Would it be possible for Austria Hungary to reform into a Federal System?

Could a progressive Emperor (not sure who any suggestions for this?) Create a reformed Empire using the model of the American Federal system?

Basically my idea is each ethno linguistic region of the Empire gets it's own state and elected parliament these states would have rights similar to US states in setting policy including the allowance of an official"state language" and would be fairly democratic. All signage must be in the state and national language, so in Slovakia for example everything would need to be in Slovak and German. Education would be kept a responsibility of the National government with all students being required to achieve fluency in German to graduate, but most classes would be in the local language, additionally local language universities would be set up in all state capitals. The National government would have a national parliament but be less democratic with the Emperor basically taking the role of the US president and being able to veto legislation as well as issue decrees which carry the force of law. The bureaucracy would be run in German and during training soldiers and officer cadets would be paired with partners from other regions forcing them to use German to communicate. The universal public education would be instituted and federally controlled and standardized and emphasize national unity and local traditions, as well as students learning German to a fluent level. (for an example of what I mean see the Soviet education model in the republics.) The Federal constitution would strictly prohibit separatism and separatist parties would be banned.

So some questions, first would such a system actually work? Would it allow the countries to express their nationality while being contained? Switzerland has had great success with that kind of thing, and the Soviet Union for most of it's existence did a good job balancing local traditions while keeping the country unified. But it could just lead to the local parliaments being hyper nationalistic and the whole system collapsing shortly thereafter. So I am curious to hear your thoughts about this.

Also would making German the official language lead to ill feelings? Would it be politically possible to use a neutral language like Esperanto or Latin? I'm not sure if that would be possible logistically or politically?

Finally what would the POD be? Were there any people in line for the throne who would have been interested in something like this? And are there any events which could ahve pushed the Empire toward these kinds of reforms?
 
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One of the much less visited but important 20th Century questions.

I suspect the key is to create a system that has incentives for the wealthy and middle classes, they see it better to go with this federal system than the economics of ethnic states.
 
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This was debated in Austria-Hungary as well. There were several plans for federalisation, the best known was promoted by Archduke Franz Ferdinand himself (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_of_Greater_Austria). Franz Ferdinand was in no way a progressive though.

Of course such a plan would face almost insurmountable opposition from the various factions of the realm that preferred the status quo or radical ethnic nationalism. But the main problem I see would in fact occur after the (unlikely) implementation of such a plan: A federal system would strengthen the centrifugal forces and could lead to problems like in modern Spain. Basically, whenever you give nationalists/separatists/regionalists something, they demand more and a federal system enables them to get what they want. Whenever a Spanish government needs regionalist support to get a bill through Congress, it has to make some concessions to them and the regionalists end up with more and more power. That's the problem with a federal system in a multi-linguistic/multi-ethnic state and you'd have to find a solution for this.
 
If the different ethnicities are given more rights without given more reason to rally around the A-H flag, they'll just try to use the newly given rights to either join their "fellow countrymen" or become independent. The only answer IMO is to centralize the government through reforms, while encouraging modernization and economic growth.
 
First of all, a lot of early modern time of the Habsburg monarchy was dominated by a conflict between centralist and federalist ideas. Centralist in that context means an absolutistic monarchy, while federalist means more power to the Länder, the various regions that in some times can trace their then current borders back to medival time. And there is one of the key probelms with the idea you presented. While continous ethical areas exist, there are just as many mixed and discontinous areas. Where do you draw the borders? Do you keep the old ones, with all the probelms they have? Or do you redraw and introduce the same problems in new form. There were many ideas on this, most often associated with Franz Ferdinand. All of them showed problems. Also, while those projects often come from Franz Ferdiand's circle of associates and he dabbled with them himself, we have little indication how serious he took them himself.

Introducing mandatory Germany comes with it's own problems. Especially in Hungary with it's side countries where the magnats were more interested in Magyarisation, ironic as this is.

The Swiss model would not work, having 10+ people in most positions instead of one never helped out. In Switzerland it kind of works because they only have to deal with 3 or 4 languages depending on several factors. Also, the Swiss model works because at some point it became integral to the Swiss identiy. Creating it anew would be very challenging indeed.
The Soviet model I know less about, but didn't that essentially relay on the Russians being able to bring the most force to bear? Reason it fell apart as quickly as it did in the 90s? So unless you fully militarise the German-Austrian population and largely disarm the others...


Best bet to make something like this work? Probably Maria Theresia or Joseph II. At least without revolutions and civil war. And even then it is unlikely to work without those.
 
It's possible in theory, but extremely difficult and unlikely.

For one, how to draw the federal state borders in a way that doesn't piss off too many people too much? One man's "barely enough" is another man's "totally unacceptable". The idea of federalism is a good one, but you'd need to strike a delicate balance.

Operating the entire bureaucracy in German wouldn't make anyone very happy. At the very least, people will insist on having local and lower-level administration in their own language.

The biggest problem is: who would this progressive Emperor be?
Not Franz Joseph, obviously.
Definitely not Franz Ferdinand.
Probably not Rudolf either - he had a few interesting ideas (some of them good, others interesting and bad), but federalization was not one of those ideas, AFAIK.
Karl? Karl wouldn't federalize the monarchy of his own free will, but maybe he could be pushed into it by circumstances...still, how to get him in place and push him the right way without jeopardizing the Habsburg empire?
 
who would this progressive Emperor be?
The groundwork for federalisation must be laid earlier. Ironically, it could be the centralist Joseph II. He had a lot of power as a ruler and ruled during some of the decisive years of the monarchy. Change some of his policies and Austria would look a lot different. He doesn't have to become a federalist (would be too unlikely, Josephinism is the absolute opposite of it) but some of his actions could lead to later federalisation, maybe because more of his reforms get through. Make Joseph reform the state thoroughly and the forces of federalism might become strong enough later to create a federal Austria.
 
What about a surviving Maximillian or a (hypothetical) son of his?

I'm not sure what Maximilian's views actually were (with regards Austria/Hungary, and not Mexico).
Also, what exactly were Rudolf's ideas?

Rudolf was a liberal-ish centralist. He was anti-clerical, not too close to the aristocracy, (vaguely) friendly towards the nationalities, but also vaguely pro-Hungarian and in favor of Dualism. Ultimately, he envisioned the monarchy as a close union between a centralized Austria and Hungary, not as some kind of a national federation. One of his ideas was to ban regional and national political parties, and force the creation of artificial empire-wide Liberal and Conservative parties.

Rudolf believed that it's Austria's right and destiny to control the Balkans, although he apparently considered client states an acceptable form of control for the time being. He thought Bosnia should be ceded to the Kingdom of Serbia, in exchange for Serbia tying itself (even more) closely to the Dual monarchy. He also entertained the idea of doing something similar with Transylvania - resurrecting it as a separate crownland or ceding it to Romania, in exchange for Romania also becoming a close satellite of the monarchy.

He strongly disliked Russia - both on general principles, and as an obstacle to Austria's push towards Salonika and overlordship of the Balkans. However, he also strongly disliked Germany and absolutely hated the Hohenzollerns. He saw the Austro-German alliance as a barely necessary evil on good days and an unnecessary evil on bad days; and dreamed of watching the German Empire break up. He was mildly pro-British and pro-French.
 
Biggest problem would be the Hungarian elite.
Especially in Hungary with it's side countries where the magnates were more interested in Magyarisation, ironic as this is.
There was some ideas, but both the Hungarians and the Court were against it.
The Hungarian magnates really do seem to have been one of the largest problems facing Austria. I know it's outside the scop of this thread but I do have to wonder about how things might have played out if thanks to some better reforms/preparation and operational command decisions the government had been able to crush the Hungarian revolution of 1848 in short order, rather than our timeline's long drawn out struggle, and decided to use the opportunity to considerably reduce their power.
 

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The Hungarian magnates really do seem to have been one of the largest problems facing Austria. I know it's outside the scop of this thread but I do have to wonder about how things might have played out if thanks to some better reforms/preparation and operational command decisions the government had been able to crush the Hungarian revolution of 1848 in short order, rather than our timeline's long drawn out struggle, and decided to use the opportunity to considerably reduce their power.
The Hungarias are a problem, but a court dominated by idiots such as von Hötzendorf didn't help.
 
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