1st Edition

Parliamentarism in Northern and East-Central Europe in the Long Eighteenth Century Volume II: Practices of Representation

332 Pages 16 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

332 Pages 16 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

332 Pages 16 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

This volume investigates the history of the parliamentary assemblies of Sweden, Poland and Hungary in the final period of the  ancien régime , offering an analysis of these three representative assemblies in a systematic comparative framework for the first time. The book studies the Polish  sejm,  the Swedish  riksdag  and the Hungarian  diaeta,  focusing on the eighteenth century with... Read more

Introduction: ‘The sweet fruits of liberty’

István M. Szijártó

1. The Variety of Political Systems in Eighteenth-Century Europe: Conditions, Institutions, Interests

Wim Blockmans

Part I: Finances and representation

2. The Political Economy of Taxation: Bargaining at the Meetings of the Swedish riksdag, 1789–1812

Patrik Winton

3. Contributions, subsidies, and the estates of Hungary, 1790–1812

Tamás Dobszay, János Poór and István M. Szijártó

4. The Representation of the Byzantine Rite Clergy at the Hungarian Diet

András Forgó

5. Princeps inter pares: Karol Stanisław Radziwiłł’s Electoral Machine and the Polish-Lithuanian Parliament in the Late Eighteenth Century

Curtis G. Murphy

Part 2: Mandates and voting

6. From Delegation to Representation: Polish-Lithuanian Parliamentary Reform and the British Example

Richard Butterwick

7. The Struggle for the Majority Rule in the Polish-Lithuanian sejm of the eighteenth century

Jacek Kordel

8. Making parliamentary rule work: The introduction of the free mandate and majority voting in the Swedish riksdag (1719–1723)

Joakim Scherp

9. Forms of Modern Parliamentarism in Eighteenth-Century Hungary

István M. Szijártó

10. ‘Instructiones ablegatum’: Parliamentary Decisions, Members of Parliament, and their Constituencies in Hungary in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century

Tamás Dobszay

Biography

István M. Szijártó is professor of history at Eötvös University, Hungary. His research interests include microhistory and the history of Hungarian parliamentarism. His books in English are What is microhistory? Theory and practice (2013, with Sigurður Gylfi Magnússon) and Estates and constitution. The parliament in eighteenth-century Hungary (2020).

Wim Blockmans is professor emeritus of history at Leiden University, Netherlands. His research aims to understand the variation of representative institutions throughout Europe. In 2024, he published The Voice of the People? Political Participation before the Revolutions.

László Kontler is professor of history at Central European University, Hungary/Austria. His research and publications focus on intellectual history, history of political thought, translation and reception, and the production and circulation of knowledge in early modern Europe. His books include Translations, Histories, Enlightenments: William Robertson in Germany, 1760–1795 (2014) and Maximilian Hell (1720–1792) and the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe (2020, with Per Pippin Aspaas).