János Dobszay
Crutches for the State
The Voluntary Sphere
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The spectacular expansion of the civic sphere has been a salient feature of developments in Hungary in recent years.
Indeed, one fifth of all Hungarians are members of some voluntary organization or another, and a tenth of them are registered members of two or more. The role of this sector in meeting social needs is on the increase, the added value produced by voluntary organizations assisting households—that is, not state nor banking or business interests—reaching half a per cent of GDP in 1994. These contributed 0.7 per cent to the full output of the economy.
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In the forty years preceding the changeover to democracy and a market economy, more than 90 per cent of associations were concerned with sports or leisure-time activities—the number of voluntary fire fighters was also astonishingly high—while health care, social, cultural or religious organizations were reduced to a few per cent of the total.
Changes began, even if slowly, in the second half of the 1980s. In 1987, the foundation as a corporate identity was restored, and a law on the freedom of association was enacted in 1989.
In the wake of the changes in the political and legal environment, there was an epidemic of organization-founding. In 1989, the number of foundations registered by the courts was 400, in 1992, 9,803. Over the same period, the number of associations rose from 8,936 to 21,528.
Although the rate of growth has slowed down (in 1992 the number of foundations grew by 3,500 and that of associations by 3,200, in 1993, those figures were 2,181 and 1,271, respectively), the process is far from over. In September 1995, more than 15,000 foundations and some 23,000 associations, interest-protecting bodies and other civic organizations were listed in the register of the Supreme Court. Today, for every thousand Hungarians there are 1.15 foundations and 2.22 organizations, all founded under the Association Act.
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These last five or so years have seen several political scandals over financial support extended in questionable circumstances—for instance, through funds made available by secret decree—by the government to voluntary organizations felt to be sympathetic or run by individuals close to it. An investigation made by the State Audit Office last year established that, more than Ft24 billion was transferred from the government sector to various foundations. An estimate has not even been attempted on how many billion forints may have been passed, under political pressure, from state-owned firms to organizations of this kind. For instance, the largest energy-supplying firm, the Hungarian Electricity Company, has alone spent Ft900 million in recent years in support of foundations.
On 1 January 1994, Parliament created a special, intermediate group for voluntary organizations so that they may be both "state" and "civic" in character, but transparent in their operation. This type of "public foundation", under current law, may be brought into being when it is assigned a public task, for example, the local organization of education. (In contrast to the foundations pure and simple, it does more than serve the public interest, it has to actually take over a task from the state.)
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a sociologist and journalist, is on the staff of the economic weekly Heti Világgazdaság. He is also a member of the Soros Foundation's committee concerned with investigative journalism.
