Abstract
Abstract The paper examines the CSOs – government relations during the COVID-19 pandemic, first introducing how the pandemic affected the already authoritarian regime in Hungary and how this regime utilized the epidemic to extend and fortify its power. Then the paper presents the antecedents of the relationship between civil society and government in the frame of the National System of Cooperation (NSC). This relationship is unilaterally dominated by the government, and it may appear as a “4C strategy”: Cooptation, Coercion, Crowding out, Creation (the creation of a new, loyal civil society). Exploring the civil society and government relations during the pandemic, the study will conclude that there was no government attempt to coordinate the activities of CSOs or to try to harmonize sectoral cooperation from a broader perspective. The occurrences demonstrated the explosion of solidarity and the carnival of solidarity. These forms of solidarity, however, remain informal and leave deepening structural problems untouched. The paper presents the results of an empirical research which was conducted between March and September of 2020. The nodal points of the research include the resilience and flexibility of the organizations, their efforts to assist during the emergency and lockdown, as well as the issues of networking and the nature of their relations with the national and local authorities.
Highlights
The paper examines the CSOs – government relations during the COVID-19 pandemic, first introducing how the pandemic affected the already authoritarian regime in Hungary and how this regime utilized the epidemic to extend and fortify its power
The paper presents the antecedents of the relationship between civil society and government in the frame of the National System of Cooperation (NSC)
This relationship is unilaterally dominated by the government, and it may appear as a “4C strategy”: Cooptation, Coercion, Crowding out, Creation
Summary
State power has an eminent position in the fight against the virus; one of its basic tasks is to organize the protection of the population. Soldiers were commanded to head the hospitals and the fight against the virus was given a military interpretation instead of a medical-professional framework. The country was closed and shut down gradually from the end of March, with the introduction of a partial curfew. These timely measures successfully prevented the further spread of the infection in the first wave of the epidemic. Within the framework of the exceptional legal order, the government has passed or amended nearly 150 regulations. Some of these have had a positive effect on the civil (NGO) sector, some have had a negative effect, and others have undermined minority rights. Perhaps the most significant involved the increase in unemployment: the number of registered unemployed jobseekers in June was higher by 128,000 compared to the same time last year, and this number is even higher when including the unregistered unemployed (160,000). It should be noted that the unemployment benefit period is 3 months in Hungary, one of the shortest in the European Union
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