The Hungarian Semi-Loyal Parties and their Impact on Democratic Consolidation

The existence of various semi-loyal or anti-system parties on the fringes of the political party system is a relatively minor but nonetheless frequently debated issue in the literature concerning democratic consolidation. In almost all democracies one may find parties that transgress the constitutionally established boundaries of democratic consensus or at least test the tolerance of democracy. However, such political groups are the most problematic in countries where only a comparatively short time has elapsed after the transition from dictatorship. Democratic practices have not yet become entrenched in the political culture in these countries to the degree necessary for rendering society immune to the types of challenges such groups represent. In Spain it took over a decade for the post-Franco Right to become "domesticated," i.e., to accept democracy in both theory and everyday practice and to relinquish attempts to reinstate the previous regime. In France and Italy an even longer period was necessary for the communist parties to fundamentally rethink their former revolutionary identity and find their places in a pluralist democracy.
The present discussion examines some important consequences of the fact that such parties exist in Hungary today.