Globalizáció, europaizálódás, civil társadalom Magyarországon
Civil Society in Hungary and EU-Accession

Summary/Abstract: Civil Society was on the forefront of democratic opposition programmes and discussions during the eighties within the Eastern Bloc, and had a longer lasting influence also on Western social science discourses. Students of civil society need to reflect the issues and changing meanings of the concept during this development, coming from Communist dictatorship and leading to the EU-accession of most former Communist Countries of Eastern and Central Europe. The analysis of East Central European states is actually reduced on Poland, Hungary, and Czech-Slovakia- produced ambivalent tendencies towards civic engagement and civil society in post- communist democracies. The author tries to refer mainly to examples of the Hungarian development, which have some more general meaning for the sub-region with specific outlook on EU-Accession. To sum up relevant pre-communist traditions for recent developments of civil society in Eastern and Central Europe, there is an ambivalent relationship between democratization, civilization and of nation-building in this region. The emancipation from Soviet influence in 1988-89, and dissolution of Soviet Empire opened political space for the reconstruction of national sovereignty and to develop civil society and democracy in former Soviet-dominated states. The liberation from Soviet rule, and institutionalization of new constitutional structures was a “national” and „democratic” as well as „civic” issue. National unity, democracy and civic engagement of the civil society are reaffirmed and resurrected in post-communist politics as former neglected factors. In this “renaissance” in Eastern Europe, there are very different political traditions and tendencies awakened and reconstructed. Their relationship to the values of civil society, pluralist democracy and human rights is sometimes overshadowed by anti-modernist and traditionalist orientations. Parallel to the tendency of stressing sovereignty of the nation-state and nation as ultimate values and actors of political universe, the political elite of new, post-communist democracies wish to join to Western European and North- Atlantic economic-political integration, to European Union and NATO.Paradoxically, the same political forces, which preach national engagement, and rebuilding of nation-state , plea for European integration as a precondition of stabilization of democracy and modernization of economic system. The new Eastern European nations all aim membership in the European Union. But this membership, which requires high level of „civicness” and the same time involve limits of sovereignty of its member states, contradicts with the traditions of nation states in Eastern Europe. The European Union is the symbol of modernity, democracy and civic culture for East Europeans, the European Civil Society is a challenge for all of them. What are the distinctive features of the development of civil society and engagement between the East and the West in Europe? [...]

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