BackCsaba Molnár: Political Autonomy in a Centrally-Driven Legislature: The Case of Socialist Hungary (1949-1990)
Main goal of Comparative Agendas Project is to explore the most important characteristics of policy dynamics. The CAP community investigates several modern democracies and some non-democratic regimes too. This proposal focuses on the latter kind of political regimes: a sole-party dictatorship. How much impact has a single member of parliament on policy-making in such a polity? It examines the legislative activity of Hungary from 1949 to 1990 (nine parliamentary cycles) concentrating on interpellations, laws and quasi-laws (the so called ‘decrees equal to law’). The Hungarian National Assembly (similarly to other legislatures of the Eastern Block) was often called ‘rubber stamp legislation’ which means it had only a peripheral role in politics. All important decisions were made by the Central Committee of the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party. MPs’ job was to execute those decision. This paper explores whether this thesis was true.