Changes and constancy in Hungarian parliamentary work in the first years of pandemic and before: A comparative analysis

In 2010, when Fidesz-KDNP, a right-wing party coalition gained a two-thirds majority in Hungarian Parliament, legislative processes changed significantly. On the one hand, government parties were able to achieve their legislative purposes without the support of opposition MPs. However, parliamentary election of 2010 reshaped also the field of policy agendas, as the relation between executive agenda and legislation became tighter, than ever before. Statements of the Prime Minister emerged as the most important forum to draw the lines of decision-making (for example to put a legislative focus on executive policy priorities), while opposition parties usually tabled their interpellations and questions to give a reaction to the laws, already passed by pro-government MPs. In other words, if Prime Minister Viktor Orbán put an emphasis on a policy issue in his parliamentary statements, the number of laws on that policy field increased rapidly. However, Orbán’s speeches did not serve only to draw the important lines of legislation. In general, the Head of the government usually reported on executive goals and results, as well as on some symbolic policy issues. For example, he always devoted time to the field of social policy in order to underline the importance of financial and social programs to support families and retirees. Parliamentary statements of the Prime Minister, therefore, were used to be a key indicator of Hungarian parliamentary work. However, I assume that pandemic re-shaped the executive-legislative relations significantly. As a starting point of the process, Hungarian Parliament passed the Act on the Protection Against the Coronavirus in 2020. The Act represented the official introduction of a special legal order, the state of danger, which allowed the government to use decrees to prescribe extraordinary legal measures in order to alleviate the epidemic crisis faster and more effectively. Therefore, the new status quo pushed laws into the background from the podium and highlighted decrees as a key tool in Hungarian policy-making. How these changes did affect the executive-legislative relations? How did coronavirus reshape Hungarian parliamentary work? What are the important similarities and differences between the previous decade and the first years of pandemic? I assume that former strong connection between the policy content of Prime Minister's parliamentary statements and legislation weakened significantly. Speeches no longer served as predictors of laws but of regulations, while laws remained the most important tools to introduce decisions on issues unrealted to the health crisis. I investigate all of the parliamentary statements of the Prime Ministers, every adopted law and each of the promulgated decrees from the last two years. I use three datasets (‘Parliamentary Speeches of the Prime Minister’, ‘Laws’ and ‘Decrees’) built by the Hungarian Team of the Comparative Agendas Project (CAP). Based on my preliminary results, pandemic reformed the parliamentary work significantly. Statements became a forum for the Prime Minister to give comprehensive overviews on the latest news about coronavirus, while focus of legislation remained on issues of other policy fields.