From a Welfare to a Workfare State: Hungary

Abstract

The paper describes welfare state developments in Hungary during and after the financial crisis. As the logic of changes having taken place in the field of welfare issues cannot be separated from the constitutional and political transformation a strong emphasis is put on the wider political context and the radically transformed political map which were set as a background to these changes. As for welfare related issues the course of changes are indicated by the diminishing legal guarantees, decreasing rights and state guarantees while increasing state control also, perverted redistribution, increasing burdens of the low-income population, care support only under certain conditions, and the promoting of discretionary decisions. Before the right wing turn in 2010 it looked as if the hybrid nature of the Hungarian welfare system would finally show up, i.e. different social-political trends would follow one another or they would appear simultaneously even. However nowadays workfare is taking over welfare; even ‘prisonfare’ was blown in by the ‘public security tornado’. The Hungarian welfare regime shows not only eclectic characteristics, but de-emphasizing of the rule of law, the attraction to social hierarchy and state-centred solutions, the pursuit of strengthening traditional family values and historical churches, the phrase “anti-liberal paternalistic conservativism” would define Hungary’s shift from post-communist hybrid welfare regime to a new atypical workfare regime.