Hopes and illusions: The farewell to idealism in Hungarian politics

Discussing the dimensions of disappointment in Hungarian democratic politics in the past two decades after 1989, the author of this paper identifies some failed projects, beliefs and expectations. These are the belief in social market economy, the idea of 'living in truth', the promise of welfare in a linear capitalist development, Civil society and democratic political culture, and fully completed democracy. The belief in social market economy and welfare transition was countered by bad economic policies and the global economic crisis. The belief in honest speech was annuled by the leaked speech of the Prime Minister in 2006 which provided clear evidence of lying to the citizens. The belief in victorious capitalism was questioned by the effects of the recent global economic crisis which underlined the weakness of neoliberal policies and led directly to the downfall of the Hungarian government. And finally, restricted, partocracy-type of democracy survived in Hungary in which civil society have increasingly been marginalized by political parties. Current Hungarian democracy can better be described as an elitist cartel-democracy rather than full-scale, competitive, high-qulity democracy. This elitism of the regime contributes to the rise to populist and far right radical political parties.