Remember me
A-Z Browse

Hungary Government and society

Government and society » Overview

The modern political system in Hungary contained elements of autocracy throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, but in the period between 1867 and 1948 it had a functioning parliament with a multiparty system and a relatively independent judiciary. After the communist takeover in 1948, a Soviet-style political system was introduced, with a leading role for the Communist Party, to which the legislative and executive branches of the government and the legal system were subordinated. In that year, all rival political parties were abolished, and the Hungarian Social Democratic Party was forced to merge with the Communist Party and thus form the Hungarian Workers’ Party. After the Revolution of 1956 it was reorganized as the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party, which survived until the fall of communism in 1989.

Citations

MLA Style:

"Hungary." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2008. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 12 Jun. 2008 <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/276730/Hungary>.

APA Style:

Hungary. (2008). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved June 12, 2008, from Encyclopædia Britannica Online: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/276730/Hungary

Hungary

Link to this article and share the full text with the readers of your Web site or blog-post.

If you think a reference to this article on "Hungary" will enhance your Web site, blog-post, or any other web-content, then feel free to link to this article, and your readers will gain full access to the full article, even if they do not subscribe to our service.

You may want to use the HTML code fragment provided below.

We welcome your comments. Any revisions or updates suggested for this article will be reviewed by our editorial staff. Contact us here.

Regular users of Britannica may notice that this comments feature is less robust than in the past. This is only temporary, while we make the transition to a dramatically new and richer site. The functionality of the system will be restored soon.

Table of Contents

Media

Audio/Video

JavaScript and Adobe Flash version 9 or higher is required to view this content. You can download Flash here:
http://www.adobe.com/go/getflashplayer