Change In The Institutional System Of Regional Development In Hungary

The institutionalism of the Hungarian regional development is way ahead of its Regional Development Act, which was introduced in 1996, and the democratic transformation of 1989, but the regional development as we understand it nowadays takes in account the local actors’ needs and goals since the middle of the 1990s. The most significant regional development measure from the two years after the democratic transformation was the external cabinet meeting. When the government sensed some kind of crisis in one region, it held an external cabinet meeting, where and when they made a measure package to handle the regional crises, but these measures were only ad hoc measures in most of the cases. The central governmental measures only got a few good results, which made the government include local actors in the decision making process. Including the local actors, and in some way putting the local level above the regional level created an unsuccessful result with regards to the governmental regional development politics. The legislators’ intention with the Regional Development Act of 1996 was to insure the publicity of the controlling and planning systems, the enforcement of the democratic values, and the establishment of the complex conditions with regards to the planning, controlling, distribution and finance in the field of regional politics. In 2011 with an amendment of the above mentioned act the lawmakers terminated the local level development councils and by the 1st of January, 2012 these tasks went under the authority of the county governments and the county-cities.