ÚJSZERŰ KUDARCMECHANIZMUSOK A MAGYAR KÖZPOLITIKA VILÁGÁBAN
POLICY FAILURES IN HUNGARY – IN SEARCH OF NEW FAILURE MECHANISMS

Summary/Abstract: Existing research results concerning governments’ failure to run effective poli cies mainly concern, and emanate from Western democracies. It is not surpri sing therefore that problems of the so-called transition countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) are little discussed and understood. The article’s aim is to narrow this gap in knowledge by analyzing policy failures in Hungary as one of the region’s countries. The article proposes three, possibly novel, types of policy failures. The fi rst one originates from an unusually strong im balance between policymakers’ personal interests and the formal policy goals, refl ecting the lack of even a minimum level of the (party) political elites’ ability to counteract centrifugal forces driven by individual interests. The second type of failure – coined as ‘regulatory impotence’ – is related to a dysfunc tionally strong protection of lawbreakers’ right to fair procedure vis-à-vis the state. Finally, the third factor of policy failure, the ‘implementation bargain’, emer ges when key implementation actors, even in the lack of a proper legal mandate, set out to bargain and strike deals among themselves about the extent to which they are going to implement the given policy.

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