Discussion Papers 2001.
Role of the Regions in the Enlarging European Union 137-145. p.
Role of the Regions in the Enlarging European Union
Edited by Zoltan Gal, Pecs, Centre for Regional Studies, 2001
POLITICAL CHALLENGES OF
REGIONALISM IN HUNGARY
Ilona Paine Kovacs
The territorial organisation of public administration and the regional policy
face the necessity of clarifying the division of labour and power between the
central, local—territorial actors and the evolving new structures having to meet
the requirements of democracy, efficiency and EU conformity. The so-called
"county-debate" ongoing since the beginning of the 1990's and the related re-
gional efforts accompanied by the malfunctions of the fragmented municipal
self-governance imply the necessity of theoretic—scientific clarification, even if
it will be mainly the competency of politics to find an answer to these ques-
tions.
International trends
The history of development of modern civil states is characterised by centrali-
sation and decentralisation cycles. The relationship between the local-territorial
and central unity is continuously changing in terms of organisation, division of
labour and system of relationships.
The strengthening of decentralisation processes and the "Europe of Re-
gions" ideal or movement did not lead to the establishment of a territorially and
structurally unified territorial administration arrangement in Europe. The Euro-
pean systems of territorial administration are extremely differentiated, yet the
trends during the previous decades and especially years point to the same di-
rection.
The regional policy suffered serious rearrangements during the past decades.
The essence of the change of model is, that the strategies based on local re-
sources gradually replaced central planning and redistribution (Horvath, 1999),
which absolutely requires the transformation of territorial administration.
The basic element of the regionalised and endogenous regional policy is the
decentralisation, co-ordination and openness, due to which the institutionalisa-
tion of different groups interested in regional development accelerates. One of
Pálné Kovács, Ilona: Political Challenges of Regionalism in Hungary.
In: Role of the Regions in the Enlarging European Union. Pécs: Centre for Regional Studies,
2001. 137–145. p. Discussion Papers. Special
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1. PciIne Kovcics
the distinctive features of the development of the millennium's public admini-
stration is the strengthening of the regional tiers and or their arrangement as
new tiers as well as the delegation of competencies in the form of the rein-
forcement of their status or tighter—looser integration of territorial units.
The headway of regional policy significantly contributed to the pluralisation
of public administration and to the process that the new "para state" types of
organisational forms and the indirect market methods in the form of privatisa-
tion and enterprises are apparent besides the services within the support sys-
tems of economy too.
The regional inequalities, as one of the most marked outward forms of social
inequalities required the dissemination of citizen friendly, transparent, partici-
pative and basis-democratic methods and the new opportunities of conflict
treatment and elaboration.
Besides the new challenge the modern necessity of professionalism and effi-
ciency became clear, which set new requirements on the staff, infrastructure
and operational methods of public administration.
Regional development and public administration
arrangement in Hungary
Prior to the systemic change the organisation of public administration was
matched to the real processes:
— Due to the growth of the farms, commuting and urbanisation the rural
administration loosing its functions was integrated in so-called common
municipal councils;
The towns and county seats were responsible for the operation and main-
tenance of the technical infrastructure and servicing system following the
concept of central places, these were therefore the beneficiaries of the re-
distributive system too;
— Within the redistributive administration the tiers making the distributive
decisions became obviously the central elements: the National Planning
Bureau and the county councils.
For the prise of the extremist redistribution, the engineering and technocrat
approach settlement network organisation an urban network evolved which was
able to ensure a relatively equalised and stable servicing and supply system and
therefore the existing regional inequalities did not grow to untreatable crisis.
The weakness of the "rational" system was besides its democratic deficit that it
hindered the dynamics of economic development and turned the actors of re-
gional development, the settlements and counties against each other.
Pálné Kovács, Ilona: Political Challenges of Regionalism in Hungary.
In: Role of the Regions in the Enlarging European Union. Pécs: Centre for Regional Studies,
2001. 137–145. p. Discussion Papers. Special
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The systemic change placed regional policy into a completely new context.
The necessity of a separate regional policy and its reinforcement was unavoid-
able (Enyedi, 1996).
The development of regional territorial administration went counter to the
organisational and structural requirements of the growing state activity within
regional policy. The weakening of the two institutions influencing the structure
of territorial administration, the associations and the counties, resulted in an
extremely fragmented local level with wide competencies without territorial
integration tiers and institutions.
This peculiar territorial administration put a significant impact on the free-
dom of action, contents and means of regional policy:
The opportunities of territorial interest representation and enforcement
decreased;
Regional policy decisions were strongly centralised, and therefore social
control and efficiency decreased and the local resources were not mobi-
lised;
Instead of a comprehensive regional policy covering the entire country
and governance the practice was rather local settlement service and infra-
structure development and crisis treatment.
Since the introduction of the local governmental model in Hungary the issue
of territorial planning was closely connected with the situation of county as-
semblies. The political, local governmental professional group opposing the
reinforcement of the counties — actually not questioning the necessity of territo-
rial integration — approach the issue of territorial medium tier with the criticism
of the county division, county tier. They defined the geographic frameworks of
the territorial administration as the city and its gravitation zone and micro-re-
gions, respectively the regions larger than the counties. Yet during the debates
the functional aspects of regional organisation and the primarily power and
legal aspects of state organisation were mixed. Throughout the history deep
regional organisation reforms regularly failed since no professional, political
consensus has been achieved in terms of basic targets and concept of the ad-
ministrative change of model. Therefore as long the professional-policy basis of
the transformation of the public administration model and not clear and ac-
cepted, the reforms of territorial organisation have no base of comparison. In
the middle of the 90's neither the institutionalised system of relationships be-
tween the actors of regional development, or the governmental reform inten-
tions nor scientific research supported the necessity and the reality of sweeping
territorial reforms.
Pálné Kovács, Ilona: Political Challenges of Regionalism in Hungary.
In: Role of the Regions in the Enlarging European Union. Pécs: Centre for Regional Studies,
2001. 137–145. p. Discussion Papers. Special
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I. Paine Kovacs
In this context the act on regional development and physical planning was
passed in 1996, which became the promise in terms of the future of not only
regional policy but territorial public administration too.
As compared with the previous regional policy the new act on regional de-
velopment resulted exactly through the establishment of its institutional system
a marking step. The basic features of this change are as follows:
—Covering the entire territory of the country — in the micro-regional, coun-
try and regional tiers — a decentralised system of special institutions was
established, which was equipped with decision-making competencies;
—The institutional system, the system of development councils, was based
on the principle of partnership, that is, it involved the representatives of
the central government, local governments, chambers and employees in
the decision-making (Szalo, 1999).
A contradiction of the building of special regional development institutions
is not within the institutional system, but in the relationship to the public legal
context, frankly, the regional development institutional system replaced local
governments and was equipped with far more authority, than the directly
elected county assemblies.
I have analysed during the previous two years the basic features of the new
institutional system:
—In the national tier the functioning of neither the ministry, nor the Na-
tional Development Council was able to break down the strong sectoral
dominance characterising the Hungarian governmental system;
—Even though the micro-regional associations were formally organised and
their number even grew, yet their development activities do not go be-
yond the horizon of settlement infrastructure development;
—County development councils became the key actors of the system due to
their strategic planning and resource division competencies. Their activi-
ties are characterised — primarily as a result of the tiny volume of finan-
cial resources and the strict central regulations of resource division — by
seeking equity and equalisation;
—The regions were organised but in lack of resources and competencies
without being able to carry out any real activities.
The success of regional policy is far not the internal matter of the regional
development institutional system since it affects the whole of the state admin-
istrative and resource division system:
—The decentralised regional development system is able to provide for the
advantages of decentralisation exclusively in the context of a similarly
Pálné Kovács, Ilona: Political Challenges of Regionalism in Hungary.
In: Role of the Regions in the Enlarging European Union. Pécs: Centre for Regional Studies,
2001. 137–145. p. Discussion Papers. Special
Political Challenges of Regionalism in Hungary
141
decentralised state and public administrative structure. Linking resources
is hardly possible with partners lacking tools, resources and competen-
cies. The further decentralisation of the state and public structures is un-
avoidable;
The fundamental condition of the success of the institution system is the
further decentralisation of resources, since currently exactly these repre-
sent the bottle-neck in Hungarian regional policy;
The decision-making and resource division cannot exit without profes-
sional preparatory—executive and intermediate apparatus and resource ac-
cumulating institutions. The current institutional system only distributes
central state resources and no private and local resources were allocated
to the common development targets. The financial institution system,
which is to accumulate, mediate the resources, is hardly established and
similarly not system of interests is existing which could motivate the re-
source involvement. Regional development decisions are today limited to
planning and division decisions, and infrastructure development, while
real regional development actually covers a match wider scale of activi-
ties: training and education, research, marketing, technology transfer,
economic support (incubation, promotion and financial support, etc.),
tourism development, environment policy, human resource development,
community development, service organisation, employment policy, etc.
These functions are partially present in the form of separate institutions,
organisations in Hungary too yet without networking or having contact to
each other at all.
Strategy of region building
Before arguing whether the counties are to small or actually to large, we have
to make clear, for which functions the different tiers, and among them the re-
gion itself must or would be appropriate to be facilitated.
— The necessity of the regional scale is the most obvious in the field of re-
gional development. Yet this function attracts further functions prelimi-
narily in the field of economic development—support, research, technol-
ogy transfer, financial functions and banking, and marketing;
— There is no doubt, that a significant part of the linear infrastructure sys-
tems, mainly due to technical reasons require a regional or territorially
larger management, than the county scale. The organisation and manage-
ment of these systems lays beyond the public authority sphere, respec-
Pálné Kovács, Ilona: Political Challenges of Regionalism in Hungary.
In: Role of the Regions in the Enlarging European Union. Pécs: Centre for Regional Studies,
2001. 137–145. p. Discussion Papers. Special
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I. Paine Kovacs
tively their borders do not coincide and therefore it is impossible to fa-
cilitate the standard public administrative borders upon them;
— A part of the high quality human services and functions are also organised
into regional systems, such as the system of higher university education,
the network of clinics and the research. But the management of these is
not characteristically a territorial and especially not an administrative
task;
— The environment and nature protection is organised at current regionally
and it partially does not follow the administrative delimitation exactly due
to its special tasks;
The organisation of the classical administrative—public authority and ju-
risdictional functions is mainly matched with the demand of the consum-
ers. The regional scale organisation of administration may be justified in
those fields, which require high level of professional knowledge and other
special conditions of operation.
Based on the consideration of the above aspects it is not possible break a
lance on behalf of the necessity of regional public administration. The majority
of the listed regional functions do not really require rigid administrative frame-
works. Therefore to the system of arguments of the regionalisation further ar-
guments must be attached.
Even if there were concrete, articulated public administrative demands ar-
guing the introduction of the regional tier, it would be subject to further consid-
eration, whether the regions should be institutionalised as new units facilitated
above the old tiers or as a new tier replacing the old one.
In the later case we have to face the lack of the "lower medium" level, since
within the framework of the currant settlement administrative structure it is
unimaginable to build the regional public administration on the 3200 settle-
ments and 6 to 7 regions. Therefore the introduction of the regional tier will
obviously increase the number of administrative tiers, and the question can at
the most be, whether the county or the micro-region smaller than the county
(district), urban county should fulfil the role of the lower medium tier.
A fundamental question is, which one of the two territorial levels, both
equipped with general competencies will have a more emphasised position,
what again preliminarily depends on the division of resources and competen-
cies, and on the other hand on the election techniques and general political in-
terrelations. The division of the competencies is seemingly the competency of
the government, and if it really intends to regionalise, than bearing the
"competency of competencies" it is able rearrange the power relations. Yet the
government's attitude towards regionalisation is necessarily ambivalent:
Pálné Kovács, Ilona: Political Challenges of Regionalism in Hungary.
In: Role of the Regions in the Enlarging European Union. Pécs: Centre for Regional Studies,
2001. 137–145. p. Discussion Papers. Special
Political Challenges of Regionalism in Hungary
143
—First of all, the government is interested in the establishment of a more ef-
ficient and effective public administration and state, and the professional
policy and modernisation aspects succeed in its decisions easier;
— But on the other hand the government is not willing to establish regionali-
sation as a burden, limit of its own power and to the costs of its own re-
sources;
— And thirdly, the government is not interested in — regarding exactly to the
political stability — creating territorial country poles, which would make
governance more difficult.
Once the number, content and functions of the tiers are outlined the legal
content of the tiers can be elaborated. If political regionalisation is planned for
the longer term it is possible to facilitate the regional level gradually reaching
the status of a fully authorised self-government. The institutionalisation of re-
gional tiers in terms of public law is namely imaginable alongside a number of
alternatives:
— The first institutionalised forms are the regional development councils.
These are appropriate to be the subjects of regional development deci-
sion-making, planning, resource division and utilisation in a narrower
sense;
— The regional cohesion channelling political interests may be launched in
the form of a looser co-operation between the county assemblies and local
governments;
— The arrangement not as the association of county development councils
but county assemblies will inevitably provide for a stronger public
authority status for the new organisation;
Regionalisation can be launched and enlarged within the sphere of state
administration in case the territorial borders and centres of regionally de-
concentrated state administrative organs coincide;
None of the above alternatives meet the requirements regulated in the
European Chart of Regional Governments. The sine qua non of the po-
litical and self-governing regions is the availability of a directly elected
representative body and the constitutional guarantees for the local gov-
ernmental basic rights.
The political regionalisation process will after having clarified the previ-
ously elaborated political, constitutional and public administration organisa-
tional issues into the phase of delimitation of borders and consideration of geo-
graphical alternatives. The number and borders of the regions is formulated
through a series of compromises and is highly dependent on the question,
whether it will be established above or instead of the counties. In the later case
Pálné Kovács, Ilona: Political Challenges of Regionalism in Hungary.
In: Role of the Regions in the Enlarging European Union. Pécs: Centre for Regional Studies,
2001. 137–145. p. Discussion Papers. Special
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I. Paine Kovacs
it can happen either through the reform of the county division or through the
integration of the counties, which makes more than 6-7 regions probable.
Besides clarifying the above an important aspect is strengthening regional
cohesion, the "socialisation" of the region-building concept, intent. The estab-
lishment of regional cohesion lacking historical and cultural traditions promises
to be difficult task. We actually talk about regional identity more than what we
know about it. Regional identity today does not any more mean simply the af-
fection to the naive situation and the personal use of space but much more a
modernisation process in the context of enlargement, globalisation of national
and international spaces (Ipsen, 1993).
Will regional awareness evolve on the ruins of county identity? Or would
the availability of a directly elected self-government organ at all represent for
the wider layers of society a value? Current time it is hard to give an answer to
these questions.
The regionalism debate does not belong in Hungary to the so-called hard re-
gionalisation (Dirven, 1993), which on a historical, ethnical and cultural basis
seeks autonomy or even national sovereignty and which is actually decentrali-
sation between the tiers of power. Despite of the above, convincing those
counter-interested and disinterested requires a well considered action pro-
gramme and communication strategy:
—Publicity must be granted to the institutions of development regions con-
solidated in terms of their status, tasks and borders;
— The partnership between the actors delegated into the regional develop-
ment councils must be extended over the widest possible circles and their
activity and communication among themselves may not remain limited to
the division of regional development resources and the participation at the
meetings;
— The actors must be motivated to regional co-operation. If they are not
granted any "success", or advantages located in their sphere during the
co-operation, than disinterest or even aversion may evolve against region-
alisation;
— The competition within and between the regions is unavoidable, even de-
sirable, but only if the normative and informal negotiation mechanisms of
interest harmonisation and equalisation are functioning. In a different
case the rivalling among the regions may harm the efficiency of func-
tioning and is appropriate to feed negative emotions;
— The regions may only become "mature" actors if they are enabled to na-
tional interest protection;
The regions must be systematically integrated into the press publicity in
order to popularise their name and image;
Pálné Kovács, Ilona: Political Challenges of Regionalism in Hungary.
In: Role of the Regions in the Enlarging European Union. Pécs: Centre for Regional Studies,
2001. 137–145. p. Discussion Papers. Special
Political Challenges of Regionalism in Hungary
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— Regional development councils must carry out an intensive marketing ac-
tivity, elaborate their PR-strategies, since in lack of professional commu-
nication the even message of the most efficient functioning is unable to
reach the public.
Finally it is important to emphasis that the strategy of region building may
not rely on a negative campaign against the counties. It is not at all provable
yet, that the development regions will be able to integrate themselves into po-
litical units, similarly, that the Hungarian state-political mechanism is ready to
integrate regions replacing the counties. Therefore at current stage the strategy
of region building ids only possible based on the co-operation of the counties,
and actually strengthened counties.
The regions indispensable for regional development associated with strong
self—governmental counties could as advantageous and for the time being only
possible alloy meet the efficiency requirements of regional policy and demo-
cratic requirements of decentralised state. The vision of Hungarian public ad-
ministration can be drawn only in its outlines, and its arrangement is only to
some extent dependent on requirement system set by the European Union, since
it preliminarily depends on internal political and professional policy considera-
tions and decisions. In Central-Eastern Europe it is a real risks that regionalisa-
tion may serve centralising intents. Hungary may not afford this mistake.
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