Cameron, the UK and the EU

It would seem that Cameron acted on an impulse when vetoing the projected EU treaty last Friday (9 December); he did so probably because no one would listen to his demands for various British exceptions, which in any case were technical and thus seen as pettifogging. All this is interesting, because in a way Cameron is reaping the whirlwind sowed by countless UK prime ministers. There is the constant contrariness, being against everything, demanding opt-outs, lecturing Britain’s EU partners and, crucially, alienating everyone, and not understanding that the UK is largely alone in not wanting more Europe. In retrospect, Cameron’s thoroughly unpragmatic decision in 2009 to leave the EPP has turned out to be a bad move. Before the summit, the EPP heads of government met at the EPP congress in Marseilles and mostly agreed on what was to be done. Cameron, of course, was not there, couldn’t be, because he was not invited. The UK has become the EU-1.


The widespread anti-EU sentiment in the UK is in itself an interesting phenomenon. It is not new. It’s been brewing for many years, partly as a legacy of Thatcherism, but above all because being against Europe, “Brussels”, the EU – all these strongly mythicised – has become the core of the post-imperial British, especially English identity. To be English means being anti-European, especially in the sense of “I like Europe, but hate the EU”, as if the two could separated after 60 years of integration. If anyone doesn’t believe the depth and intensity of the anti-European sentiment, they should read the comments in any of the broadsheets whenever a pro-European or even Euro-neutral article is published. It is tantamount to racism. Substitute the word “black” wherever “European” is used and this will be crystal clear in a trice.

The implication of the foregoing is that the UK would hardly be a reliable ally in any struggle to validate the national interests of other EU members. Indeed, the UK brand has become so toxic that everyone else would avoid it like the plague. The intense emotionality of the British attitude makes the Brits unreliable allies in any case.

All this raises the question of the new balance in the EU-26, the new roles of Germany and France, whether the 2004-2007 member states will be able to form some kind of a coalition to secure their interests and, most importantly perhaps, in what way the agenda of the EU-26 will be determined. Clearly France and Germany will play a preeminent role in how this agenda is set.

This doesn’t necessarily mean accepting a French or German agenda wholesale, but it does say that on balance there are invisible benefits to Europe that cannot be measured in monetary terms, the cost-benefit accounting favoured by the Brits that is unable to integrate soft power and goodwill into the calculus. For Europe, of course, this is good news, above all if the EU-26 succeed in constructing a stand-alone Brit-free zone where they can integrate to their heart’s content without UK obstructionism.

The German problem that the integration process was supposed to solve, on the other hand, will require new thinking. The essence of this problem is the structural disparity between Germany and everyone else in Europe. As long as Germany’s commitment to integration was all-encompassing and seen as such, the structural factor didn’t matter. The other EU states could live with an outsized Germany, especially if Bonn and Berlin had to pay attention to France and the other large states or, indeed, occasionally, a small state. What has changed in recent years, though, is that the structural problem has returned to the agenda because Germany has become a so-called “normal” state overtly pursuing its national interests, even to the extent of overriding or ignoring its EU partners, like over the North Stream pipeline which was clearly directed against the interests of Poland and the Baltic states. Besides, the German constitutional court in Karlsruhe has repeatedly blocked integrationism on various grounds.

So the question is how this Europe of 26, revolving around Germany, will actually work. If the new order means that Germany will insist on things being done exclusively in the German fashion, then a diverse Europe will fly apart, quite apart from the likely anxiety that will flow from overwhelming German power. The chances of anti-Germany coalitions forming in the EU are high. Crucially, Germany will have to exercise its power with a conscious commitment to self-limitation, to paying heed to what other Europeans want and accepting their diversity.

In this context, the treatment of Hungary by the German media (not to mention much of the rest of the international press) does not augur well. Regardless of what actually happens in Hungary, the German media have brought into being an imaginary Hungary where all the evils of Europe are collectively rampant. Read any article dealing with Hungary in the German (and Austrian) press and you will discover a dystopic land where anti-Semitism, anti-Roma sentiment, neo-fascism, xenophobia, populism rule. The recent series of neo-Nazi murders in Germany itself has done nothing to disturb the polarity. Thus the depiction of Hungary is no longer based on evidence, but has become a naturalised fact, something that is taken for granted. The thought that journalism should be evidence based, let alone aim for objectivity and neutrality, is no more. And if Germany opts to treat its other EU partners in the same way, then Europe can look forward to an uncomfortable decade or more.

All this has a curious parallel. The poisonous and poisoned attitudes of the British Eurosceptics – certainly two-thirds of the British population – the irrationality, the unresponsiveness to evidence and the moral certainty of “evil in Brussels” resemble German attitudes towards Hungary most strangely, at any rate as mirrored in the media and as a media construction of a symbolic target. Hungary can thus be held up as the negative polarity to Germany’s positive end, in the same way as the British press attributes virtue to Britain as against a symbolic Brussels.

It may even be that this imagined Hungary and imagined Brussels are used as a tactic of evasion, of deception and self-deception, that while there may be things in Germany and Britain that are shameful or undesirable, matters are much worse, deplorable etc. in Hungary and Brussels respectively. And it is decidedly helpful that the voices that are actually heard in the case of Hungary – those of the Hungarian left – support the mythic German narrative; likewise, Eurosceptics with Brussels experience perform an analogous function for the British narrative. Voices that do not support this mythic narrative are silenced or not heard and evidence to the contrary is dismissed.

Thus the mechanisms relied on by the German media and the British Eurosceptics are remarkably similar, though they would certainly reject this comparison, reject it indignantly I suspect. But looking at the structure rather than the detail reveals much, much that those affected prefer not to see. In this instance, the structure is something like this – identify a place where evil can be located, it should be a real place of course, invest it with demonised qualities, elaborate this with corroborative detail which is necessarily decontextualised and screen out any evidence that disturbs the narrative. This last easier if the voice of the contrary evidence is in any case weak, because the affected parties suffer from a discursive deficit. It is also helpful if the target has no allies within your own camp or, if they do exist, they are uninfluential or can be shouted down.

In both the German and the British case we are looking at a species of Orientalism and, for what it’s worth, coincidentally the target is indeed geographically to the east. Who knows, maybe a decade from now the phenomenon will be recognised for what it is by the next generation, as a covert exercise of power, undertaken deviously, deceitfully and self-deceptively against a target that has been reduced to subaltern status, reduced at any rate in the minds of the narrative constructors.



Sch. Gy.

Valódi demokraták klubja? - a decemberi EiT margójára

Amíg nincs döntés, addig nincs eldöntve semmi. Legalábbis ez a szabály Brüsszelben is érvényes. Illetve él egy másik aranyszabály is, miszerint jobb mindig a saját üzeneteket, benyomásokat személyesen tolmácsolni a médiának, mintsem teret adva kéretlen prókátoroknak a mondatok és a helyzet értelmezésére. Mivel nem volt döntés hajnalban, Orbán nem állt ki és mondta el véleményét. Megtették helyette mások. És elindult a panaszáradat a tízórás maratoni tárgyalásról, a szerződésmódosítás egyhangúlag való elfogadás kudarcáról és az euróövezeti megállapodáshoz való csatlakozás feltételeiről, amiről még nem volt végleges döntés. És persze a kimaradókat (a bűnösöket) pellengére is állították. Nem volt más választás, hiszen a német-francia „smooth operator” elakadt, ahogy Van Rompuy aprócska jogtechnikai bravúrja a szerződésmódosítás ratifikációk előli megmentéséről is. A technokraták ezt a kört elvesztették. Mondhatnánk, hogy éljen a demokrácia!

Azonban az euróövezet megmentése komoly feladat, a népszuverenitásra hivatkozni nagyon gyenge érv, állítja komoly szakértőnk is (Balázs Péter: Fekete bárányként kóboroltak el)

És valóban, akkor hajnalban Sarko-nek nem volt más választása, mint panaszkodni egyet a nyilvánosság felé, brit barátaira. És hogy hogyan került Magyarország a britek mellé a vádlottak padjára, (vagy inkább egy csónakba?) felettébb érdekes kérdés. Tekintve, hogy OV előző nap még Marseille-ben egyeztetett néppárti körben, tehát pontosan tudta, hogy mit mondhat, meddig mehet el. Marseille-i üzenete pedig világos volt: Magyarországnak nem áll érdekében blokkolni a megállapodást (érdekes, erre a mondatra nem sokan hivatkoztak, ellenben Cameron előzetes elkötelezettsége valahogy mégis csak a köztudat része lett.)

OV maga nem is mondott mást, mint ami a végeredmény lett: „Meg kell vitatnia a parlamentnek az euróövezeti megállapodást”. A vicc az egészben az, hogy amit Orbán következetesen végig képviselt, voltaképpen ahhoz csatlakozott további nyolc állam: Bulgária, Csehország, Dánia, Lettország, Litvánia, Lengyelország, Románia, Svédország. Innen nézve az orbáni érvelés egy egész csapat államot meggyőzött, hogy azért mégis csak demokratikusan megválasztott vezetők, nem diktátorok, tehát a parlament, mint a népszuverenitás letéteményese ilyen horderejű döntések esetén kihagyhatatlan. Persze-persze, ez már súrolja a populizmust, de azért mégis csak.

Mennyire boldogok lettek volna az Európai Parlamenti képviselők és a föderalisták, hacsak egy mondat erejéig valaki is említette volna, hogy igen-igen a kormányközi konferenciára természetesen kikérjük az EP véleményét is, és örömmel látjuk képviselőit is a tanácskozáson. Sajnos, ilyen mondat nem hangzott el.

Ami ellenben visszhangzik a magyar médiában az az Orbánnak tulajdonított elutasítás, Sarko-féle tálalásban, mantra-szerű ismétlése, torzítása, hiszterizálása:

1. Gombár Csaba: Úgy érzem magam, mint a száz évvel ezelőtt élők
2. Heller Ágnes: Orbán Viktor szembefordult a Nyugattal
3. Lengyel László: A jövő befejeződött
4. Gyurcsány: 20 év legkártékonyabb külpolitikai döntése Orbáné
5. Gyurcsány: Orbán az unióból való kiiratkozás szélére sodorta Magyarországot
6. Scheiring Gábor szerint kormányzati bohózat játszódott le délelőtt
7. Az LMP parlamenti vitanapot követel (miután erről maga a miniszterelnök biztosította a magyar Országgyűlést!)
8. Mesterházy Orbán lépéséről: a hülyeségnek is van határa
9. EU-csúcs - A Jobbik elutasítja a megállapodást (ja igen, a Fidesz-szavazógép érvelés is előbukkan)
10. Orbán és Cameron fityiszt mutattak az eurónak
11. Orbán félreértette 26 kollégáját, vagy őt értették félre 26-an?

A totális végletesség. Igaz, Orbán nagy ziccert hagyott ki azzal, hogy jól felépített érvelését nem ő maga és nem elsőként tudatta a médiával. Így ismét előállt az a helyzet a magyar virtuális valóságban, hogy ha valaki csak a baloldali magyar sajtóra hagyatkozik és az ellenzéket hallgatja, úgy érezheti, hogy Magyarországon eljött a világvége.

Ezzel szemben az európai sajtó örül, hogy végre egy kis sikerről tud beszámolni. Lélegzethez jutott a politikai elit, igaz, ki tudja, meddig. A piac és a népharag kettős szorításában nehéz lesz manőverezni. Orbán legalább a demokratikus megoldás látszatára ügyelt. Erről persze egy árva szó sem esik. Demokraták, hol vagytok?

A baloldal ezt persze tudja, mert eleve mindent tud: csak arrafelé léteznek demokraták és az európaiság is kizárólag egy baloldali monopólium. A Fidesz politikája, legyen az akármi, nem minősülhet elfogadhatónak, legalább is onnan nézve, és ezzel le is van írva a magyar társadalom. Heller Ágnes amúgy is felvilágosított bennünket, hogy a magyarok szolgalelkűek, tehát a nép képviselete, ill. a demokratikusan megválasztott miniszterelnök mit sem ér.

kng 

Left and right in Hungary - the Vienna debate

On the 19 October, the Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen in Vienna organised a debate on Hungarian politics between Prof. Charles Gati and myself. It was well attended, with around 60 people present. The debate was widely reported in the Hungarian media. What follows is the written version of my introductory remarks. Much of the debate was recorded on video and will shortly be available on my home page.

1. Before one can make sense of the dynamics of Hungarian politics, one has to understand the sociology, the history and the cultural norms of Hungarian society.

There exists a very deep cleavage in Hungary, which to some extent is similar to the experience of other late modernisers, and which is structured by the dilemma of how much to adapt from the West and how much to construct from one’s own resources. This goes back to the 19th century.

2. After 1989, the cleavage became mapped on to party politics and gave rise to a far-reaching polarisation. Neither side has a monopoly of virtue or of truth. It is simply untrue that there is a single, universal template of modernity that all late arrivals must copy. Equally, Hungary is not a closed society, it is a part of the spectrum of European cultures and partakes of that. But that is not, repeat not, how this cleavage line is lived. The left takes the view that Fidesz and its hinterland are betraying the Western, European tradition and does not hesitate to say so, repeatedly and, in a style that is contemptuous and patronising, as if to say that the left and the left alone has a monopoly of what is European, modern, just or virtuous. The left’s position, then, is universalist. The right resents this, insists that there are perfectly usable raw materials in the Hungarian tradition that are in no way inferior to any other . It takes, therefore, a particularist position. From a theoretical perspective, we can suggest that the left essentialises the West (constructs an imagined West, to use Benedict Anderson’s language), while the centre-right operates with an essentialised view of what Hungarianness is and regards the left as having betrayed this by reason of its links with the unreconstructed communist past.

3. Why the cleavage and why has it acquired this political role? The system change of 1989-1990 was overwhelmingly elite-led, with very limited popular input (the funeral of Imre Nagy was carefully choreographed), hence the elite divide was mapped onto Hungarian politics and acquired a party political shape, which it has retained to this date.

4. The consequence is that party politics are far more deeply divided than a surface analysis would allow – it amounts to an ontological divide, with strong closures. It can be termed a cold civil war. There are two contending reality-defining agencies, locked in an ongoing process of reciprocal potentiation; three, if we give Jobbik this status. Both sides are convinced of their rightness and rightfulness, and regard the other as irrational, dishonest and harmful. Value pluralism has no place here, epistemologies are closed or mostly so, there is no awareness of contingency or reflexivity, let alone of the double hermeneutic. There is a far-reaching intellectual conservatism - no Bourdieu, no Giddens, not much Habermas, hardly any Foucault etc.

5. In this cold civil war, all methods to weaken the other may be employed – discrediting (lejáratás); exaggeration (Hungarian hyperbole plays a role here); category error (muddying of categories - összemosás); giving every intiative the worst possible reading; black-and-white thinking; the constant demand that the right distance itself (elhatárolódás) from something or another (the left and Jobbik do not distance themselves from anything); dismissing the centre-right’s competence and professionalism (hence the successes of the centre-right become inexplicable); trivialisation, elbagatellizálás (issues that might discredit the left are dismissed as trivial ); silence, agyonhallgatás (not responding to counter arguments) – in all, no prisoners are taken, there is very little attention to the doctrine of self-limitation. Hence the democratic infrastructure is weaker than it might be.

6. In 2010, the party system was transformed. The left suffered a devastating defeat at the polls. Fidesz gained a two-thirds majority, the SZDSZ disappeared, Jobbik made its breakthrough and the LMP, a new eco-left party, entered parliament, though it is noteworthy that this is largely a Budapest phenomenon. The domestic support for and rootedness of the left is much eroded, hence the constant recourse to a somewhat mythicised, essentialised "West" or "Europe" or "progress", which has in any case long been a keystone of the left's ideology. But this does nothing to strengthen the left's domestic position . At the same time, the reiteration of the proposition that the left has a monopoly of being "'European" strengthens the inwardness of the right (kurucosodás). Western media, especially in Germany and Austria, have been significant allies of the Hungarian left and thus, a political actor in Hungary itself, but with zero Hungarian legitimacy. This breeds resentment on the right.

7. The left cannot, will not see that the real danger to democracy in Hungary is not Fidesz, but Jobbik, very largely because it never formulated a theory of what constitutes democratic conservatism, Christian Democracy and centre-right. In this context, with Fidesz regarded as the primary enemy of democracy, the offer by the LMP to forge an electoral alliance with Jobbik is quite logical and quite bizarre.

8. Hungary is a democracy, in that it meets both the criteria of rule by consent (elections) and democratic infrastructure; Fidesz has taken major steps to restore this, despite what the left argues. The stories spread by the left and taken up by the foreign media, which cannot check these narratives, can be regarded as mistaken, erroneous, false, mendacious (take your pick). Nevertheless, the ongoing questioning of power cannot be adequate in a cold civil war, when all critiques are seen as hostile and destructive. Left and right must agree on a basic minimum of what constitutes common ground, what is the national interest, the state interest, the social interest, but this is still outstanding (hence the earlier reference to ontology). There is, therefore, no dialogue between the two sides. To present only the one side of the Hungarian political scene, as the foreign media tend to, is thoroughly misleading, if not actually specious.

9. The reform programme launched by Fidesz can be termed a "compensatory revolution". The system change in Hungary was, as argued, overwhelmingly elite-led, with the result that too much was salvaged from the previous system - power, network capital, political skills, contacts, property, money. Fidesz's starting point is that there must be a level playing field, so that these relics (csökevények) constitute a major obstacle to the functioning of democracy, prosperity, civic values and agency (this above all). Hence the radical reform programme to bring the country up to date, an aggiornamento (felsorakoztatás) in economic, political, cognitive, semantic and intellectual terms in order to overcome the deficits in these areas, so that citizens can enjoy genuine agency. Estimates put around half to two-thirds of Hungarian society as having problems with coping with the demands of late modernity.

The two-thirds majority for Fidesz did not happen by chance and constitutes the legitimating basis for this compensatory revolution. And, for what it's worth, a year and a half after the elections Fidesz still enjoys majority support, Jobbik is overtaking the MSZP and the MSZP may well split before long (and did indeed split, after the Vienna debate).

Sch. Gy.

What are cultures and what are they for

I was invited to give the keynote address at the Global Round Table conference in Budapest, on the 21 October. The theme was “The sustainability of cultures”. This is a written and somewhat expanded version of what I had to say.


What do we mean by cultures exactly? The word has many, possibly too many meanings. So, for example, we speak of high culture, of popular culture, of corporate cultures or a specific set of rule-governed activity like safety culture. However, I am using it in the broadest sense, the one favoured by sociology and anthropology, namely a web of shared meanings, forms of collective knowledge, much of which is internalised and naturalised. This is the world of common sense, the propositions that we take for granted, and can be said to be apodictic.

What, then, are cultures for, what are they there to do? In simple terms, they make the world explicable and legible, they create cosmos out of chaos, establish an ordering. However, this is invariably a particular ordering, the world is too diverse, too charged with inputs for any culture to be able to integrate them all, hence a range of sensations will be screened out, will be excluded from view by the norms of the particular culture that we are looking at. By the same token, there is no single universal human culture, one that encompasses the entirety of the world. The Enlightenment legacy, on the other hand, made a universalist truth claim and asserted that there existed a single universal human reason; in reality this was the imposition of the thinking of a particular epoch in European thought and was diverse in itself (French Enlightenment, English, Scottish, Dutch etc.).

What a culture establishes is a moral order. It regulates right and wrong, lays down what attracts reward and what attracts punishment, it offers a model of the good life and establishes a complex web of obligations, rights and duties.

However, every culture will be affected by the phenomenon of occlusion. Certain meanings, certain propositions will be screened out, made dangerous or appear irrelevant. Similarly, aspects of other cultures will appear impenetrable to us or perplexing or repellent and vice-versa.

Cultures are sustained by a series of interlocking social mechanisms, the significance of which may be occluded. The myth-symbol complex is probably the most important of these. Every culture will have its supraspatial and supratemporal narratives of the collective self and collectively shared memory; these should not be confused with history, though they may well refer to historical events. Myth in this context is not to do with fabulation or the opposite of logos, an untruth, but refers to shared narratives.

The myth-symbol complex will be accompanied by collective rituals, which are a way of celebrating the collective self and are a means establishing solidarity without consensus; note that we are seldom fully conscious of the significance of this mechanism, though we can see those of other collectivities.

Every culture will have boundaries, boundary filters, boundary markers. These mark out the time and space that the collectivity has constructed and will ensure that external messages are interpreted and filtered in ways that the collectivity regards as usable or appropriate. Thus anniversaries, special days, vistas, buildings, artefacts can all fall into this category – these are not some kind of empty navel gazing, but are closely and causally linked to cultural reproduction. Institutions are established to act as frameworks for these meanings and to help sustain them.

Once a culture in the sense of web of meanings is brought into being, it is extremely difficult to erase it, but it can change and be changed, though this requires time. All cultures undergo a continuous metamorphosis, sometimes faster, sometimes slower, as new experiences – whether from the outside or the inside – impact on it; innovation, like technological change affects the way in which we decode meanings. All cultures seek to preserve the appearance of unchanging continuity

Finally, there is the transfer of meanings a continuous process that has accelerated in late modernity with the impact of globalisation. Thus every culture is involved in a continuous process of translation (in the widest sense), interpretation and in the screening out of “unwanted” elements. Those who do this have a special role, they are bearers of knowledge, the creators of value and at the same time as they are active in translating, they are also reconstructing the moral order and, therefore, are involved in moral legislation.

Without wanting to overestimate their role, it may be worth thinking about erecting a statue to the “unknown interpreter”, whose role is frequently underestimated, (a suggestion that was made once by Gyula Décsy).

Sch. Gy.

Trust and politics

The Friends of Europe held a fairly high-level one day round-table in Brussels on the 13 October and I was invited to participate as a discussant.

In the event, the session ran out of time and I wasn’t called upon to speak (even at the two-minute length that we are allocated at plenaries), but this is what I would have said had I been (or something close to it).


The problem of declining trust in Europe and EU institutions should not be looked at purely in the EU context, because it is a phenomenon that is affecting democratic politics everywhere. The reality is that the Western world is going through a paradigm shift and various transformations are taking place that we can only see in part or not at all (yet).

One of these processes, the one that bears most directly on trust, is that in the last two-three decades the parameters of politics have changed. Whereas, in previous times, politics was concentrated on party allegiance, elections, legislative activity, that concentration has been much diluted and power is, in consequence, far more fragmented than before (see also the blog entry “Where has all the power gone?”).


The most obvious new loci of power, as noted previously, are the new political actors (civil society, lobbies etc.), economic actors like the multinationals and the media. None of these is elected, yet they certainly exercise power. Citizens recognise that neither they nor legislatures have as much power over them as they might, so tend to become either disenchanted with politics as such or are radicalised (e.g. the rise of the radical right, the “Occupy” movements, the Tea Party). The complexity of interactions between global and local, between economic and political processes result in a clear sense of loss of agency. No one seems to have much idea how to restore this.

Another dimension of these processes of depoliticisation is the longer term (and obviously unintended) consequence of the collapse of communism and the dissolution of class-based politics. The outcome has been a technocratisation and bureaucratisation of areas of decision making, removing them from the political perspective, the rise of “politics as management”, which in reality is not politics at all, and the ever more widespread reliance on technical language and procedures that eliminate participation and agency.

To these may be added a particular facet of media power (see also the earlier blog entry), that the media drive the growing distrust of politics by their sensationalist and often hyperbolic exposures of abuses of power. Sometimes these abuses are real, sometimes they are trivial, at others these accounts of politicians misbehaving attack form rather than content; in such cases politicians may not actually have done anything wrong, but the media presentation is such that they are held responsible for something, i.e. whatever it is they are doing, it’s dubious or wrong.

The evidence may be thin, the narrative may be full of holes or actually mendacious, but the media have succeeded in establishing and sustaining a climate of suspicion in which the exercise of power is widely seen as inherently dubious. In other words, there is virtually no burden of proof needed where politicians are concerned, even if this is not applied to non-elected agents of power. Besides, the emphasis placed by the media on persons rather than issues devalues institutional authority and transforms politics into clashes of people, rather than making it the target of rational debate, as democratic theory supposes.

This state of affairs has brought about an evident discrediting of politicians and with that, of politics itself, which then has had a knock-on effect in accelerating the distrust sketched above. The outcome is paradoxical. There is a depoliticisation in some areas, but this is paralleled by a radical repoliticisation elsewhere. Overall, taken together with the complexity factor and the fragmentation, it is hardly surprising that the distrust of and frustration with politics is as widespread as it is.

Sch. Gy.

Democratic Transition

A book launch was held on 6 October in Budapest, for two books published by ICDT (International Center for Democratic Transition). The two books are;

Heltai András, ed. Elbeszélt történelem: huszonöten a közép-kelet-európai demokratikus átmenetről, [Narrated history: 25 interviews on democratic transition] (Demokratikus Átalakulásért Intezet, 2011)

Iván Bába ,The Hungarian Transition: Parties and Movements in the Political Regime Change in Hungary between 1987 and 1994, (Demokratikus Átalakulásért Intezet, 2011).

To these two should be added two more, likewise dealing with the end of communism in Hungary:

Iván Bába Békes átmenet? Adalékok a kialkudott rendszerváltoztatáshoz 2007 [Peaceful transition? Addenda to the bargained system shift], (Argumentum, 2007)

Iván Bába, ed. Felgyorsult történelem: 18 beszélgetés a szocializmus bukásáról [Accelerated History: Eighteen interviews about the fall of socialism] (Demokratikus Átalakulásért Intezet, 2011)

This was my introductory address:

Iván Bába was involved in all four books, while András Heltai edited the volume of interviews; and I have a very small interest to declare. I discussed the English translation of Iván’s text with particular reference to the word “népi”, how to render it into acceptable English. Borbándi could use the word “populism” in the 1980s – Der ungarische Populismus – but subsequently the word acquired such negative connotations that something else was needed. I was the one, the guilty party, who suggested “demotic”.


Some thoughts about methodology and content of these books

[1] Memory, oral history is inevitably only partly reliable; memories fade, distort, beautify the past, maybe turn self-exculpatory. When a particular event or set of events has been rehearsed, retold several times, we inevitably give them coherence that they did not have at the time – this is well known to social psychology. But this does not mean that the entire exercise is useless. Where it becomes valuable is in two areas. They can point towards particular events and give them a saliency that they would not otherwise have, and thereby allow us to see processes that would possibly remain latent. This doesn’t mean that people are lying. That particular trope that whatever we disagree with or see in a different light should be dismissed as mendacious, that attitude is a particular dysfunction of post-communist thinking, that every cause must have an effect, that if something has happened, someone made it happen. That is the ideological thinking that Hannah Arendt identified. No, there is accident, coincidence, happenstance, error, chance in the world. This does not mean, however, that there are no covert processes, there are, but we should be careful in making distinctions.

I think that the political significance of the 1990 taxi blockade illustrates this proposition, how it was seen at the time and what we know now are very different. It was seen as spontaneous – and fortuitously I was in Budapest at the time, I recall that I had great trouble getting to the airport – but after the events, we can now see the hand the of the security services operating against the Antall government and we can also see the way in which the Free Democrats sought to take advantage of the upheaval. It didn’t become a putsch, but it could just have been.

[2] Then, when several memories are placed side by side, some of the distortions become visible, a kind of intellectual triangulation takes place and this can be very helpful in the construction of a cogent account. The various interviews in these collections do exactly that, they allow us to put together a persuasive narrative of the past and, not least, they can let us see some of the aetiology of events, without ideological thinking.

[3] To this I would add a bit of genealogy. I don’t know how many people here remember the late György Urbán, formerly head of the Hungarian section of RFE. I knew him well in London. Among other activities, he put together a series of interview collections with a great variety of people and these are still of value. Indeed, they have been unjustly forgotten. So, maybe oral history and the exploration of the past through recalled memory has a particular Hungarian dimension – we should register it as a Hungaricum, perhaps.

[4] The key shared feature of late communism, the 1980s, that comes out of these volumes is the decay of the system. Leszek Kołakowski described it as the “decomposition” of both system and ideology. What this generated was a mounting impatience on the part of the middle generation with the system stability that had become stasis – a commitment to no change, whereas the middle generation of technocrats wanted change and wanted power. This was a shared feature of late communism more or less everywhere. They wanted the old, ideological, very conservative rulers out of the way, in order to launch something more dynamic. Crucial here was that they were not democrats, they firmly believed that they knew better than society – this is a universal feature of technocracy – and they sought power to put their ideas into practice.

Some of the cultural intellectuals did want democracy, though they too were chary of handing too much power to the people. That, of course, is the standard dilemma of reformers, how to redistribute power without the process sliding out of control and the previous holders of power ending up swinging from the lampposts or on the guillotine. The memory of the Terror of 1793-1794 in France haunts Europe still. We can see analogies in the Arab spring today.

[5] There is something unusual, even striking about these works. The thought that the participants in a major historical turning point should be ready and able to sit down and recall their activities in tranquillity, well after the events, is new. A small thought experiment. It is quite inconceivable, it seems to me, that, say, in 1825 Robespierre, Danton, Louis XVI and Napoleon would have been able to do likewise; not least, they were all dead. And the possibility of Lenin, Trotsky, Martov and Kerensky doing so in 1937 is even more bizarre. So this tells us something about the temper of our times and, it seems to me, about the legacy of non-violent political change, as well as the imperative felt by historical actors to leave their version of the story on the record. These books have taken full advantage of this shift; I see it as a quintessential quality of our post-modern age.

[6] Where the books launched today add further insights is into how the technocrats and cultural intellectuals, which includes the democratic opposition of the 1980s, evolved once the basic architecture of democratic institutions was laid down. I think we can characterise this evolution as a double disappointment. The people involved were disappointed because – I would suggest this, though this can certainly be read from today’s volumes – of Kant’s “crooked timber of humanity”, people just didn’t and wouldn’t behave as they should have done, as the intellectual constructs would have had them behave. They were contrary, difficult and unpredictable. The other disappointment was political power itself, which turned out to be more complex and more contradictory than anyone predicted. The technocrats were irritated at what they regarded as the irrational behaviour of both society and the politicians who had constituencies to satisfy. And they still are.

[7] What further emerges from these volumes is that the collapse of communism was heavily elite-led. While there was indeed popular participation in some countries, like Czechoslovakia and Estonia, in Hungary the role of society was at best secondary. This feature of the Hungarian transformation necessarily meant that the new system would reflect the cleavages within the Hungarian elite. And the key cleavage turned out to be the one that has been a part of the Hungarian scene since the early 1900s, the one between those who argued that Hungarian modernity should be constructed largely or entirely on the basis of Western experience, the urbanists, as against those who insisted that Hungarian modernity should be defined by Hungary’s own resources, the demoticists. This cleavage remains with us to this day and it has been mapped onto party politics. Iván Bába’s account is essential reading here, as it provides a thorough and judicious assessment of both. András Heltai’s collection implies that while not absent elsewhere, this cleavage was much less important in other former communist states.

[8] Finally, a word on nomenclature. What to call the events of 1989 is itself in dispute. Was it a revolution? Not in Hungary it wasn’t, though the Czechs had a velvet revolution and the Estonians a singing one, so here we speak of regime change, system shift, possibly of political metamorphosis. Precisely because the popular input was limited, many features of the previous system survived and were salvaged, above all where power and resources were concerned. This also says something about the Western analyses of the regime transition, namely that if new institutions are set up, that would in itself ensure that democratic behaviour and values would rapidly take root. This turned out to be illusory, at any rate in part, to be a confusion between form and content. Content does not invariably follow form, there are façades, appearances and the externalisation of behaviour, where the new forms are maintained, but hide a different reality.

It may be that it really does need a revolution to secure the meeting of form and content. The word revolution should not be understood in its literal sense of barricades in the streets, crowds, violence and blood – the models left us by the French and Russian revolutions; rather it should be seen as a thoroughgoing breach in the flow of history, a disjunction, a caesura. Twenty years later, the compensatory radical shift – historians can decide whether this constituted a “voting booth revolution” - can be said to have arrived in Hungary with the two-thirds majority gained by Fidesz and the Christian Democrats in the 2010 elections. Let’s hope that the participants of these events will give their version of what happened and what is happening well before another 20 years have passed.

Sch. Gy.

Developments in the Middle East

The European Parliament held debates on the Middle East on the 14 and the 27 September. These were my contributions.

I
Most of the attention attracted by the Arab Spring has focused on internal developments, as is right and proper. However, from the perspective of the Middle Eastern region as a whole, it is vital to recognise that the Arab Spring is also transforming the geostrategic environment. The balance of power between Israel and its neighbours has shifted.

Mubarak’s Egypt was committed to a policy of zero change and this included relations with Israel. But this is moving in a different direction as hitherto marginalised political forces in Egypt are emerging. Israel likewise had a stable neighbour under the repressive Assad regime in Syria, where the outcome of the pressure for change remains unclear. There is no guarantee that a putative end of the Assad regime will be of benefit to Israel. At the same time, Turkey has initiated a far-reaching improvement of its links with the Arab world and has inevitably downgraded its relations with Israel.

In an ideal world, this should provide an incentive for Israel to find a settlement with the Palestinians and to do so quickly. Time is running out and it is vital for Israel’s future security that it come to terms with the changes; if not, it will very likely be coerced into them, in much less favourable circumstances.

II
The Middle East is undergoing a palpable transformation - the Arab spring, the democracy movements, the decline of the autocrats - all testify to this and demand an urgent reassessment. Certain givens have changed and there are, therefore, new factors that determine action.

In this context, the bid for the full recognition of Palestinian statehood has become reality, whether the United Nations accepts this or not. Hence it is irrelevant that the United States has already signalled that it will veto the Palestinian application, because the idea of a Palestinian state has garnered substantial support around the world. Probably a majority of the members of the UN are in favour. So this acceptance of Palestinian statehood is almost certainly irreversible as a political fact.

Legally, of course, nothing has happened, but political realities and legal status are often at variance, as in this case. What is puzzling is Israel's stolid rejection of the Palestinian position, despite all the evidence that the much discussed two-state solution is the most likely outcome - true, a long term outcome - of the process.

The implication is that Israel will eventually be constrained to accept the Palestinian bid for statehood, so the sooner it does so, the better for all concerned. It is regrettable, then, that Israel and its supporters are basically disregarding a new political fact, the coming of Palestinian statehood.

Sch. Gy

Eesti kuum kartul - Russia’s Estonian hot potato

CSIS, the Center (sic) for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, has just published a long report on the Russian speakers of Estonia. Some comments follow.

  

1. The Russophone community in Estonia is not as homogeneous as it appears in the report and attention to this would make the recommendations more cogent. The Russophones can be grouped under five headings, each with somewhat different attitudes to the Estonian state, language and the Estophones themselves. The first is the north-east, where knowledge of Estonian is poor, where the level of integration is lowest. It is worth adding that whereas the population of Narva was, in effect, completely newly imported after 1945, implying that the third generation Narvans is now active, Kohtla-Järve and Sillamäe were only populated in the 1970s and after. Their rootedness is less intense. They are, for all practical purposes, in the same category as the North Africans in France, the Turks in Germany or the South Asians in the UK – an immigrant minority. The second category are the Russians of Tallinn and Paldiski, where the younger generation has fair competence in Estonian, though here too there are variations as their date of settlement, e.g. Lasnamäe was only built in the 1980s and was overwhelmingly settled by Russians, though this has been diluted to some extent by the vagaries of the housing market. The third category are the Russians of Tartu and Pärnu, whose knowledge of Estonian is reasonable. The fourth category are the Old Believers, who had citizenship in the interwar Republic and reacquired it as of right. The fifth category are the non-Russian Russophones (Ukrainians, Tatars etc), who do not automatically identify with the Russians. I would guess that one of the explanations for why an ethnic Russian party never got off the ground in Estonian politics could be found in this diversity, a diversity that the Russian state would obviously like to condense into a single Russian identity.

2. The report might have noted that some of the stateless prefer to keep their Russian papers as this makes it far easier for them to travel to Russia (no visas etc.). This applies above all to the older generation.

On the broader issue there is more than one way of reading the problem of the stateless. If one were to compare the situation with Lithuania, which went for the zero option on independence, it is far from clear that the Russophones in that country are significantly better off by reason of having acquired citizenship. Or, if to make a wider comparison, the Hungarians of Slovakia, who automatically acquired Czechoslovak citizenship in  1918, were then stripped of it in 1945 and were readmitted to citizen status after 1948, are hardly a positive example of the benefit of citizenship. From this perspective, the stateless of Estonia may actually benefit from that status, because that status focuses both Russian and wider international attention on them and paradoxically offers them a measure of protection. As Estonian citizens they would lose that. Besides, if one examines the ageing dynamic, one will see that in a relatively short time, a decade at most, the issue will simply disappear as the stateless die out or, maybe, emigrate.

3. It should also have been noted that around two-fifths of the police forces active during the Bronze Soldier riots were Russophones (details of the incident can be found on p.5 of the CSIS report).

More broadly on the Bronze Soldier affair, it is clear enough that if the statue had been removed immediately after independence, it would have been accepted, though Moscow might well have protested. The monuments of the former colonial power are frequently eliminated in this way. Thus ironically it was the tolerance of the Estonians that gave rise to the problem many years later, and problem there was – the statue became the focus not or not only of symbolising a Russophone presence in Tallinn, a sacralised Russian space, but thanks to Nashi-inspired activity, with backing from Moscow, it acquired an aggressive function that could no longer be ignored. True, the way in which it was removed was crass, there was no attempt by the government to consult those for whom the statue was significant – majorities are frequently insensitive to minority concerns of this kind, but some steps did have to be taken. One should never underestimate the significance of sacralised spaces and symbols – imagine the outrage that would erupt if someone were to try to erect a statue of Benedict Arnold, “the patriot”, in the middle of Boston.

4. Then, the report never really asks the question what integration actually means and should mean. In general, minorities prefer to maintain some boundaries towards the majority for fear of losing their identity and can see “integration” as the code word for assimilation. How far, therefore, should majorities move towards and minority and vice-versa? There is a major debate in Germany, France or the UK over the failure of multiculturalism and this has turned precisely on this issue, that immigrant minorities have actively resisted adopting many of the mores of the majority and have frequently pursued a strategy of equally actively constructing strong boundaries, sustaining the identity habits brought from their countries of origin and resisting the “blandishments” of majority culture. Something similar applies to non-immigrant, historic minorities, though generally the threshold of assimilation is much easier cross than with non-European immigrants (e.g. Hungarians in Slovakia, whose numbers are diminishing slowly but seemingly inexorably). What this adds up to is that minorities prefer to live in parallel societies rather than in an “integrated” one, as this better secures their cultural future. Solitude is preferred to disappearance.

5. One of the key problems in any strategy of accommodation in Estonia is the weakness of the Russophone elite, with the consequence that the Estonian majority has no real interlocutor. It is clear enough that the Ansip government made no attempt to find an interlocutor before moving the Bronze Soldier statue, but it would not have been easy in the first place. This incompleteness and relative thinness of the social structure of the Russophone community may change as the generation born or raised in Estonia takes up leading positions. Whether either the Russophones or Estonians have evolved strategies for coming to terms with this shift is another matter entirely. Crucially, it is vital for the success of any such strategy that the upcoming Russophone elite demonstrate its commitment to the Estonian state and, just as importantly, their understanding of Estonian anxieties as to the future of their language and cultural reproduction. Small language communities face this problem all the time in an era of globalisation and especially in relation to another, stronger language community.

6. The central difficulty in all inter-ethnic contact is the divergence in the narratives of the collective self. The report alludes to this, in the context of different historical narratives, but does not – it seems to me – get to grips with the pivotal aspects of the problem. These narratives of self are constitutive of the collective identity itself and are not really negotiable, because they are lived as “the truth”. This is a universal principle, not in any way unique to Estonia and its Russophones. Clashing narratives are exacerbated when cultural trauma comes into play. In the Estonian context, the significance of the loss of statehood and subsequent subordination cannot be overestimated – indeed, it is hard to see any event as traumatic as the loss of state independence (cf. Poland). The entire colonial past outside Europe is bedevilled by this problem. Furthermore, in the Estonian case incorporation into the Soviet Union resulted in a series of radical and irreversible transformations, like the loss of population through exile and deportation, a coercive industrialisation, the physical changes to the landscape, overrapid urbanisation with the construction of (rather shoddy) housing complexes and the demographic transformation through the settlement of tens of thousands of (alien) incomers.

The Russophones, of course, cannot even begin to see it this way. They see the Soviet experience as benign, as a time when Russia was helpful to Estonia and gave it access to modernity. Neither side can really begin to see the other’s point of view and the two narratives cannot be reconciled. Again, this is not a unique case. Thus Americans cannot see that for Mexico the incorporation of sizeable territories that had been a part of Mexico into the US in the 19th century is still a source of resentment.

In the Estonian context, the objective is to find a narrative around which both Estonians and Russophones can find common ground. A narrative of this kind could then, putatively, become the foundation for a constitutional patriotism. I am persuaded that at this time this is impossible, unless the Russophones are ready to make concessions, above all by detaching themselves from the Moscow narrative and adopting one that identifies directly with Estonia (narratives of this kind could certainly be constructed).

If this route is taken, then it would have to involve Estonians as well and, it may well be, that a Truth and Reconciliation Commission could help to bring about such an outcome. Conceivably this could include a solemn pledge of commitment by the Russophones, a rejection of Moscow’s Compatriot strategy and the construction of a shared rituals, like an annual festival or some such which is accepted by both parties. Clearly, this would be a long term project and would be fraught with difficulties, not least because both parties would have take some things on trust. Trust at this time is a commodity in short supply, though not entirely absent.

So, in effect, what I am suggesting is the evolution of a Russian-identity-in-Estonia, obviously connected to Russia through language, literature and culture, but much less so through history and necessarily politics. The Russophone identification with Europe that the report notes is a helpful condition, as Russians in Russia are much less well disposed towards the EU, European integration and Nato, signifying that some disconnect between the Russophones of Estonia and Russia has already come into being. Note that the advantage of this strategy is that it largely by-passes Russia itself, which still has a very long way to go before it even begins to recognise the imperialism of its own Soviet past.

Finally, I have the sense that the report sees the role played by the Russian state towards the Russophones as generally positive or neutral. I’m not so sure about this. Some of Russia’s motivations could well be actuated by support for their Compatriots and the question of the stateless is a clear point of entry in this connection. Note that Russia is seemingly relying on Francophonie as its model for relations with Russophones outside Russia, but the Moscow version has a significantly stronger political content. However, at the same time, Russia has pursued a long term policy of making trouble in the former communist states (and elsewhere) in order to weaken the EU which it sees as a rival in its strategy of reconstructing “the common European home” by its own criteria. From this angle, the Russophone minority can be and is instrumentalised in the service of the Russian state and this does not necessarily serve the interests of the Russophones. Thus when Russia imposed an export stop after the Bronze Soldier affair, many Russians in Tallinn were disproportionately affected, but that troubled Moscow not at all.

The suspicion that Moscow is not sincere when it comes to the Russophones in Estonia (and Latvia too) is deeply rooted in the majority and will not be easily dispelled. Particular concern was caused by declarations from Moscow in the context of the Russian-Georgian war and the use of Russians in South Ossetia as a pretext for intervention. A precedent was set that could be employed in Estonia too, indicating that Russia would not abjure violence as a policy instrument. This makes the political separation of the Russophones from Russia all the more important if the objective is to strengthen the sense of security of the Estonian majority, which is, as I have been arguing, the most effective road to integration into a viable, shared citizenship concept.

Sch. Gy.

Language grumble

(The first in an occasional series.)

Am I alone in being pulled up short by the proliferation of the expression “innocent civilians” in newspaper reports? It’s odd if you think about it, because the term implies that there are non-innocent civilians around, otherwise why mark the word, why emphasise the innocence?

Let’s assume that the civilians so marked are really, genuinely innocent, but then how is their innocence determined and by whom? By the journalist in question or is there some – to me unknown – judicial or other process that establishes some civilians as innocent and others as, what, complicit, guilty, sinful? Can innocence be declared without some judicial or analogous process? Or is it enough to be a non-combatant in a war zone and to suffer “collateral” damage (there’s a weasel word now, if ever there was one) from belligerency and thereby automatically qualify as innocent?

Or is it innocence in its other meaning, not knowing that hostilities are taking place? That does seem far-fetched. When bullets are flying and shells are exploding around you, that seems hardly plausible.

Digging a bit deeper, belligerency nowadays necessarily involves the entirety of a population, all-people’s war is currently the norm, we’re a long way from the 18th century when (mostly) professional armies fought it out and tried (often failed) to keep the civilians out of it. Indeed, it is safe to say that 20th century warfare – and the current century has not seen any changes – targeted civilians as much as soldiers in uniform.

The implication, of course, is that no belligerent will regard civilians as innocent, but will see them as part of the environment that sustains combatants. Not for nothing is Mao Tse-tung supposed to have said, “the guerrilla must move amongst the people as a fish swims in the sea”. This does rather suggest an absence of innocence, if nothing else.

Maybe I’m making a meal of this, that all we are looking at is journalistic laziness, the love of a cliché, a phrase that arouses sympathy for those caught up in a conflict. There is, after all, no end to such laziness and fixatedness on clichés. But that rather does put the onus on journalists and questions their assumption of innocence or, at any rate, of objectivity. So, are there “innocent journalists” around?

Sch. Gy

Gyermekbarátság Ausztriában - Kinderfreundlichkeit in Österreich

Gondosan megterveztük a nyaralásunkat: hogy ne érjen minket meglepetés, hegyekbe mentünk, ahol tervezhető az időjárás és még kissé betegen is lehet menni, hiszen ott a levegővétel is gyógyítja a folyós orrocskákat. Csak olyan szálláshely jöhetett számításba, ahol gyerekeket szívesen fogadnak (vö. no children hotels vagy pc-bb módon: adults only hotels: http://www.resortvacationstogo.com/specialties/adults-only_resorts.html). Így jutottunk el Karintiába, Kötschachba, egy négycsillagos szállodába.


Az első meglepetés akkor ért, amikor az első vacsoránál megkértek minket, hogy a gyerekek üljenek a helyükön nyugodtan, mert „ez egy vendéglő, itt nem lehet szaladgálni vagy hangoskodni”.

Az ígért játszótér ősrégi volt, EU-szabvány előtti hintával és libikókával, valamint 7 piszkos kerti törpével, akiket egy pici házikóba lehetett ki- és bepakolni. A hotelben vállaltak „gyermekmegőrzést” is, hadd pihenjenek a szülők. Azt már nem is értették, hogy miért szeretne játszani egy szülő reggel fél 7-kor a saját gyerekével a játszószobában. Meg kellett várni a 7 órát azzal, hogy ebből nem lehet rendszer. (Nem tudtam az egyévesnek elmagyarázni…)

Az igazi hozzáállást a mindig kifogástalanul kivasalt dirndlit viselő főnökasszony mutatta meg, amikor a főként olasz gyerekekből álló kártyatársaságnak odavetette: „Bambini sono solo problemi”.

Érdekes lenne megfigyelni, hogy milyen reakciót váltana ki, ha Magyarországon járnának az emberek díszmagyarban dolgozni. Kiváló ruhatervezőnk, Náray Tamás nyilatkozta egyszer, hogy a nagyapjától örökölt gyönyörű fekete bocskai kabátot egy fesztivál gálaestjére nem merte felvenni, nehogy nemkívánt mögöttes politikai/identitásbeli tartalmat kölcsönözzön a ruha viselőjének.

Nem csak a gyerekeink miatt szégyellhettük (volna) magunkat, valahogy kerülték a társaságunkat is. Az olasz vendégek csak azért, mert ők az olaszon kívül más nyelven nem beszéltek, mi pedig csak angolul és németül beszéltünk az anyanyelvünk mellett.

Amikor fény derült arra, hogy anyám Hermagor közelében (Waiern, Karintia) született, apám pedig magyarországi német, a hotel személyzete kicsit megenyhült, de csak velem szemben. Karintia Haider nélkül is Karintia…A szellemidézés itt nem ért véget. Az bizonyára csak a sors különös történelmi fintora, hogy az egymás mellett elszállásolt mindkét magyar család ajtaja előtt ott figyelt Franz Joseph szigorú mellszobra, illetve friss virágokkal ékesített festménye, talán miheztartás végett.

Amint az a számla kifizetésekor kiderült, a „gyermekbarátságot” a falak vastagsága jelentette, ugyanis felárat fizettünk a hangszigetelésért, a "Kellerwand"-ért.

Hazafelé jutott eszembe Ausztriában élő barátnőm anyósának (már nem) meglepő kérdése, amikor elújságolták neki a nagy örömhírt, hogy a második gyermekáldás is közel van: „Wollt ihr einen Tiergarten vielleicht?”

Már csak „nevettem” a hazafelé vezető úton a kocsmák mellett felállított játszótereken. Mindent a felnőttek kényelméért...

Ausztria termékenységi rátája 2010-ben 1,44 volt, azaz egy átlag osztrák nő életében 1,44 gyermeket hoz világra. Ez az EU 27 tagállamához viszonyítva az utolsó harmadban való szerepléshez elég.
Ha tényleg ez az általános felfogás a „gyermekbarátságról”, lassan szerelhetik le a játszótereket ők is…(vö. Magyarország: 1,32).

Cs. E.


Schlank-Schlemmer Wellness Hotel Kürschner Kärnten
http://www.hotel-kuerschner.at/

Demography report 2010 - Older, more numerous and diverse Europeans ( 20/05/2011 )
Catalog N. : KE-ET-10-001-EN-C

http://www.statistik.at/web_de/statistiken/bevoelkerung/demographische_masszahlen/demographische_indikatoren/index.html

„Skót szoknya versus bocskai” – Terror Háza 2010. január 14.
http://www.terrorhaza.hu/mozi/konferencia/naray_tamas_politikai_motivum_es_formatervezes.html

The threat of intergovernmentalism

There is considerable irony in the current phase of the Eurozone-crisis. The single currency was brought into being as a step, a major one, towards the “ever closer union” that the aim of EU integration has always accepted (pace the Eurosceptics, who don’t read the small print).  The irony is that it is precisely the single currency which is threatening to undermine – at any rate to erode – the community method and to reenergise intergovernmentalism.

The Franco-German plans to govern the euro are expressly designed to circumvent the Commission and the European Parliament, indeed they are very largely to one side of EU institutions. Eurozone governance is to be structured in such a way as to keep the EU and the community method at arms length. This may very well reflect majority opinion in the large states, Germany most obviously, and to that extent is arguably an expression of democratic aspirations, but it does raise another, equally important issue. The large states have self-evidently embarked on placing their state-national interests first, not least because the European interest has been allowed to fall into oblivion or something close to it.

What this development overlooks is that while the large states might at first sight reasonably expect to secure their positions on the basis of prioritising the state-national interest, for the small states of the EU this pattern becomes distinctly worrying. Their state-national interest is best guaranteed by a higher rather than a lower level of integration. The pressure to reassert state-national interest over a European-level interest neglects and probably damages the EU’s conflict resolution function.

It all rather implies that forgetting rather than memory is driving intergovernmentalism. The interwar period may have been a long time ago, but anyone with even a nodding acquaintance of those two decades will recognise that the absence of any broader consensual European level integration contributed to the constant friction that constantly intensified insecurity and constrained small states into uneasy alliances with one or other of the larger states. France’s system of client states in Central Europe, the Little Entente, failed in the end because France was too weak a patron to sustain it; Germany took France’s place. We know the outcome.

The central problem is that with well over 30 states in Europe, there are just too many sovereignties. They have to be regulated in such a way that no state feels that its interests are disadvantaged. The EU (and its predecessors) have done this fairly successfully for over half a century and the success was built precisely on the movement away from intergovernmentalism.

Lest anyone – anyone from Anglo-Saxony presumably (this assessment is a good example) – come along and say, don’t worry, we can settle these things pragmatically, they should be reminded that in the context of a disparity of power (larger states v. smaller states, for one), pragmatism becomes an instrument to intimidate the weaker actor, a form of bullying. Smaller, weaker actors need values as much as they have interests to pursue.

So those who argue that the role and function of a state is to pursue the state-national interest, and that intergovernmentalism is the most effective way of achieving this, they should be reminded not only of the lessons of history, but, crucially, that different states define their nationhood differently, they define their interests differently and they define their relations with the large states differently. Unless there are recognised, overt mechanisms to ensure that the conflicts that can and will arise from these differences in definition are settled, the future for the smaller states in Europe looks bleak.

On this scenario, the outcome could conceivably be a loose alliance or, maybe better, a loose coalition among the smaller states that takes wariness towards the large states as its starting point and seeks to find common ground for European-level solutions. A multi-speed Europe could certainly evolve along these lines and leave the larger states with a more uncomfortable outcome that they seem currently ready to appreciate. Alternatively, the small states can try and find a patron, one that recognises that its own state-national interest is bound up with the security of the smaller states, something that Germany, France and Britain seem ready to neglect.

If we are to be serious about the state-national interest and at the same time accept the need for effective conflict resolution mechanisms in order to secure the selfsame interests, then riding roughshod over the interests of small states is a recipe for intensifying tension and friction. It should be blindingly obvious that small states have just as strong an expectation of being able to exercise agency as do large states. Indeed, much of democratic practice is about this exercise of agency and finding ways of ensuring that the agency of different actors is successfully composed.

In other words, and this is the heart of the matter, the large states have to recognise that the pursuit of their state-national interest must include a proper recognition of the interests of the smaller states of Europe and it is, and should certainly be, the urgent task of the state-national elites to make this case to their electorates. The alternative is unquestionably a steady rise in insecurity, friction and conflict without adequate resolution mechanisms.

When small states feel that they are deprived of agency, then they will very likely find ways of recuperating it, directly and indirectly, and will rely on patrons with similar aims, even if they thereby become unreliable partners in the eyes of other large states. This development will very probably produce negative sum outcomes for all those involved, especially when large state patrons find themselves dragged into conflicts in which they are involved only or primarily through their smaller clients.

And to the foregoing scenario should be added the European strategies, whatever these may be, of the US, Russia and China. A weaker EU will give rise to a power vacuum and that vacuum will certainly be filled by someone’s power, affecting both large and small states. Not a particularly alluring prospect, it would seem.

Sch. Gy

Törzsiség

A blog ezzel a bejegyzéssel egy újabb formával jelentkezik, ezúttal egy könyv recenzióval, de két megközelítésből. Robin Fox: The Tribal Imagination – Civilization and the Savage Mind című kötetét az iroda két tollnoka is bemutatja. Lássuk, mire képes az együttgondolkodás!


I.

Van-e bármilyen mondanivalója ma az antropológiának? Tud-e a modern komplex társadalmakkal bármit is kezdeni? Kezembe akadt Robin Fox vaskos könyve, címe The Tribal Imagination – Civilization and the Savage Mind (talán ez lenne a magyar fordítása „A törzsi képzelet – civilizáció és a barbár gondolkodás), mely zseniálisan építi fel és bontja ezer szálra az antropológia modern, mai üzenetét, mind a nemzetközi politikai viszonyokban – miért ítéltetett kudarcra mind az iraki, mind az afganisztáni demokrácia-építés, mind az irodalomtörténetben, mind a nyelvészetben, mind pedig a társadalomtudományok kialakulásában. Igaz, a mérték, illetve a szálak hosszúsága sok helyütt zavaróan hosszúak, másutt pedig túlságosan rövidek.

Mindenesetre a könyv kiváló elemzés arról, hogy milyen finom mechanizmusok, látens vagy éppenséggel jól látható kapcsolati hálózatok szövik át és működtetik a társadalmakat és a gondolkodásokat strukturalizmuson és a rendszerelméleteken túl, milyen csoportdinamikák léteznek, és mi az elsődleges meghatározó elemük. Ez pedig a törzsiség, a nagycsalád, a klán, a férfiak közötti kötések elsődlegesen.

Fox szerint a törzsiség korántsem csak a „primitív társadalmak” sajátja – belső dinamikája, szerveződése jól tükröződik a „fejlett társadalmakban” is. Az ősi dobszó folyamatosan pereg. Hiszen éppen a törzsiség sajátja, hogy tagjai számára jól ismertek a szabályok, a tabuk, és fenntarthatósága a bizalmon, a megbízhatóságon és a közös nyelven alapszik. És nem utolsó sorban a legfontosabb szerepe, hogy önmagát fenntartsa és reprodukálja. Bármi áron.

Vérfertőzés. Ez a ma botrányt keltő fogalom mindennek az alapja, Fox szerint. Mára talán vérrokonság néven sokkalta szalonképesebb. A Bibliának, nemzeti eposzoknak, hősi énekeknek, a teljes irodalmi repertoárnak, jelenlegi észak-afrikai vagy közel-keleti eseményeknek, voltaképpen ez az emberiség mozgatórugója. A csoport fenntartásának alapgondolata, hogy a vérvonalat tovább kell vinni, és mivel a kihalás nem opció, így a befelé fordulás az egyetlen megoldás. Igaz, minden csak és kizárólag szabályozott kereteken belül: az egyéni döntések felett folyamatosan a csoport érdek dominál. Érdekes a Bibliának egy teljes deszakralizált elemzését olvasni, kizárólag az antropológus szemével és eszköztárával, bizonyítva az egy közös ős létét, a testvérek közötti házasságok sorát szemléltetve. Fox még az Oidipüsz-komplexusról és Freudról is lerántja a leplet és azt is bemutatja, hogy a görög tragédia saját korában teljesen más miatt volt felháborító.

És hogyan marad fenn a nagycsalád? Miért nem veszik a feledés homályába? Az emberi agyi fejlődéssel illetve az agyban zajló működésekkel magyarázza mindezt Fox. A dobszó folyamatosan pereg évszázadokon keresztül. A ritmus nem változik. Ma sem. Emlékek maradnak, szavakhoz, képekhez társulnak. Repetitio est mater studiorum – mondhatnánk. Az ősi versek, ritmusok segítik az emlékezést,

"... Sok régi ritmus, sűrű és borús

Zajlás a test titkos mélyeiben,

Távol a fénytől s mégis biztosan,

Hibátlanul. S ős híreket izen...."

(Tóth Árpád: Az ősök ritmusa)

magukba zárva a tudásokat, újratermelve még a „Nyugati világban” is a csoportok meghatározó kötéseit. Voltaképpen a modern iskolarendszerek ezeket a nagy eposzokat és modern drámákat mesélik újra, napról-napra. Csak éppen az antropológus eszköztára hiányzik értelmezésükhöz, újabbak rakódnak rájuk, de a lényeg változatlan. Fox könyvében újból a lényegről beszél, szembesítve és magyarázva a különféle újkori értelmezések okait.

Ami a könyv eredetisége, voltaképpen az a hátránya is. Sajnálatosan beleragad az angolszász törzsiség gondolatvilágába, nem tud belőle szabadulni, és nem képes más modern, mondhatni gondolkodási stílusokat, törzsi kultúrákat bemutatni. Angolszászul is hallatszik a dobszó. A francia és német gondolkodás ez esetben testvér nemzettségeknek tekinthetők, ahogy a Biblia és görög irodalom feltárása is, a közel-kelet illetve az indiánok bemutatása a gyarmatosítás számlájára írható. Pedig de jó lett volna olvasni a magyar univerzalizmusról vagy éppen partikularizmusról....

A modern társadalmakat Fox Athén és Spárta közötti ide-oda billegésben látja – nyitott és zárt társadalmak vetélkedése Karl Popper után. Az ideális Fox szerint a két típus vegyítése. Ahogy a mediokrácia (a csoda, hogy mindenki egyenlő) és az extrém (mindenki teljesen különböző) elegyítése is célszerű lenne Fox szerint, Taleb Fekete Hattyúját idézve, az ember minden esetben ugyanazt a kiszámíthatóságot és biztonságot szeretné elérni, ami teljességgel lehetetlen. A slusszpoén pedig, hogy a liberális demokrácia gyenge pontja maga az ember, az emberi természet – a civilizált képzelet és a törzsi képzelet folyamatos küzdelme zajlik jelenleg is.Kár, hogy a könyv utolsó fejezetébe sűrűsödik a mostani társadalmakra vonatkozó mondanivaló és kritika. Pedig az első oldaltól kezdve erre vártam.

kng


II.

Hosszú a könyv, de valójában két fő gondolatból indul ki. Az egyik a törzsiség, mint az emberiség alapállapota – az emberi közösségeknek a normális, sőt természetes kapcsolatrendszere. Fox értelmezésében a törzsiség a vérrokonságot helyezi előtérbe, erre alapozza a kötelékeket, ill. a lojalitásokat, és ezek minden más kapcsolat fölé emelkednek. A rokonság, a nagycsalád, a klán különféle formái nyújtják az egyénnek a bizalmat, a biztonságot, a társadalmi és kulturális tőkét, az információs hálózatot: a törzsiség definiálja az emberi mivoltot. Mindez szigorúan szabályozottan alakul, a tagok számára érthető keretek között, és szertartások, varázslatok, tabuk, előítéletek segítségével termelődik újra. A törzsiség, így Fox, komoly korlátokat szab az egyéni szabadságnak.

Ezt az ősi rendszert törte át, bontotta le a Nyugat a világ többi részétől eltérő fejlődése következtében, ezáltal megteremtve a a civilizációs „csodát” (Miracle), a polgári, egyéni szabadságot felkaroló társadalmat. Igaz, a törzsiség továbbra is kíséri, kísérti a Nyugatot: ennek pedig a „dobszó” (Drumbeat) nevet adja. Leegyszerűsítve: a Nyugat a „csoda” terepe, amíg másutt, a nem-Nyugaton a „dobszó” regnál, bár igaz, hogy mindkettőben fellelhetőek a másiknak a jelei is.

Fox másik nagy gondolata a „csoda” veszélyezettsége, nevezetesen a „dobszó” minduntalan elő-előretörése, pontosabban a visszarendeződés fenyegetése, mivel a dobok nem tűntek el, hanem csupán a háttérbe szorultak.

Fogadjuk el kiindulási pontnak ezt a két alapgondolatot.A nagycsalád-rendszer minden kétségen kívül a nem-Nyugat domináló eleme, aki ezt nem érti, nem akarja elfogadni, az az adott társadalmak mozgását, dinamikáit sem értheti meg. Két példa a könyvből. Fox egy amerikai újságírót idéz, aki némi megrökönyödéssel konstatálta Bagdadban, hogy a szállodájában zajló esküvők kivétel nélkül első unokatestvérek között kötőtdek. Amikor az újságíró ezt felvetette, egyszerű választ kapott: micsoda, azt szeretné, hogy egy idegent vegyek el feleségül? A normális, a természetes a nagycsaládon belüli házasság, mert csak így marad fent a rokonságra alapuló rendszer, és a velejáró biztonság. A kívülálló nemcsak, hogy nem biztonságos, hanem potenciálisan ellenséges is - felejtsük el!

A másik anekdota az első világháború idejét eleveníti fel: amikor T.E. Lawrence (a Bölcsesség hét pillérének szerzője és az Oszmán birodalom elleni un. arab felkelésnek a szervezője) katonai segítséget kér egy arab törzsfőnöktől az arabok érdekében, a következő választ kapja a törzsi vezértől: kik ezek az arabok? Vagyis nem egy arab nemzeti tudat vezérelte, hanem a törzsiség, a saját rokoni-rendszerének az előnye-hátránya. Idegeneknek semmivel sem tartozott.

A nagycsaládi világ tehát szegmentált, különféle párhuzamos altársadalmakból áll, amelyek képesek egymás mellett megélni, szabályozzák kapcsolataikat, de egymásban legjobb esetben is riválist látnak, nem pedig hasonló állampolgárt. Ezeknek az országoknak a lakosságát nem lehet népnek nevezni. Hiába beszélik ugyanazt a nyelvet, hiába (mondjuk) Iszlám vallásúak, hiába rendelkeznek hosszúlejáratú közös történelemmel, mégsem tartoznak egymáshoz: a szegmens az egyetlen univerzálisan elfogadott kötelék, mert ez a vérrokonságból indul ki és ez adja, adhatja a megbízhatóságot.

Ha egy újságíró, ill. egy diplomata vagy egy NGO munkatársa a „szíriai” vagy az „afgán” vagy a „líbiai” népről kezd el beszélni, akkor nyilvánvalóan nem érti a helyzetet; és aki arra alapozza a stratégiáját, hogy egy effajta országból egy nyugati típusú demokráciát fog kovácsolni (l. Afganisztán), annak nagyon hamar kudarc-élménye lesz. A nyugatiak hajlamosak lenézni a törzsiséget, feltételezvén, hogy ez egy olyan kiküszöbölhető diszfunkció. Nem, az érintettek ebből nem fognak kijózanodni.

Fox másik tétele azonban egy fokkal kevésbé meggyőző. Karl Popper (akinek Fox tanítványa is volt) a nyitott és zárt társadalmak tézisére alapozza érvelését: a „csoda” társadalmait az egyéni szabadság eszméje hatja át, ez a központi eleme a Nyugatnak, és ezt a világraszóló (a világot megváltó?) teljesítményt szakadatlanul veszélyezteti a sokoldalú zártságok újratermelődése. Bár Fox valamelyest finomítja az érvelését a könyv utolsó két fejezetében, mégis nehezen fogadja el egyrészt, hogy minden emberi intézmény, legyen az formális vagy informális, bizonyos zártságokat eredményez: másképpen működésképtelen lesz. A szabályozás, az intézmény szokásrendszere egy intézményi identitás-komplexumot hoz létre, ezzel pedig elkerülhetetlenül kizárja a nem-tagokat. Itt érdekes, hogy bár Fox idézi Mary Douglast, a How Institutions Think c. könyvéről nem tesz említést. Ilyenek a struktúrák.

Másrészt, az intézmények és struktúrák - és a nagycsalád is ilyen - a biztonságot, a kiszámíthatóságot, ill. ezen belül az egyéni szabadságot is szavatolják: egy struktúra nélküli társadalom eleve elképzelhetetlen és minden bizonnyal a nyers hatalmat helyezné előtérbe. Ebből az is következik, hogy a zártság veszélyét nem kell túlméretezni; igen, létezik, de nem maga a struktúra a veszélyforrás, hanem a szabályozatlanság, ill. a konkuráló intézmények hiánya. Harmadrészt Fox egyáltalán nem tér ki az esetlegesség kérdésére: a zártságot sokkal könnyebben kerüljük el, ha tisztában vagyunk saját és mások esetlegességével, mert ennek segítségével tudjuk a zártságokat kikezdeni, lebontani. Az önreflexivitással megérthetjük nemcsak az zártságok természetrajzát, hanem a nyitottság rugóit is, mivel rálátást ad saját esendőségünkre. Ez gyakran kényelmetlen, igaz, de megteremti az újítás lehetőségét. Hozzátenném, hogy az önreflexivitás kizárólag európai örökség, innen nézve az optimizmus és a remény tápterülete.

Fox nem igen vesz tudomást a kommunizmusról, pedig ez volt a 20 sz. legklasszikusabb zárt rendszere, és ebben a kontextusban világosan kiderül, hogy a külső tényező – az emberi jogok elismerése a Helsinki Záróokmányban – jelentette az esetlegesség berobbanását a zárt rendszerbe. Továbbá sajnálatos, hogy Fox nem foglalkozik Bahtyin monologikus rendszerek elméletével, mert ebből könnyen lehet következtetni a zárt rendszerek fenntarthatatlanságára. Juri Lotman Kultúra és robbanás című könyvéből pedig a zárt rendszerek gyenge pontjait is megismerhette volna.

A társadalomtudományok központi témája a struktúra és a cselekvőképesség közti feszültség: ha túl erős a struktúra, akkor ez megbénítja a társdalom önmozgását, azonban ha túl laza, és szabályozatlan a szabadság, akkor kialakul az anarchia, minek következtében egy atomizált, szétzilált társadalmi állapot válik uralkodóvá. Ezt a dilemmát Fox alig érinti, de mégis sikeresen rávilágít egy, az átlag nyugati gondolkodás által nagyrészt elhanyagolt struktúrára: a vérrokonság máig is domináló szerepére a nem-Nyugaton.

Sch. Gy.



Hivatkozások

Fox, Robin The Tribal Imagination: Civilization and the Savage Mind (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2011).

Douglas, Mary How Institutions Think (Syracuse NY:  Syracuse University Press, 1986).

Lotman, Jurij Robbanás és kultúra  ford. Szűcs Teri, (Budapest: Pannonica, 2001).

Taleb, Nassim Nicholas, The Black Swan: the Impact of the Highly Improbable (London: Penguin, 2007).

Skandinávia, az USA és az újraelosztás aktuális dilemmái

Ahogy azt már a blog két korábbi bejegyzése is tárgyalta, a II. világháborút követően nyugaton kialakult társadalmi rendszerek, illetve a modern jóléti államok berendezkedésének alapvető mechanizmusa, a redisztribúció elve jelenleg igen komoly kihívásokkal szembesül mind az Európai Unió határain belül (A new „revolt of the rich”?), mind pedig a nemzetállami szinten (Redistribution and its travails). Márpedig ez nem választható el az egymással vállalt szolidaritás, a saját közösségért és a közjóért érzett felelősség kérdésétől sem.
Miközben az európai államokban és az USA-ban a gazdasági válság és a multikulturális társadalom kiéleződő feszültségeinek hatására mind inkább felmerül a jelenlegi modellek újragondolása (a munkaerőpiacok átrendeződése, az oktatási, a nyugdíj- és szociális rendszerek átalakítása), jelenleg is igen változatos redisztribúciós (és így szolidaritási?) modellek léteznek.

De mely tényezők határozzák meg, hogy a javak és juttatások újraelosztásából kik és milyen mértékig részesülhetnek?


A jóléti modellek két pólusa: Skandinávia és az Egyesült Államok


A különböző jóléti mechanizmusok eltérését jól példázza annak az áttekintése, hogy a közszféra és a közjó fogalmát középpontba állító szociológiai kutatási irányok mely országokban tudtak igazán elterjedni. Ez a metódus tulajdonképpen a szociológia önmaga felé fordulásaként is értelmezhető, és azon a feltevésen alapul, hogy a kutatói világ fogékonysága egy-egy téma iránt mélyebb történeti-társadalmi okokban gyökerezik.
A mostanában igen kedvelt motivációs kutatások egyik népszerű ága, az úgynevezett public service motivation fogalmának vizsgálata arra keresi a választ, hogy milyen különbség mutatkozik az állami, illetve a magán szektorban munkát vállalók hivatástudata között. Az alapvetés pedig egyértelmű: azokat, akik az állami felügyelet alá tartozó oktatási, egészségügyi, szociális vagy közigazgatási szférában helyezkednek el, inkább jellemzi altruizmus, illetve a tágabb közösségért, a társadalomért való felelősségvállalás, mint a magán szektorban munkát vállaló társaikat.

Meglepő módon a közszféra altruisztikus motivációi iránti érdeklődés a különböző jóléti modelleket feltüntető képzeletbeli skála két végpontjánál tűnik kiemelkedőnek: a gazdag és univerzális transzfereket juttató Skandináv országokban, valamint a liberális modell mintapéldájának tekintett Egyesült Államokban. A kutatási hagyomány hasonlósága és az úgynevezett public ethos népszerűsége mögött azonban teljesen eltérő történelmi és társadalmi tényezők húzódnak meg.

A Skandináv országok kicsi és tőkeintenzív gazdaságai, nagy számú és politikailag jól szervezett vidéki népessége a 19. század végén kitűnő alapot biztosított a mezőgazdasági és az ipari munkásság úgynevezett vörös-zöld koalíciójához. Ezekben az országokban a szociáldemokrácia és az egalitarizmus hagyománya a politikai gondolkodás szerves részévé vált, ami a II. világháborút követően lehetővé tette a középosztály megnyerését egy olyan modell számára, amely magas adókra és a szociális háló „széles merítésére” épül. Nem elhanyagolható ugyanakkor a reformáció hatása sem: míg korábban a Római Katolikus Egyház vette vállára a szociális ellátás és az oktatás kérdését, az ezzel való szakítást követően viszonylag hamar kialakultak a szekuláris és az állami szféra jóléti ellátó intézményei (illetve a különböző civil társulások és egyesülések központi szerepe is innen eredeztethető).

Dániát véve példaként a legfrissebb értékvizsgálatok is megerősítik, hogy a dán politikai gondolkodásnak a mai napig szerves része a közjó iránti felelősségvállalás, míg az állami intézményekbe vetett bizalom magasabb a szakszervezetek, de még a média esetében mért értékeknél is. Mivel a kiterjedt állami szféra az adófizetők mintegy egyharmadának biztosít megélhetést, ezen alkalmazottak motiváltsága és elhivatottsága a társadalom irányában komoly finanszírozási kérdés is, ami tovább erősíti a közjó „étoszát”.

Noha a vörös-zöld koalíció elengedhetetlen volt a New Deal program végrehajtásához is, az USA déli részének munkaintenzív termelése, a mezőgazdasági és az ipari népesség eltérő jellege és igényei az Egyesült Államokban nem tették lehetővé egy mindenkire kiterjedő biztosítási rendszer kialakítását. A II. világháború után megerősödő középosztályi réteg jellemzően az állami szférán kívül kereste és találta meg jólétének biztosítását, ami egy „maradvány-jellegű” jóléti modellt eredményezett. Az állam kötelékében tehát főleg azok maradnak, akik saját erőből nem képesek boldogulásuk megteremésére, ez a kötelék pedig meglehetősen stigmatizáló jellegű is lehet.

Az amerikai modell legfőbb védjegyévé ezért az önsegítés és a civil társulás iránti szenvedély vált- többek között ez volt az, ami Tocquevillet is annyira magával ragadta az 1830-as években tett látogatása során. Bár az amerikai civil társadalom gyengüléséről számos publikáció számol be (Robert Putnam vizsgálata a bowling lehanyatlóban lévő kultúrájáról a „bowling alone” fogalmát állította e jelenség szinonimájává), semmi sem mutatja jobban ennek a társadalmi tőkének az erősségét, mint a felette érzett folyamatos aggodalom.

A közszférában való munkavállalás étosza az Egyesült Államokban éppen azért alakulhatott ki, mert relatíve kisszámú embert érintett és így valamilyen különös hivatástudatot feltételezett. Az 1960-as években, a jóléti államot ért kritikákkal és az újbaloldali mozgalmak megjelenésével egy időben azonban az állami intézményekbe vetett bizalom erőteljes csökkenésnek indult, és egyre inkább elterjedt az a nézet, hogy a közszférában is csak az önérdek az elsődleges motiváció. Ezek a folyamatok rendkívül hátrányosan érintették a mindenkori amerikai kormányt, az 1980-as években ezért Bush elnök már a public ethos megújítását hirdette, és ez a folyamat vezetett el a fogalom tudományos vizsgálatához, illetve mesterséges feltámasztásához is.


A jóléti állam és az Európai Unió előtt álló kihívások


Függetlenül attól, hogy az itt felsorolt történeti és szociológiai tényezők milyen konkrét modell kialakulását eredményezték a II. világháború után a nyugati világban, a jóléti állam a megváltozott gazdasági helyzetnek, a demográfiai trendeknek, az átalakult nemi és családi szerepeknek és az így létrejött új kockázatoknak és igényeknek a hatására az 1970-es évek után most kétségtelenül egy újabb változását (válságát?) éli át. Miután a gazdasági válságnak köszönhetően a piacok felelőtlensége jó ideje terítéken van, a tendencia alapvetően az állami szerepvállalás növekedése felé mutat, míg az államadósságok elszállását látva az is megkérdőjeleződhet, hogy vajon az állam mennyire jó „gazda”? Sőt, az imént felsorolt tényezők mellett éppen a növekvő költségvetési hiány az, ami új mechanizmusok kialakítását sürgeti. Hiszen míg a redisztribúció szellemiségéhez (legyen az nemzeti vagy európai szintű) elengedhetetlen valamiféle összetartozás-tudat, kétségtelen az is, hogy a rendszer stabilitása a gazdasági stabilitásra épül.
Nehéz megmondani, hogy az Európai Unió szintjén személve a kérdést mi tűnik égetőbb problémának: az összetartozás, illetve a szolidaritás hiánya, vagy a gazdasági érdekek dimenziója. Utóbbit sajnos nem lehet kiiktatni a képletből: az újraelosztás konszenzusához végső soron elengedhetetlen annak az érzete, hogy a többiek boldogulása hosszú távon a mi boldogulásunkat is elősegíti. Míg a globalizáció kapcsán mindenki a kölcsönös függőségről beszél, ma még mindig nem egyértelmű, hogy az EU vezető tagállamainak jóléte mennyire függvénye a többi tagállam gazdasági helyzetének, míg a gazdasági recesszió időszaka kétségkívül nem kedvez a közös európai nevező megtalálásának.

Akárhogy is, annyi biztosan elmondható, hogy a következő időszakban a gazdasági válság által felszínre hozott problémákra választ kell találni mind az egyes tagállamokban, mind pedig az Európai Unió intézményén belül. Ezek a válaszok pedig—csak úgy, mint a II. világháború után kialakult rendszerek—meg fogják azt mutatni, hogy a XXI. század elején hogyan is gondolkozunk saját közösségünk más csoportokhoz való viszonyáról. Nem csak a nemzeti, de az összeurópai szinten is.

S.Z.


Felhasznált irodalom:

Esping-Andersen, Gøsta (1990): “The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism”, Princeton University Press, pp. 19-34.

Flora, Peter (1986). Growth to Limits. The Western European welfare states since World War II. Vol. 1, Berlin: de Gruyter, pp. 12-29.

Jørgensen, Torben Beck (2006). “Value Consciousness and Public Management”, International Journal of Organization Theory and Behaviour, vol. 9 (4), pp. 510-536.

Putnam, Robert (1995). “Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital”, Journal of Democracy, vol. 6 (1), pp. 65-98.