Potentials of Direct Democracy in an Extremely Majoritarian System: The Case of Hungary (original) (raw)
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Direct democracy in Hungary: from popular sovereignty to popular illusion
Since 1989 in Hungary there have been organised six national referenda related to twelve questions. Based on the content of the questions raised, one can draw a line of evolution in the history of the institution. In 1989 and in 1990 the questions were closely connected to the big political issues of the transition and democracy-building: the timing and procedure of the election of the head of the state and symbolic questions related to the state-socialist period. The 1997 referendum regarded the NATO membership, while the 2003 referendum the EU accession – therefore this period was in close connection with the country's main strategic aims. The 2004 and 2008 referenda were about core political questions – therefore functioned as instruments of outsourced daily political debate between government and opposition. Moreover, during this period sixteen questions were set on the National Assembly's agenda based on succesful popular initiatives. Since 2010 the legislative and the executive power's approach to the classic tools of direct democracy has radically transformed. The Government started to use frequently the so called 'national consultation' in important legislative issues, including the constitution-drafting process. This tool has neither constitutional foundations nor legislative background in the Hungarian legal order. Moreover, it lacks the possible benefits of direct democracy and bears the typical weaknesses of it. Besides, based on the new Fundamental Law of Hungary (2011) and the new Act on Electoral Procedure (2013) the possibility of a successful national referendum has been greatly restricted: there is prescribed as a necessary condition for validity the participation of the majority of the voters in the referendum. This condition was barely reached twice in the preceding decades. Furthermore, the institution of popular initiative is not part of the legal system anymore. The latest events related to direct democracy bear more worrisome developments. The Government initiated a referendum which adressed the European Union related to its competence to decide on settlement of migrants in Hungary – a question which is obviously excluded from the possible topics of national referenda based on the constitutional background and European law. The National Election Committee authenticated the question and its decision was surprisingly upholded by the Curia (the Supreme Court of Hungary). The seventh national referendum in the history of the democratic Hungary (on October 2, 2016) will symbolize a new stage in the line evolution of national referenda, the institution itself becoming an instrument of populist governmental politics. All in all, these tendencies are demonstrating that the classic tools of direct democracy are loosing their relevance in practice while populist instruments are used more frequently. That is why it is of key importance to identify precisely the set of constitutional requiremets related to the genuine exercise of direct democracy and to separate other populist political instruments from these. The aim of the paper is to contribute to the contemporary debate related to this challenge.
Direct Democracy in Hungary (1989-2016): from Popular Sovereignty to Popular Illusion
2017
Since 1989, there have been organized seven national referenda related to thirteen questions in Hungary. Based on the content of the questions raised, one can draw a line of evolution in the history of the institution: the symbolic political issues of the transition and democracy-building were followed by the country's main strategic aims. Later, national referenda functioned as instruments of outsourced daily political debate between government and opposition, while at present-based on practice-national referendum can be considered as a typical instrument of plebiscitarian direct democracy. Moreover, during this period, sixteen questions were set on the National Assembly's agenda based on successful popular initiatives. Since 2010, the legislative and the executive power's approach to direct democracy has radically transformed. The Government started to use frequently the so-called national consultation in important legislative issues-a misleading communication tool which has no legal background. Besides, based on the new Fundamental Law of Hungary (2011) and the new Act on Electoral Procedure (2013), the possibility of a successful national referendum has been greatly restricted: there is prescribed as a necessary condition for a valid result that the majority of the voters should cast a valid vote. This condition was barely reached twice in the preceding period. Furthermore, the institution of popular initiative is not part of the legal system anymore. These trends are demonstrating that the classic tools of direct democracy are losing their relevance, while populist instruments are used more frequently in practice. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the contemporary debate related to this challenge .
Central European Papers
The aim of this paper is to identify the trends and direction of Hungarian referenda-related legislation and their interpretation. The paper tries to determine the beneficiaries of the different models-for example the political elite (governmental or opposition parties), emerging political groups, or voters as non-professional (occasional) partakers of politics. The paper relies on the methodology of the science of constitutional law and it applies temporal comparison: it gives an overview of the changes in the regulation of national referenda in Hungary since the change of political regime. During three decades of the Third Hungarian Republic, the national referendum's constitutional role and model changed several times owing to the amendment of the relevant legislation and the changes in the Constitutional Court's and the Hungarian Supreme Court's-called Curia-jurisprudence. A clear trend may be identified from the regulation of referenda: the clearly "referendum-friendly" 1989 rules were amended to become mainly "parliament-friendly". It must be noted, that while the Hungarian constitutional system (unlike German or US system) still contains the institution of national referendum, the citizen-initiated "referendum threat" is decreasing tendentiously. Meanwhile, the political elite, especially the Government and the strongest parties have the greatest chance of organizing a successful referendum. The jurisprudence of the Constitutional Court and the Curia did not follow such a clear trend as the regulation. Both these bodies' jurisprudence contains decisions in favour of referenda and against this form of direct democracy, so their jurisprudence is in a constant flux.
Keywords: direct democracy, Hungary, Ignác Martinovics, Hungarian Jacobins, Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, territorial plebiscite, Sopron plebiscite, political transformation, "Four-Yes Referendum", Constitutional Court, the relation of direct and representative democracy, Basic (Fundamental) Law of Hungary