The Hungarian Parliament in the Shadow of Crisis (2015-2023)
Year: 2024
Type: conference-paper
Abstract: In the last ten years, there have been widespread and solid debates both in the international public and in political science, as well as in constitutional literature on that Hungary has been systematically undermining the rule of law by introducing a new political system frequently characterised as populist, illiberal, hybrid or semi-authoritarian. It may therefore be of particular interest to see how the extraordinary powers granted by the emergency situations announced so far have affected the already significantly modified legislative process and the (im)balance of power between the government and the parliament. But at the same time, we should also note that the changes regarding the system of separation of powers established at the time of the democratic transition that began well before 2010 and after the revolution in the polling booths significantly accelerated. Because of all these processes, the presentation of the exceptional measures of the recent years and the assessment of their impact cannot be done without explaining the formal and informal changes of the Hungarian parliament from 1990. On the basis of the relevant legislation, parliamentary statistics and parliamentary practice, the paper describes how the congestion of legally and politically overlapping periods of extraordinary legal orders influenced the already altered legislative process and to what extent they affected the already modified executive-legislative relations. It may be of particular interest to see how the extraordinary powers provided by the emergency situations have contributed to (and/or reinforced) the trends that had started previously, such as the reinforcement of the position of the government vis-à-vis the parliament.
Author: Fanni Tanacs-Mandak
Institution: Ludovika University of Public Service
Language: English
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4401389521