Intro
The municipal elections took place in Hungary in October 2010. Subsequently local councils were formed and the structures of specialized committees supporting the work of city councils were created. As delegate of a party in opposition, I will work as an “external member” of the so-called “human committee” (responsible of housing, health, social care and education issues) in a district of Budapest. My purpose with this blog is neither to publish precise meeting reports or to provide ever up-to-date accounts of the most topical issues, in turn, I’d like to share (state) ethnographic field notes (and meanwhile discipline myself to write), to post observations and impressions related to episodes that seem for some reason critical, to account what I understood of the universe of local authorities, namely what inner relations, norms form the practices of the city council, how bureaucracy works, and how all this shape the life of the people living here. Once in an anecdotic style, then using a cynical tone, or in a from of rough field notes – we’ll see... I’m an observer standing at the threshold of the municipality: I have a right to vote and speak up in the committee, but I’m first of all considered as expert and - hopefully - less often as political negotiation partner.
The new government in power since April 2010 substantially redesigned the municipality election system in the summer which resulted in an overwhelming majority of the party in power in local governments too. (see accounts here and here) Much consequently, the political context is now quite homogeneous all around the country in terms of the political composition of the local councils. In my district, there is a comparatively small size district council where Fidesz (the governing party) has 2/3 plus majority. Through the past decade, the national press had much dealt with the corruption scandals and real estate panamas of the previous socialist-led local government, thus the new mayor and the council started the political cycle in a quasi state of grace: they earned the political legitimacy to carry out whatever they want, but can always point back and hide behind the dark sins of the socialists.
I was originally trained as a sociologist. In the past few years I mostly participated in academic researches of political sociology and the sociology of education. So far my knowledge on the universe of local councils substantiates on interviews conducted in other cities with the elected representatives and members of the city halls’ apparatus as well as on the careful reading of local education policy documents. It might turn out to be a too ambitious idea, but for the moment I plan to write a bilingual blog by this also pushing myself to elaborate a perspective possibly illustrative for those simply interested in the state of public affairs and local democracy in Central-Eastern Europe.
