ABSTRACT
In the near decade and a half since the collapse of communism and the transition to multiparty parliamentary democracy, Hungary has seen four freely elected parliaments and four governments that have emerged from each. All governments have been coalition governments, even when, in one cycle, this was numerically unnecessary. No government ever fell as the result of a vote of no confidence but no party has retained power at election time, with alterations in power every four years from nationalist-conservative to the centre-left, to populist-conservative, and back to centre-left. This brief experience with parliamentary democracy has also seen sharp conflict between the government and opposition parties in the legislature, witnessed the fragmentation and disintegration of political parties in parliament, jurisdictional conflicts between the prime minister and the nominally weak president, and the profound influence of the Constitutional Court on executive–legislative relations.
