Interviewees working in municipal committees point out that party politicians often have a different mindset from civil society activists. As C8 is part of the ruling coalition, it has to be involved in the city-level coordination to keep things working, but it cannot vote. Collaboration on issues laid down in the policy program is difficult, since party politicians control the committees responsible for preparing the decisions. They are less motivated to work on strategic goals and long-term issues or to swiftly find solutions to problems raised by residents. They prefer visible, short-term results and avoid the political risks involved in tackling the most controversial issues of the municipal status quo. Acting as external members of these committees does not give C8 sufficient political weight, hence its position depends on the attitude and ability of the committee chairs, but also on the clout and respect accumulated by its members through their hard work and expert knowledge. To resolve this situation, C8 also participates in internal working groups, where strategy documents can be prepared more smoothly.

C8 and the district mayor continue to organize forums to collect and discuss the residents’ concerns in every part of the district. While Pikó has distanced himself from C8, he is still a member. Moreover, several C8 members of the campaign team are now employees of the municipality, but as public servants, they have “removed their C8 badges,” as one of the activists noted. If it voices any criticism, C8 risks weakening the position of the mayor and causing a political scandal that would be sensationalized by the right-wing media, which would delegitimize both the mayor and C8.

As one of the interviewees phrased it, C8 now faces the strategic dilemma of becoming either a watchdog or a puppy dog of the municipality. As a value-oriented civic group that wants to accomplish its program, C8 needs to energize the project development and policy preparation processes inside the City Hall, but it cannot give up its hard-won institutional position by simply walking out. The organization now has to come up with a strategy for how to resolve the crisis caused by this internal-external position. A long-term solution might be to aim for more influential positions within the municipality in order to recalibrate it into a more “civic” mode of operation. However, given the bipolar political situation, this endeavor would face resistance from the opposition parties. Despite the merits of the campaign run by C8, political representatives often call into question the legitimacy of the group’s presence in the decision-making process. Another, more targeted strategy for C8 would be to return to advocacy about winnable – and therefore galvanizing – local issues, which is something the organization is already doing with regard to a disputed investment project. In this context, it collaborates with another CSOs to oppose the real estate development project by means of community-building practices in the neighborhood. Such initiatives, however, necessarily interfere with the operation of the local government. To promote greater democracy and participation, C8 has become involved in several initiatives fronted by the municipality, including a local consultation about movie shoots, organizing forums and by conducting a survey. Many C8 members have been involved in voluntary assistance also during the COVID-19 pandemic, but the local government often keeps silent about their role, since this would “politicize” these activities. Doing voluntary work for the local government channels energy away from the daily activities of the organization. Many vocal residents see C8 as a privileged CSO or a “local party” that is gaining a lot from governing the municipality, which is not the case. C8 does not accept subsidies from the municipality and does not even rent any premises from it, but this is hard to explain to the public.

That being said, the participatory approach of C8 has been incorporated into the operation of the municipal government. A new department has been created, called the Office of Public Participation, in order to strengthen the involvement of the public in decision-making processes. The Office for Public Participation, backed by the mayor and legitimized by the participatory pledge contained in his electoral program, is formally a department of the municipality, with dedicated projects (participatory budgeting, forums, consultations, COVID-19 volunteering, etc.) But it follows a more comprehensive approach with a view to making the whole municipality more transparent, accessible and participatory. Through its involvement in preparing the decisions of the mayor’s administration, the office cooperates with other departments, assisting them in two-way communication and consultation (e.g. participatory decision making about the local awards and decorations, summaries about council meetings in language that is easy to understand). It currently has a staff of five, among them a former C8 member and the former campaign manager. The office is responsible for programs in which many C8 members are involved as volunteers. However, the office is not engaged in any close and formal cooperation with C8; since it represents the municipality, not C8. This means, that C8 is not mentioned, even if the C8 members sometimes feel that they are doing the lion’s share of the work. This is a strongly held view among the members of C8 – despite the fact that the Office for Public Participation also disposes of the assets and human resources of the municipality – which is largely invisible to CSOs outside the day-to-day work of the municipality.

Two possible solutions to this strategic dilemma have been proposed within C8: one is to behave like one of the local CSOs, carrying out collaborative projects together with them and with the municipality under the logos of all the participating organizations. In this scenario, the creation of a formal forum (CSO roundtable) would facilitate the coordination between the civil society actors. The other solution is to leave these tasks to the municipality, which should involve other volunteers and participants in its projects, while C8 would concentrate on its own projects and engage with the municipal authorities more at arm’s length. In this second scenario, C8 would assume a privileged position in a political sense, setting it somewhat apart from other local CSOs. All our interviewees agreed that performing voluntary work for the municipality as if the campaign was still ongoing is not a sustainable option for C8, and that strategic decisions have to be made. C8 cannot afford to undercommunicate its work, since it is the lifeblood of its ability to compete politically. Some of its members want to deploy their work as an asset themselves, instead of allowing political actors to appropriate it. With no internal hierarchy or party discipline within C8, these tensions may lead to conflicts in the future.

C8’s role dilemma is representative of a more systemic contradiction. In the overloaded Hungarian local government sphere, which has to counterbalance the government’s antidemocratic centralization efforts, grassroots movements such as C8 that become involved in politics are faced with an environment that is dominated by political parties. They need to work with these parties, but should not necessarily merge into them. For a CSO, to gain influence over the institutions and processes of local government is a long learning process, in which an electoral victory is probably a unique situation. CSOs are able to develop their roles and strategies in a more organic manner while in opposition, by concentrating on specific issues and constituencies. If they aim to act as political representatives at the local level, they cannot circumvent the electoral game altogether, which requires not only the strength of a social movement, but a mature strategy and political agenda. Once they enter politics, they are responsible not only to their autonomous membership, but also to voters, which requires them to mediate between various interests and needs, as well as to bear responsibility for the static system they are trying to improve.

Civic initiatives are able to legitimately criticize the shortcomings of partisan local politics (instructions and obligation coming from above instead of being embedded locally), and a pattern has emerged by which this partisan logic is slowly being dissolved and domesticated by localist impulses. A Hungarian study of CSOs actively involved in the 2019 local elections, which was conducted simultaneously with ours, highlighted similar experiences. The future of C8’s municipalist project depends on how much institutional change it can achieve within the local government, and how much leverage it can create not only for itself, but also for other local stakeholders. Stronger collaboration between such movements is very important to enable them to learn from each other, especially regarding their experience of pre- and post-election negotiations, which may improve their starting position as well as the intra-municipal setting for achieving their goals.