ABSTRACT
From the late 1980s to the early 1990s, Hungary and the other East Central European countries underwent substantial social and economic structural changes. The introduction of wide-ranging constitutional institutions and practices led to a radically new legal institutional setting in Hungary. The discontinuity is clearest in the formal institutional framework, part of which changed structurally, part only nominally. It is an interesting question how human attitudes, behavior patterns, values, and emotions interact with institutional transformation. The assumption is that after the first years of constitutional democracy and a market economy, when the institutions were introduced by the elites, the society started to become acquainted with the new reality through the learning process of use and misuse, evaluation, and selection of the new institutions. Much was not anticipated. The process of a second awakening, or "bitter awakening," as Miklos Vasarhelyi (1995) puts it, can be the basis for a realistic long-term social strategy where new ways of communication and association, responsible individual action, selfhelp, and the reconsideration of the private-public relationship can bring the concepts of civil society back to the center of discussions. This might result in the formulation of questions neglected in the mainstream transformation processes and bring a more balanced view to the multidimensional problem of continuity and discontinuity.
