The Possibility of Local Economic Development (LED) in Hungary Bence Rapkay EGEA Budapest ELTE University, Budapest “Without ideas and vision, no pragmatic decisions can take place. The vision of the whole, not just the general rules of the game, should govern our acts and become the motor of social progress” (SEDLÁČEK, 2011, p.114)
Introduction
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ntil recently, spatial development policies in Hungary focused on the interactions between territories. Presently, Hungarian researchers have started to agree on the fact that another approach can be more efficient in local development: an approach, which is based on local resources (human, natural, artificial, etc). I wrote my degree thesis on the issue of Local Economic Development (henceforth LED) and Social Economics in Hungary. On the one hand I have some notions which refer only to Hungary, but on the other hand the main knowledge of this thesis is “international”, or at least applicable in post-socialist countries. When I say “local economy” I mean the specific level of the economy, where the production and the consumption (VÁTI KHT, 2010) are directly connected. On this level, people can clearly see their place in the chain of production and the - badly injured - capita of trust can rebuild in the society. My main objective was to create an alternative to the way too expensive welfare state model as GREGG (2003) argues it in his work. I wanted to find a sustainable lifestyle for rural territories and for local groups, even in a major city. In this paper, I argue that the governmental advocacy and aid cannot be the solution. My research is based on several written sources; from the ancient PLU-
TARCH to AUGUSTINE , from the Czech author TOMÁŠ SEDLÁČEK to the Hungarian LÁSZLÓ CSABA and ANDRÁS LÁNCZI, from the moral philosopher SAMUEL GREGG to the rural developer FLYNN.
The issue - the LED - was the focus, and inter- or even transdisciplinarity should not be an obstacle to me. I made some interviews, and I organised a focus-group discussion about the topic. I visited some of the places, which we can put into the big LED-basket (considering ecological villages, social enterprises, farms, governmental working programmes for unemployed people, etc). I hoped to find the connection between the theoretical and the practical side of the issue. In the summer of 2012 I led a scientific field trip to one of the poorest areas in Hungary: Ormánság, next to the Croatian border. We used surveys and interviews to collect a sufficient quantity of primary data. Based on my research, I argue that the main problem of the welfare state can be cured with specific programmes dealing with the localities. I argue that the absence of morality is a crucial part of the problem: there are socio-economic patterns in Hungary which are rooted in the unfinished or even unstarted discussions about the Soviet Regime and its rural policy. I am convinced that only by understanding rural spaces can we make a step towards sustainable forms of local economics. Is rural Hungary the pitfall of the financial policy? Is it the dream picture of the urban middle class? Is it the playground of the landowners? Is it the laboratory of sociologists, a place where they find the kind of alcoholism and poverty which they read about in books? We have to understand the topic we discuss. To discover this complex issue I emphasised the following aspects – and these are just examples – in my thesis: the meaning of locality and rurality; EU-conforming strategies and what their problems are; new approaches to the issue; the government’s duty. After almost every macroeconomic crisis throughout history, the local level of economy usually (re)gained its value. How can this happen in an age of globalization? In this essay, I will give you some mosaics from the socio-economic issues, which LED is affected by.
European Geographer 11th issue • Scientific Symposium 2012, Leuven
What can a geographer do? “It is more the agreement on a question that unites a field, not the answers” (SEDLÁČEK , 2011, p.181). As SEDLÁČEK points out, questions can unite scientific fields. Several ones have their specific answers, but geography - as a synthesizing science shares questions with other disciplines such as economics, sociology, history, anthropology, psychology, etc. Moreover, geography can interpret the ideas to the reality of spatial entities.
Problems faced How to do policies The starting point of my thesis is the current socio-economic situation in Hungary. Recently, the economic and political thinking has been in bad shape, at least the mainstream version of the phenomenon. According to CSABA (2011, p.820) as long as we deal with the public issues in an “automated manner”; as long as we deal less and less with moral and long-term issues, the “seize–the–day” attitude will be stronger and politics become even more symbolic. We do not know what we should do with our lives, we do not know what its meaning is, but we have several specific “to–do–lists” in every policy field. We have fragmented strategies for almost every single socio-economic problem in the world, but we do not have treaties which can deal with the issue in a wiser way (for more planning theoretical issues see FRIEDMANN, 2004).
The source of the socioeconomic problems in Hungary Citizenship progress had been absent in Hungary for several hundreds of years. We had to face the problem of feudal paternalism and the progress of pseudo-citizenry during Communism. There is still no real integration in our country and the possibility of social mobility is lower than in Western Europe. Nonetheless, we have a welfare state model, which can give a false impression of social progress. It is not real progress, however: millions of Hungarians would live on third-world levels without government advocacies and public services. There will be a time when the state can’t bear this situation anymore. We shouldn’t wait for this. The communist ideology misunderstood the nature of men: in the warm bed of paternalism, without freewill there can be no entrepreneurship. The progress of society is not based on institutions and state interventions, but on the creative man (for further read-
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