Review of History and Political Science

The Habsburg Legacy: Rokkanian Perspectives on East Central European Politics between the Two Wars
Vit Simral

Abstract
The work adds to the discussion on the nature of the Habsburg legacy in the politics of East Central Europe. It focuses on the development of the formal constitutional framework and on the development of party systems in Austria-Hungary and its successor states of the interwar period. Drawing on the theoretical concepts of Lipset and Rokkan, the work searches for differences between the timing of democratisation in individual regions of the Habsburg Empire and establishes how these differences affected the formation of socio-political cleavages. Furthermore, it highlights the major features of successor states’ party systems that were carried over from the era of the Habsburg Empire.

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