The Domestication of the Civil Sphere

Nagy, Ádám and Béres-Áfra, Zsuzsa and Szalóki, Viktor (2025) The Domestication of the Civil Sphere. CIVIL SZEMLE, 22 (2). pp. 9-24. ISSN 1786-3341

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Abstract

In our study, using examples, we examine the Hungarian model of domesticating the civil sector, according to which (Nagy, 2014) the „National Cooperation System” (Nemzeti Együttműködés Rendszere, NER) – the name and frame of the Hungarian governmental model with a two-thirds majority since 2010 – employs a multi-step domestication methodology. The first step involves centralizing funding and exercising control over power. This method proves effective for most civil organizations, as their primary interest is not in political statements but in achieving organizational goals. Consequently, they do not oppose this operational mechanism based on “power” – understood here as funding or its promise. If financial pressure is unsuccessful, the state employs its ever-expanding media arsenal as a pressure tool. At this stage, only those organizations that aim to fulfill the ethos of monitoring state power, alongside traditional civil society roles of participation, service, and oversight, continue to resist. If even this approach fails, the state utilizes its public power tools to enforce the government’s will – primarily seeking to turn off those organizations labeled as hostile. In our study, which methodologically relies on desk research supplemented in several cases with “worst practice” elements, we demonstrate how the interpretability of this model has evolved and solidified into a threefold approach: disqualification, domestication, and direction. The unique office established under the guise of sovereignty protection aligns with this model, which, in our view, supports the execution of this final step. Consequently, our study period spans 2010-2024, with a narrower focus on events between 2014 (following Prime Minister Orbán’s 2014 Tusványos speech) and 2024. Of course, we do not wish to simplify reality into an evil state/NER versus a sound civil society contrast. Still, it is a fact that the Hungarian state has gradually dismantled the democratic institutional system over the past decade, including by narrowing the opportunities for civil society. Overall, we believe that while there are numerous examples of the first tool, even within the imperfect implementation of the democratic model in Hungary, there is hardly any precedent for using the second tool. The deployment of public power tools is characteristic of a non-democratic system.

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