Representatives of The Central Authority and County Administration in Transylvania (1867–1925)

0571352 - MÚA 2024 RIV GB eng J - Journal Article
Pál, Judit - Popovici, Vlad Vasile
Representatives of The Central Authority and County Administration in Transylvania (1867–1925).
Journal of Modern European History. Roč. 21, č. 4 (2023), s. 458-473. ISSN 1611-8944. E-ISSN 2631-9764
R&D Projects: GA ČR(CZ) GX20-19463X
Keywords : Transylvania * local self-government * administrative centralisation
OECD category: History (history of science and technology to be 6.3, history of specific sciences to be under the respective headings)
Impact factor: 0.5, year: 2022
Method of publishing: Limited access
https://doi.org/10.1177/16118944231202156

The transition from the administrative system of the Habsburg monarchy to that of the successor nation-states after World War I has traditionally been analysed in terms of discontinuity, or even rupture. In our research, which focuses on the specific case of Transylvania, we demonstrate that both the development of a centralised administrative system and the relationship between the state authority and local autonomies were characterised by continuity rather than change. In both the Hungarian and the Romanian state, the key institution involved in the process of diminishing local self-government was the representative of the central power in the territory (the lord lieutenant until 1918 and later the prefect). The gradual expansion of his prerogatives over institutions and county officials began in Hungary in the early 1870s, and continued until the interwar period in Romania. This was a process that extended beyond the changes in the political and state regime in 1918. Thus, for interwar Transylvania, administrative centralisation in the French tradition did not represent a paradigm shift, but instead the continuation and acceleration of an already quite advanced process that the Hungarian state, which had been eager to modernise its administrative structures, had already introduced 50 years earlier.
Permanent Link: https://hdl.handle.net/11104/0346763