Wybory parlamentarne na Węgrzech - prawo wyborcze, partie polityczne i wyniki wyborów w latach 1990-2002

Abstract

This paper is about the electoral system, political party system and the results of parliamentary elections in the Republic of Hungary. Electoral law is a combination of majority and plurality vote balanced by the so called ‘state list’. Every voter in Hungary (adult over 18, not dispossessed citizen’s rights) has two votes. One is used in majority election the other is posed to a party’s list. As a result, the State Assemble (Hungarian parliament) is created. It consists of 386 MPs, 176 elected in majority vote constituencies, 152 from party’s lists (plurality votes divided in-between parties that succeeded in getting at least 5% support and coalitions of three or more parties that gathered at least 15% votes on a base of Hagenbach-Bischoff system). The additional 58 mandates are distributed between state lists. All parties that exceeded 4% support are entitled to create their own lists with the names of the politicians they most want to sit in the parliament. On the base of d’Hondt system mandates are allocated. This electoral system was created in 1989 and remains unchanged (with a minority exception, not in influencing the general rules) and is an exceptional situation in this part of the world. The system is quite complicated but appears to provide a parliamentary majority with stable government. It also appears to have stabilised the political party system. The article presents the history of the major Hungarian political - Hungarian Democratic Forum, Free Democrat’s Association, Young Democrats Association, Christian-Democrats Party, Hungarian Socialist Party, FIDESZ and a few others. The results of parliamentary elections (in 1990, 1994, 1998 and 2002) are presented and discussed together with an analysis of the Hungarian political scene.