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Political Transition and the

Professionalisation of Political

Communication

Ildiko Kováts

INTRODUCTION: POLITICAL COMMUNICATION – BEFORE AND FOLLOWING THE POLITICAL
REGIME CHANGE
The issue of the professionalisation of political communication in Hungary is
inseparable from the process of political and social transformation that took place
during the 1980s and 1990s, as politics itself was also professionalised. Political
communication is an organic part of politics in that it is closely tied to the objectives
of the key political players, their definitions of their tasks, their concepts of their
roles, and the visions of society that they wish to communicate. Although there are
widely and seemingly universally applicable methods of effective political Political Transition and the Professionalisation of Political Communication
communication, their analysis cannot be separated from the actual contexts of their
usage.

Hungary’s political transition is generally said to have begun in 1990 when the first free
elections took place. In reality the transformation began earlier, but the first multi-party
parliamentary elections ushered in a new type of democratic politics. Even though
change was incremental, and although the former state party or party state utilised
certain techniques associated with so-called professional political communication,
1990 can be considered the beginning of the process of the professionalisation of
political communication because of the principal change of politics: the transformation
to a pluralistic democracy. 161