Austro-Hungarian Government
Defeat in the Seven Weeks' War demonstrated that Austria was no longer a great power. Looking to the future, Franz Joseph set three foreign policy objectives designed to restore Austrian leadership in Germany: regain great-power status; counter Prussian moves in southern Germany; and avoid going to war for the foreseeable future. Because reconciliation with Hungary was a precondition for regaining great-power status, the new foreign minister, Friedrich Ferdinand von Beust, became a strong advocate of bringing the stalemated negotiations with the Hungarians to a successful conclusion. By the spring of 1867, a compromise had been reached and was enacted into law by the Hungarian Diet.
The Compromise Ausgleich of 1867 divided the Habsburg Empire into two separate states with equal rights under a common ruler, hence the term "Dual Monarchy." Officially, these states were Hungary and the "Kingdoms and Lands represented in the Parliament," the latter being an awkward designation necessitated by the lack of a historical name encompassing all non-Hungarian lands. Unofficially, the western half was called either Austria or Cis-Leithania, after the Leitha River, which separated the two states. Cisleithania was distinguished from Hungary, which was called Transleithania. The officially accepted name of the Dual Monarchy was Austria-Hungary, also seen as the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Every thing in Austro-Hungarian political life dates from 1867. At that time the King ratified the Hungarian Constitution and bestowed a similar one on his Austrian lands. In doing so he entered, as Emperor of Austria, into an arrangement with the independent allied kingdom of Hungary. Hungarians accepted the arrangement, though a certain number of irreconcilables refused to acknowledge it, and Louis Kossuth died abroad rather than do so.
The "Austro-Hungarian Monarchy" - thus reads the official name - consists, according to the fundamental state law of December 21, 1867, of Cisleithania, or the empire of Austria [provinces: Lower Austria, Upper Austria, Salzburg, Styria, Carinthia, Carniola, Coast Districts (Görz, Gradisca, Trieste, and Istria), the Tyrol and Vorarlberg, Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, Galicia, Bukowina, and Dalmatia], and Transleithania, or the Kingdom of Hungary [provinces: Hungary, Transylvania, Fiume, Croatia, and Slavonia]. The provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina, occupied after the Treaty of Berlin in 1878, are administered by the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, but do not belong to it legally. Each province has a "Landtag" (Diet) that legislates in home affairs and fixes the provincial taxes, but has no power to alter state laws.
The legislature is centered in a "Reichsrath" (Parliament) in Vienna and one in Budapest, consisting each of a "Herrenhaus" (House of Lords) and an "Abgeordnetenhaus" (House of Commons). The former is composed of princes of the imperial family [20 in Vienna - 20 in Budapest], nobles with hereditary privileges [66-286], ecclesiastical representatives [17-51], and life members nominated by the emperor and usually "arranged" by the ministry to create the desired majority [122-102 in 1898]. The latter was formed by members elected partly directly, partly indirectly, by the classes of the "Grossgrundbesitz" [large landed proprietors], the towns, the chambers of trade and commerce, and the rural districts, 353 in Austria and 453 in Hungary. The ministers were appointed by the emperor. They may or may not be members of Parliament, and can be retained in office if they should fail to get a majority for their bills, or even if they should receive a "vote of distrust" ; they can be removed solely by an impeachment for breach of the Constitution.
All the elections to the Imperial Diet and the various Popular Assemblies from 1861 to 1896 were characterized by the desire to bring to the front the landowners, the capitalists, the so-called "educated classes" of Vienna, and the German bureaucracy with its scheme of Teutonization. The means employed to this end was the establishment of the electoral system known as the " Vier Kurien." In other words, all voters were divided into four classes. Only the great landowners holding fiefs from the Crown are eligible to Class A; and these are qualified to cast a disproportionately large number of votes. Class B embraces all the cities of the Empire, the population of which, both in the Teutonic and in the Slavonic districts, is composed largely of the German element. In Class C the Chambers of Commerce and Trade only are represented; and the preference is naturally given to the capitalists of industry. This class also is entitled to elect a large number of representatives. Class D represents the rural population, and elects its representatives indirectly, i.e., by means of electors. In this way it is exposed to the influence of the bureaucracy, the landowners, and the " educated class." The plutocraticaristocratic character is peculiar to all four classes.
King Francis Joseph successfully asserted his prerogatives, in that he had actually refused to sanction bills passed by both houses of parliament. Without his sanction they are of course invalid, as they would be in any constitutional monarchy. The ministers arc the servants of the Crown rather than of parliament, and the political parties have to shape a program which the Crown will sanction before they arc likely to be asked to take office. In the event of a deadlock the Crown, which is bound to summon parliament at stated intervals, can exercise its prerogative and dismiss it on the same day. The Hungarian dislike of creating anything like a dual parliament led to the extraordinary device of these two bodies, debating separately and not allowed even to speak to each other, like two children whose mothers will not 'make friends.' They communicate in writing and, if it is necessary to take a joint vote, they vote without debating.
The Austrian House of Commons had a few dozen members who could speak German, some who even did not understand it, and speeches were delivered in half a dozen tongues not understood by the majority of the members. Similar conditions were prevalent in all branches of government. Thousands of lawsuits, the majority of the cases before the courts of provinces of mixed language, must be carried on in two or three tongues; briefs, pleadings, sentences, had to be translated and retranslated, time and money were wasted for interpreters, and the jury system has become a farce and sham on account of nationalistic prejudices and by reason of the inability of many jurors to understand any other language but their own.
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