Repoliticization of the Constitution? Constitutional Politics in Hungary 1990-2022

While there is an ongoing debate on the profoundness of constitutional changes since the coming into power of the second Orbán government in 2010, the new Fundamental Law of Hungary (2011) got undoubtedly into the center of (daily) political battles. Conventional wisdom claims that the Hungarian constitution had been depoliticized from 1990 to 2010 and repoliticized from 2010 to date. In my presentation I will challenge this general narrative and argue that struggles around constitutional questions have always been part of the Hungarian politics. It has deep historical roots, and imprints of this mentality have been discernible even after the democratic transformation process in 1989/1990. I will underpin this thesis by giving a realistic definition of the term ‘constitution’ and by showing that mentality of prodemocratic system opposition prevailed not only in historical periods of Hungary but also after 1990. I will argue that the constitutional politics of the system opposition on a rhetorical level has actively prevented the Hungarian political system from becoming a consolidated democracy. This argument will imply that we have to revise the theoretical framework of democratic consolidation as presented by Merkel (1998; 2008). Furthermore, I will show also that political rhetoric and political activity might diverge fundamentally by presenting data of parliamentary voting behaviors which show surprising propensity to cooperation between political ‘enemies’. I will conclude that long standing tradition of constitutional politics understood as mentality of system opposition prevailed even after the democratic transformation in 1989/1990 and that the general narrative of depoliticization of constitutional issues between 1990 and 2010 could not be hold.