István M. Szijártó traces the religious, economic, and partisan forces that shaped the Diet, putting its historical significance in international perspective and demonstrating that it played a critical role in the eventual dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction Part I: The Frameworks Chapter 1. The Dualism of King and Estates Chapter 2. The Workings of the Machinery of the Diet Part II: The Structures of Politics Chapter 3. The Dualism of King and Estates Dominated by Confessional Questions Chapter 4. Taxes and Privileges Chapter 5. Government and Opposition at the Diet Chapter 6. Career Paths at the Diet Chapter 7. Realignments on the Estates’ Side of the Political Arena Part III: Interpreting Hungarian Politics in the Eighteenth Century Chapter 8. Texts and Discourse Chapter 9. County and Gentry Chapter 10. Historiographical Traditions and European Comparisons Bibliography Index

“The wonderful contribution of this work is exactly what it wanted to accomplish: to inspire historians to get into the archives and uncover the microhistories of many different sources of power. This book is a breath of fresh air in the study of eighteenth-century Hungarian history, and I strongly recommend it.” • Journal of Modern History “This study is packed with useful information, insights, and findings… Both student and scholar will find this rich account of Hungarian and Habsburg politics essential reading.” • International Journal of Parliamentary Studies “Szijártó’s outstanding monograph offers an admirable example of a work of scholarship on complex problems in the somewhat ‘exotic’ history of early modern East Central Europe which both conforms to the local (in this case, the Hungarian) historiographical tradition and meets the standards of the Anglophone academic world.” • Hungarian Historical Review “The Hungarian Diet has been grievously neglected in international scholarship. Szijártó’s study will completely transform that landscape. It demonstrates how and why the country's parliamentary system proved one of the most effective restraints on absolute monarchy and its centralizing policies in 18th-century Europe.” • Robert Evans, University of Oxford “This is a major work of original research on an important subject, one that is regrettably little known or examined in Anglophone scholarship.” • William D. Godsey, Austrian Academy of Sciences