Rolling Transition and the Role of Intellectuals The Case of Hungary
Produktdetaljer
Biografisk notat
András Bozóki is Professor at the Department of Political Science, Central European University, Budapest and Vienna (since 1993). His research areas include democratization, regime change, anarchism, political ideologies, and the role of intellectuals. He holds diplomas from Eötvös Loránd University in Law (1983) and Sociology (1985). He received PhD in Political Science at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (1992). He is a holder of the Ferenc Erdei Prize (1991) and István Bibó Prize (2009). He was President of the Hungarian Political Science Association (2003-5). He was a recurrent visiting professor at Columbia University. He worked as research fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin, just as in Florence (Italy), Vienna (Austria), Brighton (UK), Stockholm (Sweden), Wassenaar (The Netherlands), and at the UCLA. He served as Minister of Culture in the Republic of Hungary (2005-6). His recent books: Rolling Transition and the Role of Intellectuals (2022), Embedded Autocracy (2024)."The book successfully answers the questions of who were the intellectuals who played the most influential and comprehensive role in Hungary’s transition from state socialism to democracy, what they wanted, and what they were against. Beyond the questions, the book analysed the ideas, strategies, rotations, and activities of Hungarian intellectuals before, during, and after the transition with great success. The book is invaluable for its detailed account of the Hungarian intellectuals’ uphill struggle and their significance, its theoretical and empirical conceptualisation of regime change, and its meticulous filling of this gap in the English-language literature."
https://doi.org/10.2478/ppsr-2023-0010
- Attila Gökhun Dayıoğlu and Mertcan Öztürk, Polish Political Science Review
"This is an extraordinary book that is sure to be regarded as a landmark study. It is very ambitious and equally long and offers a powerful account, both extensive and intensive, of the complex Hungarian transition to democracy between the years 1977 and 1994—from the post-Helsinki reemergence of semi-autonomous civil society groupings to the second free election in postcommunist Hungary, normally considered by political scientists to mark the 'consolidation' of democracy."
- Jeffrey C. Isaac, Hungarian Studies Review
Utilizing a new and original framework for examining the role of intellectuals in countries transitioning to democracy, Bozóki analyses the rise and fall of dissident intellectuals in Hungary in the late 20th century. He shows how that framework is applicable to other countries too as he forensically examines their activities.
Bozóki argues that the Hungarian intellectuals did not become a ‘New Class’. By rolling transition, he means an incremental, non-violent, elite driven political transformation which is based on the rotation of agency, and it results in a new regime. This is led mainly by different groups of intellectuals who do not construct a vanguard movement but create an open network which might transform itself into different political parties. Their roles changed from dissidents to reformers, to movement organizers and negotiators through the periods of dissidence, open network building, roundtable negotiations, parliamentary activities, and new movement politics.
Through the prism of political sociology, the author focuses on the following questions: Who were the dissident intellectuals and what did they want? Under what conditions do intellectuals rebel and what are the patterns of their protest? This book will be of interest to students, researchers, and public intellectuals around the world aiming to promote human rights and democracy.
List of Tables
List of Figures
Abbreviations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter I. The Role of Intellectuals: Theories and Interpretive Frameworks
1. Who are the intellectuals?
1.1. Conceptual approaches
1.2. Classical theories of intellectuals
1.3. Theories of the New Class
1.4. Modern theories of intellectuals
2. Intellectuals and social movements
3. Intellectuals and politics in Central Europe
Chapter II. The Political Context: Censorship and Co-optation
1. Censorship and the press in the late Kádár era
1.1. The practice of controlling the press
1.2. Mechanisms of informal control
1.3. The collapse of selective repression
2. Strategies of co-optation: “Intelligentsia-policy” in the one-party system
2.1. Celebrities, seigneurs, confidents, and his “court”
2.2. Reformers, civilian groups, and sympathizers
Chapter III. Dissident Intellectuals: The Culture of Critical Discourse
1. Opposition groups
1.1. The flowers of decay
1.2. The rise of samizdat
2. The dissidents between state and society
3. The topics of the samizdat journals
3.1. Moral politics
3.2. The question of national minorities
3.3. Churches and peace activism
3.4. Environmentalism
3.5. Cultural criticism
4. The historical memory of the democratic opposition
4.1. Revolution, retribution, and capitulation
4.2. Anniversary celebrations
4.3. Central Europe rediscovered
4.4. The taboos fall: The situation of minorities
4.5. Alternatives in economic policy
4.6. The perceptions of normality
4.7. Historical memory
5. The debate of the Beszélő circle on strategy
5.1. Perspectives of the future
5.2. Political goals
5.3. The possible ways of change
Chapter IV. From Moral Principles to Political Action
1. The ideas of the dissidents
1.1. Humanization of power
1.2. Antipolitics
1.3. Disobedience
1.4. Civil society
1.5. Human rights
2. The identity of the democratic opposition
3. Open network-building and party formation
3.1. Forms of organization
3.2. The rhetoric of crisis
Chapter V Regime Change and Elite Change
1. Patterns of transition: Poland and Hungary
2. Elite change: The rise of reform intellectuals and the technocracy
2.1. Reform economists
2.2. The ideology of modernization
2.3. The technocracy
3. The Roundtable talks as elite settlement
3.1. The rediscovery of elite theory
3.2. Three theories of post-communist elite change
4. Co-optation, cooperation, contestation
Chapter VI. Negotiated Revolution: The Strategy of the Opposition
1. The meaning of the Roundtable talks
2. From model change to regime change
2.1. Tactical maneuvers
2.2. Preparatory talks between the Opposition Roundtable and the MSZMP
2.3. The reburial of Imre Nagy
3. Constitution-making at the National Roundtable talks
3.1. The structure of the talks
3.2. Shifting positions
3.3. Major steps forward, limited results
4. From the referendum to the free elections
5. Imagined democracy: Fundamental values
5.1. Freedom and popular sovereignty
5.2. Representative democracy
5.3. Nonviolence
5.4. Broad consensus
5.5. Back to Europe!
6. The past revisited: Historical references
6.1. The revolutionary tradition
6.2. The tradition of institution-building
6.3. Break and the new beginning
Chapter VII. Intellectuals as Legislators
1. Who were they and what did ....
“Bozóki provides a sweeping and compelling account of the transformation of Hungary from the late communist period through the democratic transition and the early post-transition period. It is a major contribution to the tradition of the critical sociology of intellectuals in the spirit of Karl Mannheim’s Ideology and Utopia and Konrad and Szelenyi’s The Intellectuals on the Road to Class Power.”