Contemporary Hungarian Society

This book examines social change in Hungary, commencing with the period of late-stage socialism, the country’s immediate post-communist transition, its subsequent consolidation and the emergence of authoritarian leadership since 2010. The volume seeks to employ a longitudinal and comparative perspective and provides comparison to other central and east European states that emerged from state socialism.

The Hungarian regime change of 1989-1990 led to previously unimaginable social and economic transition. In recent decades, regime change and socio-economic transition in Central and Eastern Europe has produced a library of literature, and transition studies has periodically become a discipline in its own right. The author uses an interdisciplinary approach – drawing from social history, sociology, statistics and contemporary history - in order to understand and analyse social change in all its complexity.

The book will be of interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students, social scientists, historians, experts and those interested in Hungarian and Central and Eastern European history and social change.