The political system of Austria-Hungary

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THE POLITICAL SYSTEM OF AUSTRIA-HUNGARY

Olga Murashova

Annotation

austria hungary empire monarchy

In the article initiatives of state power of the Austrian empire are analyzed in relation to reorganization of the Austrian empire in a dualistic monarchy - Austria-Hungary. It is set that the personal touch of laws of 1860-s years item was become by wide declaration of democratic rights for the privileged Nations (Germans and Hungarians) and enslaved Nations. Grounded idea, that Austria, in spite of imperfect administrative and territorial device, from one side, became the modern and liberal state, and from other - the level of disintegration of empire became sharp accordingly through an agreement 1867, after which Hungary became to state-satellite of Austria. Essence and factors of constitutional reforms and public ethnic policy is found out in 1848-1870 years.

Key words: political system, political institutes, parlamentarizm, rights and freedoms of citizens, Austria-Hungary, initiatives, competition, modernization.

The main text

The purpose of the article is to determine the foundations of the political system of Austria-Hungary, the forms in which they appeared, attempts to establish the ethnopolitical consciousness of the enslaved peoples of the empire.

At the end of the 40s of the 19th century. The Austrian Empire entered a protracted period of upheavals, a bipolar world of ruptures and appeasement in 1848-1867, the main content of which was the survival of the monarchy and dynasty. In 1848-1849, the stability of the political system of the Austrian Empire depended on real constitutional changes. They became the provisions of the Constitution of 1849, which for the first time voiced the issue of the constitutional participation of a person in state administration and the possibility of finding compromises with the peoples of the empire [8, p. 108, 109]. However, there was the problem of the equality of peoples in the linguistic and ethnic sense, the recognition of historical kingdoms and crown lands, and the simultaneous monopolistic participation of the nation-state in the centralized management of the same lands and peoples. The events of the panEuropean revolution of 1848-1849 proved that an empire of this type is no longer able to deal with state-political processes, which were increasingly identified with patrimonial jurisprudence [11, pp. 15-17].

On April 25, 1848, the imperial constitution was published, which declared Austria a constitutional monarchy (Osterreichischer Kaiserstaat, lit. "Austrian Imperial State") and approved the Austrian parliament - the Reichstag. Its bicameral structure was envisaged - the House of Lords (Herrenhaus) and the House of Deputies (Abgeordnetenhaus). The first chamber included princes of the imperial court, heads of notable noble families, archbishops and bishops of princely rank, persons appointed for life by the emperor and elected by large landowners. The second chamber was formed through two-stage elections with a quota of 1 out of 50,000 people. However, the revolutionary wave in May 1848 adjusted the order of elections: the first state elections were declared constitutive and unicameral, and the elections to the House of Lords were canceled [11, p.15]. For six months - from June 1848 to March 1849 - the country held a Constitutional Assembly, which went down in history as the "Kromerzhik Parliament" (from the name of the Moravian town of Kromerzhik, where parliament members gathered in November after their departure from Vienna) [9, p.5 -25]. His main achievement was the adoption on September 7, 1848 of the act on the release of peasants from feudal obligations. The result of the meeting of the parliament was supposed to be the project of federalization of the empire, proposed by the leader of the Czech faction, F. Palatsky [3, p. 9]. According to it, the Habsburg possessions were to be divided into seven equal lands according to the national-geographical principle: Austro-German, Czech (or Czecho-Slavic), Polish-Rusyn, Hungarian, Romanian, South Slavic and Italian. F. Palatskyi proposed to grant broad powers to each of them, leaving only international issues in the hands of the central government.

In Austrian constitutional law, the concept of parliament was defined as the state assembly (Reichstag) or the state council (Reichsrat). - Auth. politics, army, finance, foreign trade, transport and communication. However, this project directly contradicted the centralizing plans of the Viennese government [10, pp. 76-77]. The Kromerzyck project envisaged that Austria should become an indivisible hereditary constitutional monarchy. The representative body - the Reichstag, which was elected for three years, was formed by the Chamber of Lands (Landerkammer) and the Chamber of Deputies or the People's Chamber (Volkkammer). The first of them was formed by regional seyms with six deputies from each land and district seyms with one deputy from each district of regions that had two or more districts. The second was elected in the course of direct elections. Persons over 28 years of age who had Austrian citizenship and had lived in Austria for at least a year were entitled to vote.

The idea of equality of all peoples of the monarchy was enshrined in Article 21 of the draft constitution: "All peoples of the empire have equal rights... The right to use their language in the system of education, state administration and public life is guaranteed by the state" [12, p. 263]. The document significantly limited the powers of the emperor, transferred most domestic policy issues to the parliament and the government responsible to it.

It should be noted that at this time, firstly, for the first time in history, representatives of various peoples of the monarchy gained experience in parliamentary work and free discussion of important political problems, secondly, the Austrian state and legal consciousness of the participants in the work of the parliament - Germans, Czechs, Poles, Slovenians - strengthened, Ruthenians - to a common state-political organism, thirdly, the principle of equality of peoples was officially recognized and, fourthly, the cultural and limited administrative autonomy of individual peoples was opposed to Hungarian, German, Italian and Polish nationalisms, the goal of which was the creation of respective national states. However, the Cromerzhit constitution remained a draft, since on March 4, 1849, the parliament was dissolved, and the peoples of the empire received a new Basic Law [9, pp. 43-45]. «Octroyed» (donated) bucket constitution removed from the previous one by almost completely restoring the power of the emperor, who from now on also had legislative power. It was carried out together with the bicameral Reichstag. Deputies of the upper house (Oberhaus) were elected by the Land Diets for five years. The Lower House (Unterhaus) was formed by direct elections with a quota of one deputy per 100,000 people. people. Under the emperor, there was an advisory body - the imperial council (Reichsrat) (Reichsrat), whose decisions, however, required the approval of the parliament.

The principle was the introduction of a new form of government - a constitutional monarchy, the centralization of state administration (through the model of a unitary state divided into provinces with rather limited autonomy), as well as the so-called pluralism of nationalities. Thus, the constitution contained the provision that all nations living in the state are equal, and each nation has an inalienable right to the protection and development of its nationality and language [8, p.116]. However, the next year the emperor and his entourage tried to eliminate the concessions made during the revolution. According to the decree of December 31, 1851, the Constitution of 1849 was declared null and void and abolished. Since then, the emperor declared his intention to rule the country independently, albeit with the help of ministers and the Reichsrat. The constitution was not mentioned again. From the democratic rights of 1849, the government left the principle of equality of each citizen before the law, the freedom of all officially recognized religions. However, court publicity, freedom of the press, and jury trials were abolished [5, p.89].

After the defeat and suppression of the revolution, the ruling elite of the Austrian state, led by the new emperor Franz Joseph I, was looking for a way out of the crisis situation. And since the situation was worsened by external political defeats and loss of prestige in the international arena [14, p.220], the uncertainty of the power structures led to the inconsistency of the internal political course, contradictory legislation, attempts to balance centralist and autonomist tendencies through complex state-law combinations [13, p.472].

During several decades of the 19th century. the question of the political system in the monarchy remained open. It was an example of a kind of swing between two pairs of poles, one of which marked the nature of the political regime of the Habsburg monarchy, the other - the features of the administrative system. On the one hand, it was absolutism and the constitutional parliamentary system opposed to it, and on the other, centralism and its antipode, the federal and/or even confederal model.

In 1867, new basic state laws were adopted, which regulated relations between Austria and Hungary in the dualistic state. From now on, it was called Austria-Hungary. The basis of the constitutional laws of the reorganized state were the diploma of October 20, 1860, the patent of February 26, 1861, six basic state laws of December 21, 1867, as well as the "Pragmatic Sanction" of December 6, 1724 on the succession to the throne and the indivisibility of the empire. The management structure and legal norms formed in the 1860s lasted until the collapse of the empire [5, p.94].

The epicenter of changes in the political system of the monarchy was destined to become a dualistic compromise (Ausgleich), which turned the Austrian Empire into Austria-Hungary and gave the Danube Monarchy a form that it generally and generally kept until the end of its existence. Accordingly, after 1867, Hungary actually became the second center in the state.

State unity was ensured by the persons of the Austrian emperor and the Hungarian king, who was the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces, determined the nature of foreign policy and exercised control over the activities of three ministries common to the entire monarchy - military, financial and foreign affairs. The emperor possessed the right of "prior sanction", according to which government bills could be discussed by the parliaments of both parts of the monarchy only with his consent. In exceptional cases, the emperor and the government could manage the western part of the country (this did not apply to Hungary) without a parliament, which later happened during political crises and during the First World War [10, p.128].

Executive power in Austria was carried out by the Cabinet of Ministers, which united nine departments: internal affairs, cults and education, agriculture, trade, railways, public works, justice, finance and defense. The department was headed by the minister-president. Deputies exercised control over executive bodies by submitting requests (interpellations). The lower house had the right to appoint commissions to investigate the correctness of the actions of administrative bodies. The December constitution established a clear division of power between the Reichsrat and the provincial seyms and somewhat strengthened the powers of the former [12, p. 101]. A characteristic feature of the laws of the 60s of the 19th century. there was a wide declaration of democratic rights.

According to the Basic Law of December 21, 1867 on general rights, the equality of all citizens of the empire before the law, the same opportunities to occupy public positions, freedom of movement, inviolability of private property, secretfreedom of correspondence, the right to submit petitions and petitions, freedom of speech and the press. Previous censorship was abolished, and freedom of belief and conscience was proclaimed on the condition that religious views would not harm the state duties of citizens. It was stated that Austrian citizens have the right to freely choose a profession and obtain a professional education. Article 19 of the constitution on general rights became extremely important, which stated: "All peoples of the state are equal, and every people has the inviolable right to preserve and develop their nationality and language. The state recognizes the equality of all regional languages in school, state institutions and public life. In regions where several peoples live, educational institutions should be organized so that without using force to learn another regional language, each of these peoples will receive the necessary opportunities for education in their native language" [5, p.97]. However, the specified constitutional article on the equality of peoples and their languages did not receive further clarification in the legislation and was interpreted differently depending on the political situation. Nations as such were not considered as subjects of law, although the transfer of the right to decide on individual issues to local autonomous authorities in practice recognized nations as such. The result of this was the further ethnicization of Austrian politics, which was later transferred to the political life of the successor states of the Habsburg Empire [3, p. 17].

A number of legislative acts issued earlier were also included in the constitutional law on general rights. In particular, the law of October 27, 1862 on the protection of personal freedom, which stated that the imprisonment of a person can only take place in accordance with a court decision. A citizen could be detained without the permission of the judicial authorities for no longer than 48 hours. According to the law on the protection of housing rights, a search of a house could be carried out only with a court order or written permission of the judicial authorities within 24 hours after its issuance. The press law, which was published on December 17, 1862, granted the right to publish newspapers and magazines to virtually all citizens of the empire. The procedure for establishing new publications was determined. For this, the regional government had to be notified of the publication program, the name of the responsible editor, and the place of printing.

On the basis of the Constitution of 1867, a number of laws were adopted that related to important aspects of public life. The law of May 25, 1868 transferred control over schools from the church to state authorities. In Austria-Hungary, a mandatory eight-year education was introduced, although the regional seyms had the right to slightly adjust the mandatory period of study. In the same year, issues of interfaith relations, including mixed marriages, changes of faith, etc., were settled. Creation of inter-religious schools was allowed. General military service was introduced. The law of October 15, 1868 clarified the existing regulations on the press, expanding the rights of publishers and strengthening the regulation of the functioning of censorship. On April 7, 1870, a law was issued that allowed strikes if they were properly prepared and motivated [6, p. 32].

Thus, thanks to the integration function, the state, which appears as a result of the collective will of ethnonation, performs a special role - it acts as a decisive counterparty of ethnopolitical processes. Within the framework of newly emerging ethno-political organisms, its prerogatives and monopoly rights provide the state with a central role in the formation of its relations with individual ethnic subjects, and at the same time give the opportunity to play the role of a third force in the interaction of the latter. Among the prerogatives are the formation of legislation, the right to use legitimate violence, implementation of budget policy, etc. AustriaHungary, despite all the shortcomings of its domestic and foreign policy, the basic institutions of the dualistic empire, and therefore the political system, contradictions and conflicts, was imagined as a state entity capable of developing, improving and, in general, quite effectively protecting the interests of its citizens.

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