Rolling stones: dissident intellectuals in Hungary (1977–1994)

ABSTRACT

This article presents a model of rolling regime change that offers a new account of dissident intellectuals’ contribution to Hungary’s democratic transition. We analyse dissident intellectuals’ activities from the late 1970s, when they worked to undermine the Kádár regime, until the mid-1990s, when their political influence ended. Using descriptive statistical methods, we show that, rather than constituting an unchanging, monolithic group, the dissident intellectual movement changed periodically while its goal lived on. It was a combination of renewal, continuity, and adaptation to changing circumstances that made them so effective in shaping Hungary’s elite-led political and economic transitions.

KEYWORDS:

• Dissident intellectuals
• Hungary
• regime change
• roundtable negotiations
• network-building
• elite change

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The number of participants dropped due to missing data does not influence the results. Bozóki (2019, 401-466) used a different approach, assuming that all participants who did not name their occupation were intellectuals, and the results of his analyses and the ones presented herein are essentially identical when it comes to proportions.

2 Even when workers joined these initiatives, they tended to belong to the same profession, suggesting that they came from the same factory—further evidence that connections between intellectuals and the working class were meagre.

3 It is probable that, in a few cases, intellectuals who were working in manual jobs because the government made it impossible for them to secure a job matching their qualification due to their dissident activities were deleted from the database inadvertently if they indicated no other profession during this period. However, their numbers are likely to be low and their exclusion random, which would not systemically influence the results.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

András Bozóki

András Bozóki is Professor of Political Science at Central European University (CEU) in Vienna, Austria. His research interests include comparative politics, Central Europe, democratization, hybrid regimes, political ideologies, and the role of the intellectuals. His books include Post-Communist Transition: Emerging Pluralism in Hungary (1992, 2016), Democratic Legitimacy in Post-Communist Societies (1994), Intellectuals and Politics in Central Europe (1999), The Roundtable Talks of 1989: The Genesis of Hungarian Democracy (2002), Political Pluralism in Hungary (2003), Anarchism in Hungary: Theory, History, Legacies (2006), Virtual Republic (2012), Rolling Regime Change: The Political Role of Intellectuals in Hungary (2019) and others. His articles appeared in Comparative Sociology, Democratization, Perspectives on Politics, East European Politics and Societies, European Political Science, Taiwan Journal of Democracy, Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics, Debatte: Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe, Baltic Worlds, East European Constitutional Review, Osteuropa and several others. András Bozóki was visiting professor at Columbia University, Smith College, Mount Holyoke College, Hampshire College, Nottingham University and Bologna University. He was chairman of the Hungarian Political Science Association and served as founding editor of the Hungarian Political Science Review.

Agnes Simon

Agnes Simon is Evaluation Research Team Leader in the Pedagogical Competence Development Centre (CERPEK) at Masaryk University. She specialises in US foreign policy, summit diplomacy, and Central European politics. Her current research focus is on US presidential summit meetings, the Moscow/Washington, Hungarian politics and teaching and learning about foreign policy decision-making. Her articles appeared in the Journal of Global Security Studies, The Journal of Transatlantic Studies, and European Political Science. Her most recent publications include “Trusting through the Moscow-Washington Hotline: A Role Theoretical Explanation of the Hotline’s Contribution to Signal Interpretation and Crisis Stability” with Eszter Simon (2020) and “Teaching and Learning about Foreign Policy Decision-making via Board-gaming and Reflections” (2020).