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Hungary Conflict-Resolution Mechanisms
In countries with a command economy, the ruling
communist
party generally denies the existence of antagonistic
conflicts
that arise between groups with differing economic
interests. The
leadership suppresses open expression of these conflicts
and
resolves them behind closed doors. When authorities reform
such
an economic system by introducing market mechanisms, they
acknowledge that economic, and therefore political,
conflict
arises between various groups and that the authorities
must
devise political mechanisms to resolve them. The market
mechanism
resolves certain conflicts, such as disputes between
buyers and
sellers or creditors and borrowers, but new
conflict-resolution
mechanisms are necessary to resolve broader conflicts.
As of the late 1980s, the Hungarian leadership had
chosen to
tackle this problem by implementing conflict-resolution
devices
that did not threaten the HSWP's monopoly of power. The
government introduced electoral reform, granted the
judiciary
greater independence to administer justice according to
legal
criteria, and encouraged trade unions to become more
active in
defending the interests of the workers against enterprise
managers
(see State Apparatus
, ch. 4). Trade unions
obtained the
right to call strikes when management decisions
disregarded the
law or breached a collective contract or "socialist
morality";
however, the authorities tolerated no conflict between the
unions' goals and those of the regime
(see Mass Organizations
, ch. 2). The government also encouraged the press to
publicize
abuses of power by management
(see Mass Media
, ch. 4).
After the 1968 reform, organizations also emerged to
represent economic interest groups, and some of these
organizations acquired a growing influence in party and
governmental decision making. The government required
private and
semiprivate entrepreneurs to become members of the Small
Craftsmen's National Association, the Small Tradesmen's
National
Association, or the Industrial Cooperatives' National
Council. In
1988, about 900 small entrepreneurs founded the National
Association of Entrepreneurs, which worked through
Hungary's
Chamber of Commerce. In the late 1980s, the National
Association
of Entrepreneurs actively participated in the debate over
a law
on business organization.
Data as of September 1989
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