpospolitą Polską.
The main thesis of this article is that nationalist political discourses emerged in Hungary more suddenly, radically and earlier than previously thought. An underlying assumption is that nationalism may be best understood through an analysis of political discourses. The sudden appeal of these kinds of political discourses demands explanation. How did the discourses of nation overwrite earlier discourses? How did they gain social, political and cultural legitimacy? How were they related to the Enlightenment? In answering these questions, we first point to the ambiguity and fluidity of new concepts and terms, such as nation, language, fatherland, patriot and foreigner. These key concepts of nationalist discourses provided innovative and independent sources of political legitimation. They enabled the frameworks of political life and thought to be re‐established. They made for an easy entry into politics because they were rooted in familiar, earlier political discourses. However, for the success of nationalism as a political paradigm, the new discourses of nation also had to make attractive ideological offers and project positive visions of the future. These offers, as we will show, were built on an appeal to ‘public happiness’. They bound together Magyarisation and nationalism and grew from an ideology into a political programme.
The author studies the 19th-century Slovak National Movement as a manifestation of the ethos of plebeian resistance against the “laws of progress” of the century in question, according to which small ethnic groups and nations were to be assimilated for the sake of the further development of more advanced nations and their cultures. A significant role in the formation of the ethos of plebeian resistance was played by Slovak folk culture, the historical context of Great Moravia, the solidarity and support of other Slavic nations living in the Habsburg monarchy, and, above all, the moral qualities of Slovak patriots. Among the most significant manifestations of this ethos was the codification of Slovak, which contributed to the formation of Slovak national identity and national ideology, the 1848–1849 Slovak Uprising, and the development of the Slovak national movement in the 1860s continuing into the mid-1870s. The aim of the 19th-century Slovak national movement was to achieve an equal position of the Slovak ethnic group among the other nations and ethnic groups living in the Habsburg monarchy, which would give rise to the free development of its creative powers and abilities as well as to the pursuit of ethical, humanistic ideals in the lives of its members.
A devastating challenge to the idea of communism as a 'great leveller', this extraordinarily original, rigorous, and ambitious book debunks Marxism-inspired accounts of its equalitarian consequences. It is the first study systematically to link the genesis of the 'bourgeoisie-cum-middle class' – Imperial, Soviet, and post-communist – to Tzarist estate institutions which distinguished between nobility, clergy, the urban merchants and meshchane, and peasants. It demonstrates how the pre-communist bourgeoisie, particularly the merchant and urban commercial strata but also the high human capital aristocracy and clergy, survived and adapted in Soviet Russia. Under both Tzarism and communism, the estate system engendered an educated, autonomous bourgeoisie and professional class, along with an oppositional public sphere, and persistent social cleavages that continue to plague democratic consensus. This book also shows how the middle class, conventionally bracketed under one generic umbrella, is often two-pronged in nature – one originating among the educated estates of feudal orders, and the other fabricated as part of state-induced modernization.
In this chapter, we introduce the theoretical background and the main concepts that are helpful for understanding policy agenda change in non-democracies and for comparing the agenda dynamics of different regimes. We rely on the punctuated equilibrium theory of policymaking as well as the politics of attention in our investigation of five distinct regimes of over 150 years of Hungarian policy history. We define the notion of policy agendas and explain why they are useful for understanding policymaking patterns in historical context. We also explain the difficulties of investigating policymaking in non-democratic contexts. The regime typology used in the book is also presented in this chapter, along with our rationale for case selection. The functional comparability of regimes is explored beyond the free-not-free dichotomy by relying on the concept of partly free and hybrid regimes. We argue that within this more general framework, Hungarian political history provides a generalizable case for testing hypotheses related to policy dynamics in non-Western and non-democratic regimes.
In this chapter, we provide information on modern political regimes in Hungary from 1867 on. During the more than 150 years since feudalism was finally overthrown in the mid-nineteenth century, Hungary experienced a slew of regime changes. Although we briefly present all regimes which existed during this period, we focus on five of them investigated in the case study chapters of this volume. Thus, we explore the pre-war proto-parliamentarism of the Dual Monarchy, the traditional authoritarian Horthy regime, the Socialist autocracy led by János Kádár, the post-communist era of liberal democracy, and the illiberal Orbán regime. We present the constitutional-institutional setup, their placement on the democracy-autocracy scale and their party systems. In subsequent chapters, we rely on this classification of regimes in defining their impact on policymaking and policy agenda dynamics.
The paper uses data from the World Values Survey and the European Values Study on individuals in Hungary and its neighbouring countries to examine the effects of political borders on different beliefs, as opposed to that of ethnic differences or historical borders. The focus on Hungary and its neighbours is explained by the fact that parts of the Hungarian ethno-linguistic community can be found in all these countries, which makes it possible to separate the effect of culture from that of the current political community. By applying a cultural gravity model which is concerned with the differences in beliefs between all possible pairs of individuals in the sample, the paper finds that out of five areas of beliefs, it is the beliefs regarding work, markets, and democracy whose differences are robustly affected by political borders, giving some support to the approach which argues that values are shaped through the dialogue occurring within a political community.*
This chapter comparatively analyses how the Albanian minorities in Kosovo and North Macedonia and the Hungarian minorities in Romania’s Transylvania, Serbia’s Vojvodina, Slovakia, and Transcarpathian Ukraine try to take advantage of the EU structure and the multi-level governance (MLG) system of the EU to boost their claims for further autonomy.
Having been invited by editor-in-chief, Professor Anne Wagner, to edit the present special issue, we decided to fulfil a longstanding wish to provide a panorama about the Hungarian Language and Law. Along with other ‘law and …’ movements, Law and Language has attracted a great deal of attention from subsequent generations of Hungarian academic lawyers, because the political transition served as a wonderful subject and context for scholarly papers and text books, for examining the putative or real influence of this or that popular social scientist or for undertaking literature overviews. Unfortunately, there have been relatively few academic papers that have sought to draw general conclusions from empirically well-founded case studies. In order to fill that important gap, this special issue has taken the opportunity to select only those interdisciplinary papers whose goals include an analysis of Hungarian legal discourse written from a critical angle and using critical empirical methodology. At the very outset of the editing process—back in 2018—for the purposes of this special issue we defined as ‘empirical’ any sufficiently coherent fact-based research that reflects the language of legal discourse. And ‘critical’ means an engagement with the values of the Rule of Law. This double methodological and axiological feature is manifest throughout the selected papers classified as ‘law and language’.
This study of the Hungarian science fiction film Szíriusz/Sirius seeks to show that stifling state control and central oversight of production practices impacted on the aesthetics of Hungarian cinema. Hungarian films of the 1940s, shot on state-owned sound stages using identikit sets and costumes, offered audiences visions of a glorious past characterized by interiority and drabness that pointed to a limit to the nostalgic imagining of Hungary's past.
The establishment of the Nemzeti Casino (National Casino) in Pest helped establish civil society in nineteenth-century Hungary. Count István Széchenyi, hoping to modernize Hungary on the English model, established the casino in 1827 as a public forum for the Hungarian nobility. By transcending caste divisions between nobles and bourgeois elites, Széchenyi's casino served as an unofficial parliament and stock exchange, and generally helped cultivate Hungarian patriotism. The Pest Casino inspired a nation-wide trend for casinos, which in turn formed a civil society in opposition to Habsburg absolutism. Yet when the casino movement spread to Hungary's minority nationalities, Jews, Slovaks, Romanians, and particularly Croats, the casino also contributed to national divisions in Hungary's ethnically diverse population that affected the course of the 1848 Revolution.
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