I Blame Communism
Banned
But it wasn't anything like absolute. The Austrian half had a chronically stalled but working parliamentary government under universal male suffrage and a series of more-or-less electoral provincial regimes; while the Hungarian half, though with a small franchise and dominated disproportionately by the landed interest, never got on with the imperial government too well. So constitutionally speaking Austria was about as 'liberal' as Germany, although Hungary, unlike Prussia, did not dominate the polity. And Austria of course had imperfect but much better rights for nationalities, and its military wasn't officially above the law.
That both countries were semi-representative systems means both of them have to take account of a constituency strongly in favour of the other. Speaking of which: the 'stiffening corpse' lark is not how pan-Germans saw it at all. They assumed that Austria-Hungary would go from economic-political domination to formal incorporation in a larger version of what the zollverein had done in little Germany, with the eastern section being dependencies or colonies of some kind. Obviously this view was not shared by The Establishment, but then they had their own reasons for supporting Austria; that some frequent critics of their foreign policy were pro-Austrian was, of course, handy.
And who says an alliance with Britain is 'available'? Takes two to tango.
The 'spirit of 1848' died in 1848, when some '48s were shot and others cheered on the shooting. Since then it had split into 'the liberal nationalist spirit', 'the socialist spirit', and so on and so forth.
That both countries were semi-representative systems means both of them have to take account of a constituency strongly in favour of the other. Speaking of which: the 'stiffening corpse' lark is not how pan-Germans saw it at all. They assumed that Austria-Hungary would go from economic-political domination to formal incorporation in a larger version of what the zollverein had done in little Germany, with the eastern section being dependencies or colonies of some kind. Obviously this view was not shared by The Establishment, but then they had their own reasons for supporting Austria; that some frequent critics of their foreign policy were pro-Austrian was, of course, handy.
And who says an alliance with Britain is 'available'? Takes two to tango.
The 'spirit of 1848' died in 1848, when some '48s were shot and others cheered on the shooting. Since then it had split into 'the liberal nationalist spirit', 'the socialist spirit', and so on and so forth.
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