Electoral Institutions and Ethnic Group Politics in Austria, 1867–1914

Howe, Philip J.

doi:10.1080/13537113.2010.490749

Cited by 4 publications

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“…For example, in the first round of voting in 1907, Gerichtsbezirk Jablunkau, a precinct in Silesia's District Five (Stadt Bielitz), cast 21% of it ballots for the German Progressives, 78% for the German Christian Socials, and 1% for a (German) Social Democrat, despite the fact that Jablunkau was 85% Polish and only 15% German. Furthermore, this behaviour appeared to have occurred at a far greater frequency than has been recognised in the historical literature (Howe 2002: 240–50). These tentative observations were nevertheless based on a very small number of cases.…”

mentioning

confidence: 86%

“…The 1867 Austro‐Hungarian Compromise established separate though similar constitutions for the Western (‘Austrian’) and Eastern (‘Hungarian’) halves of the Monarchy. Under constitutional rule, which lasted until World War I, each half of the Monarchy maintained an elected parliament along with a number of joint institutions, including the person of Franz Joseph, who ruled as Emperor ( Kaiser ) in the Western and King ( König ) in the Eastern half (Brauneder 2000; Brauneder and Lachmayer 1976; Howe 2002; Péter 2000; Ucakar 1985).…”

Section: Institutional and Demographic Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Recent parliamentary and party historiography, however, has increasingly put Parliament in a more positive light, developing a keener eye for compromise among and the practical accomplishments of Austrian politicians (Binder 2005; Boyer 1981, 1995; Garver 1978; Höbelt 1993; Kelly 2006; Wandruszka and Urbanitsch 2000; Winkler 2000). Simultaneously, a growing literature has begun to question the ‘naturalness’ of Austria's many nationalities, emphasising the coexistence of multiple identities within individuals, competing definitions of the nation, the availability of transnational loyalties, the institutionalisation of nationhood, the significance of local contexts, and the instrumental use of national identities by nationalist politicians (Cohen 2006; Howe 2002; Judson 2006; Judson and Rozenblit 2005; King 2002).…”

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confidence: 99%

“…This hyper‐fragmentation of the party system was not unique to Austria in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and need not be attributed to ethnic divisions as such, but rather to the institutional environment in which parliamentary representatives operated. Parties demanding national autonomy were by far the least successful in courting Austrian voters of any nationality. Parliamentary obstructionism can as easily be attributed to a lack of executive accountability as to ethnic conflict. At the same time, it served as a mechanism for protecting minorities and keeping the government in check. Despite obstructionism, Parliament was quite capable of passing important legislation, something that required the formation of multiethnic majorities (Howe 2002). …”

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confidence: 99%

“…Despite obstructionism, Parliament was quite capable of passing important legislation, something that required the formation of multiethnic majorities (Howe 2002).…”

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confidence: 99%

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Voting across ethnic lines in late Imperial Austria¹

Howe

2010

Nations and Nationalism

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The Austrian party system, following the introduction of universal manhood suffrage in 1907, has conventionally been characterised as being divided along ethno-national lines, reinforcing perceptions that politics within the Habsburg Empire was overwhelmingly driven by nationalism. However, the electoral results in a number of districts only make sense if one assumes that voters cast ballots for their alleged ethnic opponents. A systematic analysis of election results, utilising a simple process of elimination and drawing on the highly detailed statistical records available, strongly suggests that such voting was commonplace. Furthermore, alternative explanations based on differential voting qualification rates, errors in the census, and electoral fraud do not withstand close scrutiny. One must therefore conclude that although ethnic conflict did occur, it was paralleled by inter-ethnic bargaining and compromise, thereby supporting more positive appraisals of Austrian electoral and parliamentary politics and of representative political institutions in ethnically divided societies.

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confidence: 86%

Section: Institutional and Demographic Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Despite obstructionism, Parliament was quite capable of passing important legislation, something that required the formation of multiethnic majorities (Howe 2002).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Voting across ethnic lines in late Imperial Austria¹

Howe

2010

Nations and Nationalism

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Bridging the Gap: Lottery-Based Procedures in Early Parliamentarization

Cirone¹,

Coppenolle²

2019

World Pol.

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How is the use of political lotteries related to party development? This article discusses the effects of a lottery-based procedure used to distribute committee appointments that was once common across legislatures in nineteenth-century Europe. The authors analyze the effects of a political lottery in budget committee selection in the French Third Republic using a microlevel data set of French deputies from 1877 to 1914. They argue that the adoption and benefit of lottery-based procedures were to prevent the capture of early institutions by party factions or groups of self-interested political elites. The authors find that partial randomization of selection resulted in the appointment of young, skilled, middle-class deputies at the expense of influential elites. When parties gained control of committee assignments in 1910, selection once again favored elites and loyal party members. The authors link lottery-based procedures to party development by showing that cohesive parties were behind the institutional reform that ultimately dismantled this selection process. Lottery-based procedures thus played a sanitizing role during the transformation of emerging parliamentary groups into unified, cohesive political parties.

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How do political elites persist? Political selection, political inequality and empirical historical research

Coppenolle

2020

Fr Polit

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How do political elites persist? In this article, I review selected research on who legislators are, how democratic institutions affect their selection and behaviour, as well as their persistence over the long run. The extent to which political elites persist, forms a measure of the level of political inequality between elites and citizens. I argue that political inequality in societies can be measured as the extent to which the same individuals, or families, monopolize political power. This operationalization travels well through space and time. In extreme forms of non-competitiveness, power is passed on within political dynasties, and power becomes essentially hereditary.Democratic competition is meant to break up the extreme political inequality associated with absolute, hereditary politics. We still insufficiently understand the exact institutional reforms under which hereditary political selection declined during European countries' evolution towards representative democracy (e.g. Offerlé, 1993) from the individual interests of those who decided to reform (Benoit, 2004, Capoccia andZiblatt 2010). Yet these questions were crucial for early elite theorists (e.g.Michels ([1911([ ] 1968([ ), Mosca ([1896([ ] 1939) who warned that all power has a tendency to become hereditary. To understand how institutions affect political selection, and long-run political inequality, we need to understand why individuals support (and largely continue to support) 1 the institutional equilibriums that make up their representative democracies. For this non-exhaustive review I draw on examples from the study of political inequality and political selection, broadly defined, and present some of my own recent contributions to this literature, about historical lotteries, legislative elites, and political dynasties in France and Britain. The focus in this work on highly unequal, early democratising countries addresses two important research

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Electoral Institutions and Ethnic Group Politics in Austria, 1867–1914

Cited by 4 publications

References 0 publications

Voting across ethnic lines in late Imperial Austria¹

Voting across ethnic lines in late Imperial Austria¹

Bridging the Gap: Lottery-Based Procedures in Early Parliamentarization

How do political elites persist? Political selection, political inequality and empirical historical research

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Electoral Institutions and Ethnic Group Politics in Austria, 1867–1914

Cited by 4 publications

References 0 publications

Voting across ethnic lines in late Imperial Austria1

Voting across ethnic lines in late Imperial Austria1

Bridging the Gap: Lottery-Based Procedures in Early Parliamentarization

How do political elites persist? Political selection, political inequality and empirical historical research

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Voting across ethnic lines in late Imperial Austria¹

Voting across ethnic lines in late Imperial Austria¹