Political Developments After 1989 and Their Impact On The Nonprofit Sector

Abstract

The installation, functioning and fall of the communist regime took considerably different courses in each of the Central European countries that were part of the so-called Soviet bloc, i.e., Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland. Nevertheless, the fundamental political changes happening in these countries in the late 1980s had one typical feature in common: they were significantly influenced by the ideology and activity of people who voluntarily engaged themselves in civil (dissent) initiatives, or, today it could be said, in nonprofit organizations standing in opposition to the totalitarian communist power (see for example Solidarity in Poland or Charter 77 in the former Czechoslovakia).2 The fundamental changes the dissenters and their nonprofit organizations (NPOs) desired, were, above all, establishing parliamentary democracy with a pluralist system of political parties and people’s freedom of association. The manner in which NPOs in these countries managed initiating these changes, influencing them, or participating in them was then reflected in the later attitudes of politicians and the entire society toward the nonprofit sector. There can be no doubt that it was these changes that enabled the nonprofit sector to develop, which was unthinkable in these countries under socialism. The most obvious evidence of that is the rapid growth in the number of NPOs after 1989 in all Central European postcommunist countries.