Who gets to play? The logic behind enfranchisement and democratic party system consolidation in Central Eastern Europe
In my book-style dissertation project, I bridge top-down and bottom-up theories of democratization in ethno-nationally diverse states. I look at what parliamentary (internally mobilized) and extra-parliamentary (externally mobilized) parties did during the democratizing period when universal male suffrage was on the horizon. Regionally, the project focuses on the constituent states of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire during the first wave of democratization, the emergent European states of the Empire such as Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Yugoslavia and parts of modern-day Ukraine, Italy, and Romania all experienced different degrees of ethno-national diversity during the turn of the 20th century, different levels of economic development and different approaches to nation-building, which provides me as the researcher with an interesting laboratory for understanding how nationalism played into democratization in ethno-nationally diverse states.
For each of my three case studies: Austria (Lower Austria), Czechia (Moravia and Bohemia) and Hungary, I trace how parliamentary parties decided who to enfranchise and when, prior to universal male suffrage. Like Tilley (2004), I argue that pre-democratic suffrage reforms reveal the nature and cleavages of political competition between parliamentary elites, and that the enfranchisement process reveals which groups in the disenfranchised populace parliamentary actors were nervous about formally including into the state and why.
But while parliamentary parties were fighting about who to enfranchise, groups started to organize within civil society as different types of extra-parliamentary parties: Socialist, Catholic, Protestant, ethnic, and, agrarian parties. Yet, under a limited franchise these parties only existed in the population and not in government. On one hand, some of these parties served a functional purpose for the mostly rural and poor disenfranchised majority. On the other hand, some of these extra-parliamentary parties focused instead on appealing to parliamentary elites and mobilizing workers in hopes gaining greater formal political incorporation.
These on the ground mobilizations helped secure greater political rights eventually but they did not help ensure the survival of the party and its ideology. I argue that these necessary functional ties between the party and civil society (which substituted for the state during mass disenfranchisement) helps explain which parties survived democratization and therefore shaped the nature and future of party systems post-universal male suffrage.
I collected and digitized data from over 34 thousand civil associations from select provinces from across the Empire to understand how parties cemented themselves in civil society during the democratizing period, as well as several other historical datasets.
In sum, I show that other types of identities (national, regional and religious) matter for the enfranchisement in plural societies and that to survive in democratic party systems, parties had to provide the population with at least the promise of goods and services post-democratization.
Chapter 1 - Democratization in Central Europe: Bridging the West and the East
Chapter 2 - Theory: Who gets to play?
In my book-style dissertation project, I bridge top-down and bottom-up theories of democratization in ethno-nationally diverse states. I look at what parliamentary (internally mobilized) and extra-parliamentary (externally mobilized) parties did during the democratizing period when universal male suffrage was on the horizon. Regionally, the project focuses on the constituent states of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire during the first wave of democratization, the emergent European states of the Empire such as Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Yugoslavia and parts of modern-day Ukraine, Italy, and Romania all experienced different degrees of ethno-national diversity during the turn of the 20th century, different levels of economic development and different approaches to nation-building, which provides me as the researcher with an interesting laboratory for understanding how nationalism played into democratization in ethno-nationally diverse states.
For each of my three case studies: Austria (Lower Austria), Czechia (Moravia and Bohemia) and Hungary, I trace how parliamentary parties decided who to enfranchise and when, prior to universal male suffrage. Like Tilley (2004), I argue that pre-democratic suffrage reforms reveal the nature and cleavages of political competition between parliamentary elites, and that the enfranchisement process reveals which groups in the disenfranchised populace parliamentary actors were nervous about formally including into the state and why.
But while parliamentary parties were fighting about who to enfranchise, groups started to organize within civil society as different types of extra-parliamentary parties: Socialist, Catholic, Protestant, ethnic, and, agrarian parties. Yet, under a limited franchise these parties only existed in the population and not in government. On one hand, some of these parties served a functional purpose for the mostly rural and poor disenfranchised majority. On the other hand, some of these extra-parliamentary parties focused instead on appealing to parliamentary elites and mobilizing workers in hopes gaining greater formal political incorporation.
These on the ground mobilizations helped secure greater political rights eventually but they did not help ensure the survival of the party and its ideology. I argue that these necessary functional ties between the party and civil society (which substituted for the state during mass disenfranchisement) helps explain which parties survived democratization and therefore shaped the nature and future of party systems post-universal male suffrage.
I collected and digitized data from over 34 thousand civil associations from select provinces from across the Empire to understand how parties cemented themselves in civil society during the democratizing period, as well as several other historical datasets.
In sum, I show that other types of identities (national, regional and religious) matter for the enfranchisement in plural societies and that to survive in democratic party systems, parties had to provide the population with at least the promise of goods and services post-democratization.
Chapter 1 - Democratization in Central Europe: Bridging the West and the East
Chapter 2 - Theory: Who gets to play?
- Including the case study for Austria, "Agitation from below", that evaluates existing theories of democratization in the "mostly likely" case
- An evaluation of how elites balanced their own interests (staying in power) with Magyar nation-state consolidation
- A paired comparison between Bohemia and Moravia, that teases out when national identity matters for enfranchisement and when class identity matters for enfranchisement
- Using newly digitized data on civil associations in Hungary and Silesia, I test the hypothesis that it's not only the enfranchisement process that determines party tenure during democratization but also external party building matters.
- The persistence and rise of Nationalist Socialism and nationalist party systems.
- With generalizable implications for modern states undergoing voter disenfranchisement, states where social goods and services are provided by parties and not the state, and for states deeply divided along ethno-national or racial lines.