Neither Absolutism nor Anarchy: New Narratives on Society and Government in Late Imperial Austria

A reevaluation by historians of political life in late imperial Austria and the capacity of the state to accommodate modern modes of popular political engagement is long overdue. Over the last twenty years lively discussions have developed about the extent of political modernization in Germany and Russia during the last decades before World War I. A number of historians have argued that modes of government and popular politics changed much more significantly in those empires than was previously recognized. In the meantime an important new monographic literature has arisen on popular political action, government, and civil administration in the Habsburg monarchy that suggests that much the same may have taken place there, too.