Enabling Environments for Civic Movements and the Dynamics of Democratic Transition - Hungary

Period of democratic transition: 1990
Pro-democracy civic movement: present

Hungary fought as a German ally during World War II but was taken over by Germany after an unsuccessful attempt to switch sides. Despite joint Allied sovereignty after the war, the Communist Party soon took control. The Soviet Union crushed an uprising by Hungarians seeking to liberalize the political and economic system in 1956, an event that remains prominent in the country's consciousness. Subsequent Communist policy was relatively liberal compared with that imposed on the rest of the Soviet bloc.

In the late 1980s, the country's economy was in sharp decline, and the ruling Hungarian Socialist Worker's Party came under intense pressure to accept reforms. By 1987, activists within the party and the bureaucracy, as well as intellectuals in Budapest, began to pressure for change and organized their own groups. Among the most prominent opposition groups were the FIDESZ student movement, the Hungarian Democratic Forum, and the Liberal Alliance of Free Democrats. Independent civic groups and trade unions emerged in 1988 and expanded in 1989 among growing regional democratic political ferment. While no single, formal umbrella coalition was formed, major civic and political groups worked together and jointly organized several important mass protests in 1989. In addition to these actions, reform began from within the government; in 1988, Parliament adopted a number of democratic reforms, including freedom of assembly and press, and a new electoral law. The following year, the Central Committee endorsed a multiparty system for Hungary. Civic pressure and government actions combined in Hungary to create one of the smoothest transitions in the former Soviet states when it held its first free, multiparty parliamentary elections in 1990.

Since 1990, government control has passed freely and fairly between left- and right-leaning parties. The country has followed an aggressive path of reform and pursued the popular cause of European integration.