Some characteristics of the composition of the Presidential Council of the Hungarian People’s Republic, 1971–1975

Abstract

The goal of the study is to examine the degree to which the composition of the Presidential Council of the People’s Republic at the mid-point of the Kádár regime matched the officially declared concept on political systems at the time. This concept held that, within the framework defined byThe goal of the study is to examine the degree to which the composition of the Presidential Council of the People’s Republic at the mid-point of the Kádár regime matched the officially declared concept on political systems at the time. This concept held that, within the framework defined by the state socialism, the body would represent all the politically relevant large groupings and / or organisations of society. Naturally this kind of “representation” did not and could not meet the conditions of civic democracy, given that state socialism was not constructed on the principle of the division of powers, it denied such a division, relying instead on the principle of the unification of power. Partially making use of the political language of the time, this study attempts to reconstruct and present how the regime’s logic decided who could be in the body and why. We also briefly consider the characteristics of the member organisations of the Council in the period of 1971–1975.