The half-blind watchdog. Remarks on the online citizenship, transparency and public administration’s integrity in Hungary

Abstract

Albeit Hungary is in the first third of the world in the field of transparency and accountability, its position is quite weak in the European Union as well as among the world’s most developed countries at all. In this paper, four reasons of this weakness are observed: existence of digital divide; visions about democracy are various without certain consensus, due to the colourful historical heritage; online and offline civic life and journalism (the “watchdogs” of society) are either bound to governmental organizations or they are forced into financial dependency (currently, there are only two relatively well-known Hungarian homepages dealing with accountability of public and private sectors); and as a result of the previous three, institutional accountability is not a real need for citizens. These factors can only be changed by time, while international and governmental subsidy would be necessary to invigorate transparency, furthermore civic integrity trainings and courses could catalyse the process.