A „társadalom kora”. Munkásbiztosítás és munkaügy Magyarországon a 19. és a 20. század fordulóján
The “age of society”: Social insurance and labour policy in Hungary at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries

Summary/Abstract: Through an analysis of the making of Hungary’s 1891 compulsory health insurance Act and the its compulsory accident insurance Act of 1907, this study attempts to interpret the establishment of the institution of social insurance as an element in the evolution of Hungarian mass society. Relying on analyses of the history of similar West European institutions it depicts the birth of compulsory insurance as the making of an institutional system which no longer dealt with social tensions locally – as had been the case before, in poor-relief – but on a mass scale, building on new techniques of administration. The most important noticeable difference between the makings of the two laws discussed lies in the following: while, due to the lack of considerable influence of the yet insignificant industrial and commercial interests, the first one resulted from the work of experts following western, above all, German patterns as well as from the benevolence of the majority of the political elite, the second law evolved out of a debate in which employers and employees alike wished to have the lion’s share in the making of the law through their respective interest organisations. Nonetheless, the most important part in the shaping of the insurance institution was still played by the ministerial apparatus and the political decision-makers. Although not standing equally far from employers and employees, first of all, they pursued their own goals as well as their ideas based on western patterns and did not wish to serve the interests of either party.

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