Captured by State and Church: Concerns about Civil Society in Democratic Hungary

Kover Agnes ()
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Kover Agnes: Department of Social Work, School of Social Sciences, Eötvös Loránd University, Pazmany Peter setany 1/A, Budapest 1117, Hungary Sociology, Indiana State University, Terre Haute, Indiana 47809, USA

Nonprofit Policy Forum, 2015, vol. 6, issue 2, 187-212

Abstract: This paper conceptualizes challenges and dangers that have impacted Hungary’s civil society (third sector, nonprofit sector, voluntary sector) over the past decade. The cases presented illustrate the fragility of both the civil sector and its underlying democracy in Hungary. The boundaries between state and nonprofits reveal pervasive paternalistic/cliental processes stemming from the period between the two world wars and pre-1989 experience of public–private relations and issue management. On the one hand, old regime strategies have survived and been maintained by the overt and unreflected dependency of the civil sector on the state. Secondly, the boundaries between church organizations and civil nonprofits present a politically mis(non)managed process that has resulted in a fading role of non-church NGOs in the field of social service. This process can be traced back to an unequal and biased treatment of service provider organizations in an allegedly sector-neutral environment. Both cases illuminate operations that have resulted in a significant dismantling of the civil sector and a consequent deterioration of democracy in Hungary.

Keywords: civil society; democratization; public policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
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DOI: 10.1515/npf-2014-0010

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