ABSTRACT
This contribution uses the question of the presidency of the republic, the most divisive and consequential issue of Hungary’s round table negotiations of 1989, to explore the process rather than the outcome of ‘negotiated revolution’. Political debate is necessarily something other than the exchange of reasoned argument. But the clear contrast between the bi-polar political divide within the Opposition Round Table (ORT) and their multifaceted and sometimes inconsistent lines of argument over policy suggests that, on this contentious issue at least, politicking was at least as important as politics.
