Antal Tamás: A tanácsrendszer és jogintézményei Szegeden 1950-1990 - Dél-Alföldi évszázadok 26. (Szeged, 2009)

IDEGEN NYELVŰ ÖSSZEFOGLALÁSOK

After reviewing the legal framework of council activities, the author holds the view that the standpoint of those who conceived the soviet-type public administration at the beginning of the 20th century was basically not incorrect. The mere fact itself that it was not planned democratically in every aspect does not mean that everything done or created on a local level in Hungary during 40 years is to be condemned ab ovo. This is also reflected by the fact that in spite of the transformation into the local government character (1990), several institutional features are still similar to the ones in the council era. This is illustrated clearly by Act LXV of 1990 on Local Governments, as it follows the structure of the third council act and an expressly great number of identical or greatly similar regulations can be found when reading the two norm texts. However, there is a great difference in emphasis: while in line with the characteristic of Hungarian constitutional history the council acts laid the emphasis on the almost thousand-year-old counties in public administration - especially with respect to the delegation of powers and the relationship maintained with higher state organs - the act on local governments "dethroned" the counties so to say, at the same time controversially reviving the city of county rank between 1954 and 1971 in a more modern form. In the last decades of the council era attempts were made, as part of regional organization, to do away with the principle of "one settlement, one council" as it failed to fulfil the initial hopes, but our system of local governments reverted to this tried and tested solution, which has proved to be a mistake functionally. The council system has become part of legal history by now. It was not necessarily worse or better than the currently effective system of local governments, only different in principles while similar in function. Its precise knowledge and analysis may be very informative for the future, too — not only in Hungary but also in Western Europe as this type of the institutional system of public administration is still essentially unknown there.