JOURNAL: Parliaments, Estates and Representation XLII (2022), No. 2

 

(image source: Routledge)

Constitution-making by elected assemblies in Southern Europe during the nineteenth century (Kostas Chrysogonos) (DOI 10.1080/02606755.2022.2084295)

Abstract:

The aim of this article is to examine whether the specific method of constitution-making in Southern Europe during the nineteenth century, and in particular the entanglement of an elected assembly with it, played any role in its outcome. The conclusion, based on a country-by-country report, is that the methods of constitution-making oscillated between royal concession, co-operation between the monarch and an elected assembly, and enactment of a fundamental law by an assembly alone. The participation of an elected assembly would frequently result in a document somewhat more liberal and more democratic than in the case of fundamental laws conceded by the monarch. However, the differences were not huge. Constitutions made by an assembly seem furthermore to have fared on average somewhat better than conceded constitutions, as far as their endurance is concerned. Concession and contract were however gradually falling into disuse as methods of constitution-making, ceding their place to (constituent) assemblies on a Pan-European scale. Since consent is obviously inscribed in the genome of constitutionalism as the fundamental organizational principle of society, it is to be expected that the symbolic foundation of a political community will be laid through the institutionalized consent of the members of this community.

Fabricating opinion: the Duke of Northumberland’s subscription campaign for petitions to parliament against the 1831 Reform Bill (David Zaret) (DOI 10.1080/02606755.2022.2084292) (OPEN ACCESS)

Abstract:

During the first five months of the new Grey administration (22 November to the 22 April 1831 dissolution), parliament received more petitions over the contentious issue of parliamentary reform than in any prior episode of mass petitioning. This case study uses unusual records with granular evidence from the professional management of a reactionary campaign for petitions against the 1831 Reform Bill. The records are from the law firm that managed the campaign, underwritten by the Duke of Northumberland, one of the realms richest magnates. The duke’s initiative proceeded despite negative assessments by local Tory leaders, who correctly predicted the petitions would get few signatures and be a public relations disaster. The duke’s initiative received more derisive publicity than any other petition campaign in this first phase of the Reform Bill’s political odyssey. This study of a failed petition campaign does not alter what we know about the substance or progress of legislation that became the 1832 Reform Act. Instead, it sheds new light on the broader issue of change and continuity in public petitioning with regard to 1) the credibility of opinion represented in petitions and 2) professional management of mass petition campaigns as routine legal practice.

From the diet of estates to the parliament. The case of Transylvania (1846–69) (Judit Pál & Vlad Popovici) (DOI 10.1080/02606755.2022.2084296)

Abstract:

This article focuses on the transition from the diet of estates to the modern parliament in Transylvania – a province of the Habsburg monarchy until 1867 and part of dualist Hungary between 1867 and 1918. It discusses the evolution of the electoral legislation and its relation to the general political context of the Habsburg monarchy and that of the province, and analyses the structural changes of the body of representatives in the succession of provincial and state assemblies, diets and parliaments that took place from the late 1840s to the late 1860s. Its main aims are to highlight the dependency relationship between the provincial representative institution and the major political changes atop the monarchy, and the effects of this situation on the transition process towards a wider and more representative franchise based on modern liberal principles. This article also discusses some of the most important changes undergone by the body of provincial representatives during this period. This includes their relationship to the political dependency previously mentioned, and how the traditional elites managed to maintain and sometimes even strengthen their political standing.

Aleksander Petrino. A Greek condottiere in the Austrian Parliament (Lothar Höbelt) (DOI 10.1080/02606755.2022.2084288) (OPEN ACCESS)

Abstract:

Aleksander Petrino (1824–99) was the only Austrian government minister who came from its eastern-most ‘crown-land’, the Bukovina – the only one without a clear-cut ethnic majority. Ukrainians were the biggest group but were massively under-represented among the elites. A sizeable part of the leadership of the Rumanians consisted of Phanariot Greeks, such as Petrino. Austrian politics in the opening phase of constitutionalism during the 1860s was characterized by a cleavage between centralist German Liberals and federalist and Catholic Slavs. Bukovina representatives did not easily fit into either category. Petrino, who also worked assiduously as a lobbyist for railroad companies, initially sided with the German Liberals, then organized a gathering of minorities from different parts of the Austrian half of the Empire, including Italians and Slovenes. It was the decision of this squadrone volante to join the Czech and Polish boycott of the Vienna Parliament in March 1870 that persuaded the Emperor to finally dismiss the German Liberal Bürgerministerium (‘Citizens’ Ministry’).

The historical transformation of the Iranian parliamentary complex (Vida Janavi) (DOI 10.1080/02606755.2022.2084289)

Abstract:

This article aims to provide a better understanding of how the Iranian parliament building, as an assemblage of buildings, urban spaces, narratives and similar symbols, shapes, reshapes and negotiates the Iranian concept of its political self since the establishment of the parliamentary structure in 1906. It examines the political practices, ideologies and consciousness of people affected by different political concepts embedded in each regime. This article discusses the involvement of spaces in creating historical events. Despite similar historical studies, it focuses on where the history of constituting the Iranian Parliament happened. It does so by reviewing and analysing the archives, documents and new urban plans for the Iranian Parliament.

Book reviews:

• Estates and constitution: the parliament in eighteenth-century Hungary by István M. Szijártó (Austrian and Habsburg studies 30), Oxford, Berghahn, 2020, illus., xii + 362 pp., £115 (hbk), ISBN 9781789208795 (András Forgó)
• Partisan politics: looking for consensus in eighteenth-century towns by Jon Rosebank, Exeter, University of Exeter Press, 2021, ix + 297 pp., £75 (hbk), ISBN 9781905816675 (D.W. Hayton)
•  Parliament the Mirror of the Nation: Representation, Deliberation and Democracy in Victorian Britain by Gregory Conti, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2019, xi + 408, £90, ISBN 978 1 108 42873 6 (hbk) (Paul Seeaward)
• Haldane: the forgotten statesman who shaped Britain and Canada by John Campbell, Montreal and Kingston, McGill-Queen's University Press, 2020, xxxviii + 483 pp., £30 (cloth), ISBN 9780228000938 (Martin Farr)
• Kritisches Handbuch der österreichischen Demokratie. BürgerInnen, Verfassung, Institutionen, Verbände [Critical handbook of Austrian democracy: citizens, constitution, institutions, associations] edited by Reinhard Heinisch, Vienna, Böhlau Verlag, 2020, 334 pp., € 27.99 (pbk), ISBN 978-3-205-23183-7 (Gerald Kohl)
• Diccionario biográfico de los diputados y diputadas del Parlamento Vasco (1980-1984) edited by Joseba Agirreazkuenaga and Mikel Urquijo, Vitoria/Gasteiz, Parlamento Vasco/Eusko Legebiltzarra, 2021, 2 vols, xii+1097 pp., €25, ISBN 9788494955969 (pbk) (Xabier Zabaltza)

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