ABSTRACT
Although parties have been central actors in the democratic transition process in Hungary (Ågh 1994), parliamentary party groups have not yet been analysed in a complex way. Thus, the aim of this chapter is to examine the institutionalisation process of PPGs in the context of party formation. We shall see that, initially, PPGs and parties mutually strengthened each other’s development. Later their interrelatedness became manifest in party splits and new party formations. Finally, we shall conclude that the evolving strong parliamentary party groups have formed the basis for the professionalisation of new party elites and the PPG ‘environment’ has always had a certain impact on the ‘fate’ of parties. By introducing the development and the organisational characteristics of PPGs we shall strengthen the hypothesis that parties in Hungary, as in other post-communist countries, mainly exist as elite frameworks and they are weak in their representative and linkage functions (Kopecký 1995).
