Hungary

The recent history of Hungarian politics needs to be divided into three stages in order to understand the scope for women’s participation in parliamentary, and more generally, political life. From 1949 to 1989, although there were parliamentary elections to the national assembly, Hungary was not a parliamentary democracy. The main political institution, the communist party – known initially as the Hungarian Workers’ Party, MDP, and from 1956 called the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party, MSZMP – wielded centralised power. The national assembly met for between one and three days each year. Decision-making rested with the central committee of the party and lawmaking was conducted through the Presidential Council. Although a 30 per cent quota for women existed, it was not honoured. Only in the 1970s did women’s representation hover around 24 per cent, and finally in 1980, women made up 30 per cent of the national assembly (Table 3.1). These female representatives, were chosen for parliamentary seats by communist party leaders, ‘legitimised’ through elections that were a façade rather than true democratic contests. Between 1989 and 1990, Hungary moved from being a centralised one-party state to a democratic multi-party system. This peaceful transition had its roots in the mid-1980s as the political regime began to liberalise. Parliamentary reforms in 1988 meant that the legislature began to operate as a place of scrutiny and debate. In 1989 Hungary was proclaimed a parliamentary republic and the first free elections took place in March 1990. In the third period, from 1990 onwards, Hungary consolidated liberal democratic institutions and practices and in 2004 became a full member of the enlarged European Union. In the midst of these monumental political changes over a relatively short period of time, women’s representation in the national assembly declined to a low of seven per cent. The story of the marginalization of women from political power is inextricably bound up with Hungary’s social traditions and political practices.