SGER: A Negotiated Transition to Democracy: Data Collection for an Archive

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This award is supported through the Small Grants for Exploratory Research mechanism. This project documents the negotiated transition to democracy in Hungary. The researchers focus on the unprecedented negotiations in which the ruling communist party reached agreements with representatives of opposition parties and trade unions to establish the conditions for competitive political parties, contested elections, and parliamentary governance. These intensive roundtable negotiations, involving several hundred bargaining sessions (in plenary, committee, and subcommittee meetings), were conducted from June 13th to September 17th, 1989. A complete reconstruction of the negotiating process requires interviews with the main participants supplemented by reports from social scientists who observed the process. This project involves the use of existing tape recordings, minutes, and other summaries of various bargaining sessions, as well as in-depth interviews with those who participated in the process. All materials will be cataloged and archived for use by other social scientists interested in studying the transition to democracy in Hungary. The project should add considerably to our understanding of how a democratic political system with representative institutions and a vital public sphere is constructed.