Values and Regional Varieties of the Hungarian Bourgeois Elites

Abstract

The elite theory elaborated in the late 19th and early 20th century (Gaetano Mosca, Vilfredo Pareto) was pioneering in acknowledging that the democratic governments led by elites are also oligarchies. Joseph Schumpeter, however, held that the people have the opportunity of accepting or refusing the men who are to rule them. Democracy is thus achieved through the free competition for the vote of the electorate.

The author outlining in recent study the evolution of the social composition of Hungary's governing elites in the age of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, argues that traditional elite groups (aristocracy and the former middle-sized landholding nobility) survived as a political elite. This, however, changed in the interwar period when increasing number of new recruits came to power especially in the "long 1930s". In terms of the swift emergence and socio-economic establishment of the bourgeois middle- and upper middle classes taking place following the mid-19th century several hotly disputed historical issues like the Jewish assimilation and the Buddenbrooks-effect are also discussed.

Lastly, a short case study based on a written recollection coming from the 1940s and produced by a middle-class lady from Pécs is to demonstrate the unambiguous internal integration of the local middle classes despite their diversity by race (denomination), lineage or occupation.