ABSTRACT
For the first two decades of communist party rule in Hungary, civil society was severely restricted to the realm of private life and was clearly separated from formal political activity. Economic activity was subordinated to central bureaucratic management, and consumption and collective social life came under the general regulation of the state. After 1968, however, the situation changed slightly as a result of various economic reforms. Within the state-managed economy a gradual trend took place towards more decentralized forms of decision-making, giving greater influence to enterprise managers in relation to ruling party and state officials. At the same time restrictions on small-scale private economic activity were gradually relaxed, leading to the development of what became known as the ‘second economy’. However, although the economic changes expanded the scope for civil contracts, they did relatively little to expand the scope for citizens to engage in political activity outside the confines of the party and the institutions under its control. As Szoboszlai has commented, in this period the ‘so-called second economy and an aborted civil society seemed to substitute for political society’.1 Nevertheless, compared with the period before the
1970s, there were significant developments in civil society. These lay first in a slight relaxation of restrictions on independent forms of association, and in the evolution of a peculiar form of interest reconciliation mechanism aimed at channelling social interests into the central decisionmaking process.
