`Whispering at the Back Door'?
| Author | Stephen P. Osborne,Gergely Fabian,Gyorgy Jenei |
| Published date | 01 October 2008 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0952076708093248 |
| Date | 01 October 2008 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
‘Whispering at the Back
Door’?
Local Government – Voluntary and Community Sector
Relationships in Post-accession Hungary
Stephen P. Osborne
University of Edinburgh, UK
Gyorgy Jenei
Corvinus University, Hungary
Gergely Fabian
University of Debrecen, Hungary
Abstract This article explores the evolution of local government – voluntary and
community sector relationships in Hungary since ‘The Change’ of 1989. It
does this in the context of a national policy framework concerned to develop
the role of the latter sector as a key provider of essential public services at the
local level. The article finds that the organic networks that enabled public
policy development and implementation in the communist era continue to
persevere in Hungary. This perseverance has meant that local voluntary and
community groups privilege network skills above service domain skills – and
that the pressure to provide public services has crowded out much of the
capacity for civil society activity by these groups. The article concludes by
considering the implications of this research for the wider group of accession
states in Eastern Europe.
Keywords Hungary, local governance, local government, non-profit organizations, part-
nership, civil society, public services, voluntary and community organizations
Introduction
One of the central features of development of Hungarian society since ‘the
change’ of 1989 has been the rebirth of voluntary and community organizations
DOI: 10.1177/0952076708093248
Stephen P. Osborne, University of Edinburgh Business School, William Robertson Building,
50 George Square, Edinburgh EH8 9JY, UK. [email: stephen.osborne@ed.ac.uk] 331
© Public Policy and Administration
SAGE Publications Ltd
Los Angeles, London, New Delhi
and Singapore
0952-0767
200810 23(4) 331–350
(VCOs).1,2 Initially, the focus of these organizations was upon the renaissance of
‘civil society’ in Hungary – though often there were competing views of what such
a society might encapsulate and might mean for Hungary (Osborne and
Kaposvari, 1997).
As the process of ‘modernization’ has proceeded in Hungary, though, the focus
of these organizations has evolved to include also a role in developing and pro-
viding essential public services for their local communities (Szeman, 1996).
Initially much of this development was funded by non-Hungarian supra-national
agencies. These were concerned to modernize Hungarian society along western
market-economy lines, to ensure its integration into the west and prevent a re-
emergence of a communist-style government. As such it is correct to characterize
this development as functional rather than organic – it was imposed by external
forces rather than being an authentic development of Hungarian society (Deacon
and Hulse, 1997; Osborne and Kaposvari, 1998; see also Stubbs, 1996 for a
broader Eastern European perspective).
Since the mid-1990s however, many of these supra-national bodies have with-
drawn from Hungary, though the impact of their functional reforms remain. In
principle, for the VCO sector, their place has been taken by the Hungarian
government as the prime funder of this sector at the national and local level. The
development of the relationship between central and local government and the
VCO sector in Hungary, though, has been beset with problems. Previous studies
have highlighted the dearth of governmental finance actually available to support
and develop this sector,3as well as the ambivalent standing in which VCOs are
held by the state (Kuti, 1994, 1996; Szeman, 1996, 2000). Thus, the VCO sector is
highly dependent upon the Hungarian state – but this state has only limited
resources for, and an undecided motivation towards, support of this sector.
This article explores the current state of this complex relationship, at the
national and local level in Hungary. It is in three parts. After an explication of its
methodology, this article commences with an overview both of current govern-
ment–VCO sector relationships in Hungary and of the public policy trajectory in
respect of this sector. It examines in particular the emergence and impact of the
National Civil Strategy and the National Civil Fund. Part two then reports upon a
micro-case study of VCO–local governmental interaction. This concerns the rela-
tionship between a small VCO and local government in one provincial town in the
deprived north-eastern region of Hungary (Nyiregyhaza). The final part of the
article considers the import of these findings for our understanding of VCO–local
government relationships in Hungary – and in Eastern Europe more broadly.
It must be emphasized that the findings herein must be treated as entirely
exploratory. It is based upon one micro-case study and will need further work to
validate its findings in the wider context. Nonetheless the exploration of its find-
ings with the key actors and stakeholders in this study has suggested a level of
authenticity for these findings.
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