The crisis of the public in the "East"

ECPR Joint Sessions, 10-15 April 2012 Workshop Re-defining the Public Workshop directors: Annette Zimmer (University of Münster) Marta Reuter (Stockholm University) Paper proposal - Abstract The crisis of the public in the “East”: The case of Hungary as the worst case scenario Attila Ágh (Corvinus University Budapest) There has recently been a fierce “public” debate on the “public” in the new member states (NMS). Accordingly, there has also been a very large and very attractive academic literature on all “public” related issues in and on these countries. Therefore, this paper does not deal so much with the international discussions of the “public”, but it concentrates on its current crisis in the “East”. The East of the EU27 is the East-Central Europe (ECE) - or in a larger context the new member states (NMS) - that has generated its own theoretical problems and the related conceptual frameworks in the countries concerned in particular, and also in the EU literature in general. The paper analyzes first of all the special case of Hungary where this “crisis of the public”, with the drastic “backsliding of the new democracies” in all dimensions of the “public performance”, has appeared in the sharpest and deepest way. The deep transformations of the systemic change have produced a radical re-interpretation and re-definition of the public in ECE. This re-definition of the public is partly common with the other EU member states as a parallel process, but it differs also from the EU mainstream to a great extent as a characteristic divergent process. The crisis of public in ECE has taken place in both aspects of the formal democratic institutions (the checks and balances system) and their governance performance (the criteria of good governance). Two paradoxes have to be discovered behind these changes. First, externally, there has been a sharp contrast between the EU performance pressure demanding strong centralization from the NMS as urgent effective actions in the Europeanization adjustment process on one side and the EU formal demand for the decentralization of the political system as a whole on the other. Second, internally, there has been an age-old tradition of overconcentration of power in the ECE states that has been kept in reality despite some decentralization in the formal-legal terms because of the Europeanization process. Moreover, the recurring serious fiscal problems have even strengthened the recentralization efforts, and this negative tendency has culminated in the recent global crisis. This paper approaches “the crisis of the public” from the side of the performance crisis as the governance deficit in the ECE countries, although tries to discuss it in the larger context of the backsliding of democracy with its focus is on the “bad governance”, including the failure of the public sector in proper service delivery. The new democracies have not yet been able so far to organize a well performing state or public sector. It has generated a widespread public discontent, and, its repercussions have undermined the support for democracy and EU membership to a great extent. Hence, two decades after the systemic change it is necessary to launch a serious investigation about the crisis of the public in the “East” as a “health check” by reconstructing its entire controversial history in a “medical report”. The paper deals with the three main types of the public that have been radically transformed in ECE after the systemic change in the last two decades: Public 1 as the political community (the political participation or activity in general, and the electoral turnout in particular, as the public voice). Public 2 as the socio-economic community (the economically active population organized by the developmental state as the public service). Public 3 as the cultural community (the common identity on the several levels of identity: local, national and EU, and satisfaction with the system as the public opinion). The paper tries to point out that the three subsequent crises – transformation crisis, post-accession crisis and global crisis - in ECE have produced their high social price, which has been responsible for all deformations of the public. It analyzes the social and national populisms in ECE as the traps of public mobilization and gives large empirical material about the socio-economic and political impacts of these three crises on the Hungarian developments, having been the worst case scenario in ECE. The paper concludes that the biggest contrast in the ECE countries is between the procedural and performance democratization. Namely, the EU institution transfer led to the “procedural democratization” that has to be understood first of all in the institutional-administrative dimension, whereas later the EU policy transfer should have led to the “performance democratization” but it has hardly taken place so far. Most people accept that at formal-legal level there is a democratic order in their country concerned but they think that it works with a very low performance (see e.g. Pew Foundation, 2009). The bad governance as a poor steering of the society has to be radically changed. Since the political and economic systemic changes have been seriously damaged by the missing social consolidation, the ECE countries have to restart the whole exercise by focusing on the social systemic change. After the first patient-passive and the second aggressive-active decade the main issue is how to re-conquer the public in ECE. Indeed, the strategy of “reculer pour mieux sauter” (to draw back in order to make a better jump) may be the best way out of the present socio-economic and ideological crisis. After the failure of the top-down approach it is high time to discover the bottom-up approach as the social reorganization of the public by the civil society movements and organized interests. References: Ambrosetti (ed.) 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