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Difference between revisions of "Hungary"
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==Government and Society of Hungary== | ==Government and Society of Hungary== | ||
''Government and society'' | |||
*Overview | |||
The modern political system in Hungary contained elements of autocracy throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, but in the period between 1867 and 1948 it had a functioning parliament with a multiparty system and a relatively independent judiciary. After the communist takeover in 1948, a Soviet-style political system was introduced, with a leading role for the Communist Party, to which the legislative and executive branches of the government and the legal system were subordinated. In that year, all rival political parties were abolished, and the Hungarian Social Democratic Party was forced to merge with the Communist Party and thus form the Hungarian Workers’ Party. After the Revolution of 1956 it was reorganized as the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party, which survived until the fall of communism in 1989. | |||
*Constitutional framework | |||
In 1989 dramatic political reforms accompanied the economic transformation taking place. After giving up its institutionalized leading role, the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party abolished itself (with the exception of a small splinter group that continues under its old name) and reshaped itself into the Hungarian Socialist Party. In October 1989 a radical revision of the 1949 constitution, which included some 100 changes, introduced a multiparty parliamentary system of representative democracy, with free elections. The legislative and executive branches of the government were separated, and an independent judicial system was created. The revision established a Constitutional Court, elected by Parliament, which reviews the constitutionality of legislation and may annul laws. It also provides for an ombudsman for the protection of constitutional civil rights and ombudsmens’ groups for the protection of national and ethnic minority rights. | |||
The 1989 constitution was amended repeatedly, and a controversial new constitution, pushed through by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s centre-right government, was promulgated in January 2012. Among other significant recent revisions of Hungarian law was a change in 2010 that allowed nonresidents to attain citizenship if they could prove their Hungarian ancestry and mastery of the Hungarian language. | |||
Supreme legislative power is granted to the unicameral National Assembly, which elects the president of the republic, the Council of Ministers, the president of the Supreme Court, and the chief prosecutor. The main organ of state administration is the Council of Ministers, which is headed by the prime minister. The president, who may serve two five-year terms, is commander in chief of the armed forces but otherwise has limited authority. The right of the people to propose referendums is guaranteed. | |||
*Local government | |||
Hungary is divided administratively into 19 megyék (counties) and into cities, towns, and villages. Budapest has a special status as the capital city (főváros), headed by a lord mayor (főpolgármester) and divided into 22 districts, each headed by its own mayor (polgármester). Local representative governments are responsible for protection of the environment, local public transport and utilities, public security, and various economic, social, and cultural activities. Public administration offices, whose heads are appointed by the minister of the interior, supervise the legality of the operations of local governments. | |||
*Justice | |||
Justice is administered by the Supreme Court, which provides conceptual guidance for the judicial activity of the Court of the Capital City and the county courts and for the local courts. A chief prosecutor is responsible for protecting the rights of citizens and prosecuting acts violating constitutional order and endangering security. The constitutionality of the laws is overseen by the new Constitutional Court, which began operation in 1990. A constitutional amendment in 1997 called for the addition of regional appellate courts, which came into force in the early 21st century. | |||
*Political process | |||
Parliamentary elections based on universal suffrage for citizens age 18 and over are held every four years. Under the mixed system of direct and proportional representation, candidates may be elected as part of national and regional party lists or in an individual constituency. In the latter case, candidates must gain an absolute majority in the first round of the elections or runoff elections must be held. Candidates on territorial lists cannot be elected if their party fails to receive at least 5 percent of the national aggregate of votes for the territorial lists. | |||
About 200 political parties were established following the revision of the constitution in 1989, but only six of them became long-term participants in the country’s new political life after the first free elections (1990): the Hungarian Democratic Forum, Alliance of Free Democrats, Independent Smallholders’ Party, Christian Democratic People’s Party, Federation of Young Democrats (Fiatal Demokraták Szövetsége; Fidesz), and Hungarian Socialist Party—the latter being the party of reformed ex-communists. The same six parties were returned to Parliament in 1994, and for the following decade most of them remained represented in the legislature. The hard-core communists reemerged in 1992 as the Workers’ Party, while the right-wing Hungarian Justice and Life Party was created in 1993, when it split from the Hungarian Democratic Forum. Fidesz appended Hungarian Civic Party (later changed to Hungarian Civic Alliance) to its name, and between 1998 and 2002 it became the dominant party and formed the government. The Christian Democrats organized the Centre Party alliance in 2002 but failed to make it into the Parliament. | |||
*Security | |||
The Hungarian armed forces consist of ground forces, air and air-defense forces, a small navy that patrols the Danube, the border guard, and police. Military service was compulsory for males over the age of 18 until 2004, when Hungary established a voluntary force. (The term of duty varies according to the branch of service but is typically less than one year.) The armed forces are not permitted to cross the state frontiers without the prior consent of Parliament. In the decade between 1989 and 1999, the armed forces declined from 155,000 members to just under 60,000, but, at the same time, they also underwent a process of modernization to prepare Hungary to join the Western military alliance NATO. Membership was finally achieved in March 1999, eight years after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, of which Hungary was a member. | |||
*Health and welfare | |||
Following World War II, health care improved dramatically under state socialism, with significant increases in the number of physicians and hospital beds in Hungary. By the 1970s, free health care was guaranteed to every citizen. Higher-quality private health care, permitted but limited before the transition period, grew in importance from the early 1990s. | |||
A broad range of social services was provided by the communist government, including child support, extensive maternity leave, and an old-age pension system for which men became eligible at age 60 and women at age 55. This costly welfare system was a heavy burden on the country’s finances. At the end of the communist era, Hungary ranked 20th among European countries in terms of per capita GDP, but it was 12th in social spending. Social insurance expenditure, which constituted 4 percent of GDP in 1950, had risen to one-fifth of the GDP by 1990. The Hungarian system had become one of the most expensive in the world, yet there was considerable resistance to efforts to scale it back. | |||
When health insurance was reformed in 1992, it retained its all-encompassing nature and was also made mandatory. At the same time, however, this reform required both employers and employees to contribute to the system’s upkeep, as well as to pension plans. The government’s move in 2003 to privatize almost half of its health care institutions was rejected in the following year by popular referendum. The private financing of health care slowly increased with the introduction of co-payments for some prescription medications, office visits, and hospital stays. | |||
*Housing | |||
Housing shortages were constant in Hungary for decades after World War II, despite the million housing units built by the state in urban centres from 1956 to 1985. In the immediate postwar period, Hungary maintained an average of three persons per room, a rate that eventually dropped to one per room by the mid-1990s. Moreover, by the late 1980s, electricity was available for nearly the entire population (it had been in fewer than half of Hungarian homes in 1949, when apartment houses were nationalized), and running water was available for more than three-fourths of homes. The construction of private homes, which had increased in the 1960s and ’70s, constituted more than four-fifths of all construction by the mid-1990s, as housing became part of the market economy. | |||
In the 1990s, as the cost of home ownership and rents soared, the housing market became increasingly polarized. The lower class continued to live in shabby, prefabricated, and often deteriorated apartments, while the upper class occupied expensive apartments or villas that approximated Western standards both in their construction and in their internal outfitting. High-quality housing was bought not only by Hungary’s nouveaux riches but also by many Westerners, among them a significant number of permanent or seasonal repatriates. | |||
'''Education''' | |||
*GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS | |||
Ever since the start of obligatory universal education initiated by the Law of 1868, Hungary followed the German system of education on all levels. This included four, then six, and finally eight years of elementary schooling and—for a select few, after the first four years of this basic education—eight years of rigorous gymnasium (gimnázium) studies that prepared the students for entrance to universities. These universities were also organized along the German model, with basic degrees after four or five years, followed for those in the humanities and sciences by the doctorate based on a modest dissertation. Those wishing to become a member of the professorate also had to go through the process of “habilitation” (habilitáció), which required the defense of a more significant dissertation based on primary research. | |||
All this changed after the communist takeover of Hungary following World War II. In 1948 schools were nationalized, and the elitist German style of education was replaced by a Soviet-style mass education, consisting of eight years of general school (általános iskola) and four years of secondary education (középiskola). The latter consisted of college-preparatory high schools that approximated the upper four years of the gimnázium as well as of the more numerous and diverse vocational schools (technikumok) that prepared students for technical colleges or universities but in most instances simply led directly to mid-level jobs. This system of education survived until the 1990s, when the fall of communism resulted in a partial return to the traditional educational system. While much of the Soviet-inspired 8 + 4 system is still intact, it now competes with the 6 + 6 and the 4 + 8 systems, wherein the six- or eight-year gimnázium tries to replicate the intellectually more exclusive pre-Marxist Hungarian educational system. | |||
During the 1990s the uniformity of the communist educational system was further shattered by the introduction of private secondary education. Nationalized religious schools were returned to churches and religious institutions, and various new private secular schools were created. Between the mid-1980s and mid-1990s, the number of secondary schools increased from 561 to 887, even though the student-age population had declined from 1.3 million to just under 1 million. | |||
Mass industrialization obliged women to take outside jobs, resulting in the creation of an extensive system of preschools and kindergartens. Attendance was not mandatory, but, given that in many homes both parents worked, most children attended. Up to the mid-1990s, education was free from the kindergarten through the university level and also obligatory from age 6 to 16. At that time a modest tuition was introduced at the state universities and a much steeper one at the increasing number of private schools and institutions of higher learning. | |||
*HIGHER EDUCATION | |||
Preparation for higher education became virtually universal by the early 1980s, and by the end of that decade about one-fifth of those between ages 18 and 24 were enrolled in one of Hungary’s numerous institutions of higher learning, many of them founded or reorganized after World War II. This growth continued even after the communist regime had ended; in 1990 there were only 70,000 full-time and 100,000 part-time college and university students, but by the first decade of the 21st century the number of full- and part-time students had risen to almost 400,000. | |||
There was a major reorganization of Hungarian higher education in 2000. Prior to then, traditional major institutions of higher learning were Loránd Eötvös University of Budapest, Lajos Kossuth University of Debrecen, Janus Pannonius University of Pécs, Attila József University of Szeged, the Technical University of Budapest, and the Budapest University of Economic Sciences. There were also dozens of specialized schools and colleges throughout the country. In 2000 most of these specialized colleges were combined with older universities or with each other to form new “integrated universities.” The result was the birth of the renewed Universities of Debrecen, Pécs, and Szeged; the reorganized Universities of Miskolc and Veszprém; and the newly created St. Stephen University of Gödöllő, University of West Hungary of Sopron, and University of Győr. The main exception to this integration process was in the city of Budapest, where Loránd Eötvös University, Semmelweis Medical University, Technical University, and the University of Economic Sciences and Public Administration (renamed Corvinus University in 2005) remained stand-alone universities. | |||
In the period after the fall of communism, several private and religious universities were established, including the Central European University of Budapest, founded by the Hungarian American philanthropist George Soros as an English-language postgraduate institution where the students are introduced to Sir Karl Popper’s idea of an “open society.” The best-known religious institutions include Péter Pázmány Catholic University and Gáspár Karoli Reformed University. In addition, some of the specialized colleges of music, fine arts, theatre, and military arts were elevated to university status. | |||
The postcommunist period also saw the restructuring of the university diplomas. Regular degrees remained, but the university doctorate and the Soviet-inspired “candidate” (kandidátus)—a research degree offered by the Academy of Sciences—were abolished and replaced by an American-style doctorate. At the same time, the “habilitation” was reintroduced as a prerequisite for university professorships. The science doctorate (tudományok doktora), offered by the Academy of Sciences since 1950 and known as the “great doctorate” (nagydoktorátus), remained in force. But, whereas previously it was awarded on the basis of a comprehensive dissertation, it is now given in recognition of major life accomplishments by a very select group of scholars and scientists. | |||
==Culture Life of Hungary== | ==Culture Life of Hungary== | ||
==History of Hungary== | ==History of Hungary== | ||