The concept of civil society in Central and Eastern Europe and in Hungary

In the contemporary period, the term civil society has proved useful in many fields of re-search, the originally eighteenth century term has also been used to make new and differ-ent sense of contemporary social and political developmdiffer-ents.¹⁷⁸ in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and elsewhere in the eastern bloc as well, the language of civil society was a vital ingredient in the resistance to totalitarian regimes after the crushing of the Prague Spring;

and it has featured in most political efforts to push back or overthrow dictatorship.¹⁷⁹ Civil society is generally considered to be a major factor in the breakdowns of the com-munist regimes in east-Central europe and their subsequent democratic consolidation, but scarcely any attention has been paid to the specific characteristics of this social domain in state socialist settings. Marek Skovajsa proposes to distinguish two different types of civil society in the communist polities:

1) independent civil society corresponds to standard Western notions of civil society as an autonomous sphere of associational life between state and family.¹⁸⁰

2) the so-called broader civil society encompasses associational structures controlled by the communist state that form the infrastructure of what will become component parts of a standard civil society once transition to democracy occurs. Broader civil societies in state socialist countries can be decomposed into several segments that differ from each other in the nature of their relationship to the regime.

From Skovajsa’s point of view the broader civil society structures are more important (!) for the consolidation of civil societies after 1989 than independent civil society.¹⁸¹

In Central and Eastern Europe, major thinkers, like Václav Havel, Jacek Kuroń, Adam Michnik and Kiss János., sought to develop a theoretical framework for the concept of civil society. According to their conceptions, civil society rejects in the same way communist totalitarianism and ethnic nationalism. Their efforts – and the efforts of the civil media – in addition to the formal constraints established by the public focused on the development of a parallel alternative political and cultural publicity. they conceived the future society in the terms of the ‘third way’ that is something beyond communism and capitalism. after 1988 a significant cleavage occurred in this aspect, too: the alignment to the Western institutional patterns favoured the adoption of the topic characteristic to the debates concerning the role of civil society in the western trends.

it should also be emphasized that even in those twenty years that are presented in this chapter the concept of ‘civil society’ was not present with the same intensity in the attempts made by social sciences to describe society.

according to antonin Wagner when in 1992 a group of international scholars met in Budapest and launched the international Society for third Sector Research (iStR), the

178 Keane (2009) (n 172)

179 ibid.

180 Marek Skovajsa: Independent and Broader Civil Society in East-Central European Democratizations.

Taiwan Journal of Democracy (2008) volume 4, no.2, 47–73.

181 ibid.

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abstract term ‘third sector’ was thought to be an appropriate substitute for the many other, culture-bound labels in use at the time, such as ‘nonprofit’, ‘non-governmental’, ‘independ-ent’, ‘voluntary’.¹⁸² Two decades later ‘[the] concept of a third sector has disappeared from much of the scholarly discourse (…). In many quarters around the world the scientific com-munity has replaced third sector by civil society.’¹⁸³ Wagner assumes that by choosing the formula ‘civil and nonprofit organisation’ many scholars and practitioners try to express that they have realised the difference between the two notions (for further details regard-ing the concept of civil/nonprofit see subchapter 2.3.).¹⁸⁴ He postulates that ‘third sector’

and ‘civil society’ represent two different categories of perception or scientific paradigms, one based on a socio-economic, the other on a political frame of reference.¹⁸⁵ according to Hannah arendt, society has developed – in a long evolutionary process – forms of cor-rective collective action to counter the deficiencies of ownership- and citizenship-driven organisations: nonprofit organisations in response to the many forms of market failure and civil-society organisations as a complement to the inadequacies of the public sphere of the state and of the government.¹⁸⁶

Among the Hungarian concepts describing the phenomena of the civil sector there are many which in the recent decades ‘fell into disuse’ from both substantive law and the dogmatics, e.g. the concept of social organisation. the term social organisation is not ap-propriate anymore, because it does not include the foundations that appeared only in the eighties.¹⁸⁷ it is also problematic that this concept has a political and ideological surplus meaning, gained during the era of the socialist state.¹⁸⁸

in the period reviewed in this chapter in the Hungarian and the adopted literature¹⁸⁹ some sort of consensus emerged regarding the concept of civil society in connection with the following four points (conceptual elements):

1. Civil society is the network of independent organisations and associations of persons, which are different from the other institutions of the society due to their specific rules of establishment and operation. The definition of civil society is based on a broader understanding, including registered nonprofit non-governmental organisations (ngos), but also other formally and informally organized citizens, groups, coalitions, movements, representatives of the media and educational insti-tutions.¹⁹⁰ larsson found that the term civil society was more often than not used to refer to the sum of ngos.¹⁹¹

182 antonin Wagner: Religion, Civil Society, and the Modern Welfare State. XXI. Század – Tudományos Közlemények (2009) 21, 31.

183 ibid.

184 ibid.

185 ibid. 33.

186 ibid.

187 Kuti – Marschall (n 24) 61.

188 Jagasics Béla: A nonprofit szféra elmélete. [Theory of the Nonprofit Sphere] Nonprofit Szolgáltató Központ, Zalaegerszeg, 2001. 13.

189 Kondorosi Ferenc: Civil társadalom Magyarországon. Politika + Kultúra Alapítvány, Budapest. 1998.

45.

190 http://www.ceetrust.org/about-us/mission.html>accessed 1 November 2013

191 Mimi larsson: Civil Society in a new Democracy – a look at local Realities. DeMStaR Research

66 legalandgeneralconTenTofTheciVilSocieTybeTween 1989 and 2010 in hungary

2. it is not identical either with the government or with the private sector, although it is directly and organically connected to both.

3 the ethical principles of its existence are the enforcement of the human-civil rights, the rule of law, and the plurality of interests.

4. the civil society is destined to confront the will of the state with the values, aspira-tions and practices represented by it through the self-provided publicity and through the expression of interests. the most important means of this is ‘community par-ticipation’, the content of which in the european area is developed in great detail by the aarhus Convention and by other legal instruments, too. its three pillars are the right to information, the right to a voice and the right of appeal. these three pil-lars are complemented by the institutional system and by the package of measures elaborated for the preparation and qualification of the citizens to be able to become participants.

The above definition is, of course, not exclusive, and taking into account the social structures which differ from those of the developed world partly due to the slightly dif-ferent development path, and partly to the lateness of their establishment, one can meet quite different interpretations and emphases (the importance of the alternative meanings continues to grow substantially in the economic crisis of the recent periods). in our days we also can meet a number of experiments which try to adapt the concept of civil society to the essential requirements of the era, mainly by inserting the concepts of information society and those of the globalization.

Of course, the existing concepts, the defined phenomena and the institutional oppor-tunities provided by the law, can always be interpreted in the context of culture and that of the legal traditions which characterize the given medium. in the v4 countries, Western european civil society and civic control over the state were taken as examples to be followed.

no matter how determined civic activists may be, however, they can attain very little if the rule of law does not function properly.¹⁹² From the aspect of maintenance of the rule of law, state should be under civic control. Civic control implies the social activity of both groups of people and also individuals.¹⁹³

it must be also mentioned that ‘according to act liii of 1995 on environmental Protec-tion, local municipalities in Hungary are still considered part of civil society’.¹⁹⁴ De jure et de facto, local municipalities have comparatively little to do with civic control. Following the political changes in eastern europe around 1990, local municipalities were designed partly to counterbalance the state and partly to complement the state activity of public administration at a local level. local municipalities may currently be regarded as part of the state power [even though newly set up districts (járások) have taken over many of the former tasks of the local self-governments]. Top-down effects implemented by the state, including local municipalities, can be counteracted by bottom-up effects. the bottom-up

Report no. 7 – May 2002. p. 23.

192 Julesz Máté: Civil Society and Environmental Protection. JURA 2012/2. 113.

193 ibid. 112.

194 ibid. 113.

67 TheconTenTofThemainconcePTSafTer 1989: ciVilornonProfiT?

effects are therefore left to not too strongly positioned associations and relatively powerless individuals.¹⁹⁵

2.1.3. The concept of civil society in Europe and the impact of the Eu