The Parliament as a High-Political Programm

Abstract

The central object of this chapter is the Hungarian parliament building, a neo-Gothic palace in the centre of Budapest, on the east bank of the Danube. Despite the fact that at the time of its opening, in 1902, this was the largest (and arguably the most impressive) parliament building in the world, for most political scientists it has been a largely invisible object. For them, parliamentary democracy in Hungary effectively began much later, after the collapse of communism in 1989 (Agh and Kurtan 1995; Kaldor and Vejvoda 2002; Olson and Norton 1996). Consequently, what they are interested in are abstract procedures and institutions associated with parliamentary democracy, not the specific site of the legislature. The latter is most often analysed and discussed by architectural historians, who tend to be fascinated by the shape and size of the building, its external ornaments and internal decoration, but have little if anything to say about the current state of parliamentary democracy in Hungary and beyond (Bakos, Sisa, and Tihanyi 2001; Egry and Markovics 1980; Sudjic and Jones 2001). In this chapter, my aim is to disturb this neat division of labour by outlining what we can learn about parliamentary democracy if we examine it through the Hungarian parliament building.