From a Good Beginning Towards a Dead End

After the regime change, Hungarian civil society thrived. But the real intermediary power of organizations and networks in the 1990s depended on foreign and internal resource mobilization and both powerful internal and external as well as foreign support. The first Orbán government (1998–2002) put a national focus and supported the churches in their civil society (CS) activities. The interaction between CS and institutionalized politics was characterized by a top-down approach, also shown by the founding of civic initiatives supported by Fidesz. After the socialist-led government’s inclusive approach of interaction from 2002 to 2010, the authoritarian turn of the Fidesz government from 2010 onwards began a state capture of CS. The interaction was dominated by a nationalist approach legally restricting NGOs to establish a cultural hegemony. State subsidies and the establishment of organizations are carried out by the Fidesz government or party loyalists strengthened this. Nevertheless, there are few initiatives, such as human rights groups or parties, for example, Green Party, together with liberal mayors, for example, of Budapest, opposing the Fidesz regime. The Hungarian example shows that the state capture of civil society, inter alia, by law weakened democratic parameters as the intermediating democratic function of CS is to be erased.