Social contracts in Hungary: Historical-political contexts and conceptual challenges

In the past more than three decades, Hungary transformed a democracy from a non-democratic Socialist regime, then after a period of liberal democracy, underwent the opposite process of de-democratization. This historical trajectory from authoritarianism to liberal democracy and illiberalism displays a challenge to the application of social contract as an analytical tool and its normative content about constructing resilient social contracts under turbulent conditions. The paper aims to explore the conceptual challenges specific to the Hungarian case and addresses a problem of normativity that appears when discussing social contracts in illiberalism. First, I will discuss the idea and concept of social contract in political discourse itself, as it appeared in the run-up of the regime change of 1990 in the discourse of the regime’s opposition and later, after 2010, in the discourse of Fidesz in a revolutionary imaginary and in the context of enacting a new constitution. We may ask how the discourses on social contracts are connected to turbulent times and the discursive constructions of historical times as revolutionary. However, the juxtaposition of political and analytical discourse addresses how much we can rely on the concept’s meaning given by political actors. Applying the concept to the whole political trajectory may be helpful to overcome this problem. As a heuristic tool, we can elaborate on the cornerstones of social contracts under the three separate phases, asking whether there is continuity even though they are the results of fractures. Second, the presentation tries to explicate the problem that comes into mind when applying the idea of resiliency in the context of an illiberal social contract. At this phase of research, the most important characteristics of contemporary theories of authoritarian social contracts are that they arrange the relationship between the (autocratic) leader and the demos, and authoritarian social contracts rest on a specific bargain about certain deliverables on the part of the autocrat and obedience in return on the part of the demos. Besides the possible descriptive value, we need to address the problem of how desirable the resilience and endurance of such social contracts are. In dealing with the (theoretical and practical) problem, perhaps we need to focus on the actors of the interaction in the social contract, either understanding it as a relationship between equal actors at the same level (citizens or social groups) or between citizens and the European Union. Both can provide citizens with the horizon for a secure and valuable life under a social contract.