The Elective Representation of the Romanians in the Hungarian Parliament
The Elective Representation of the Romanians in the Hungarian Parliament

Summary/Abstract: The paper analyses the presence of Romanian representatives in the lower chamber of the Hungarian Parliament between 1869 and 1892. It starts with the prosopographical description of the Romanian MPs and their political affiliation, presented for each elective cycle of the given period. Next, following Adalbert Toth’s method, the authors grouped the represented parties in three tendencies (slightly different from Toth’s original ones): government parties, Hungarian opposition parties and Romanian national parties. The results show that most of the Romanian MPs (73%) were elected on the lists of the Hungarian government parties, and many of them migrated from the Parliament to bureaucracy during the 1870s. Under such circumstances - given the elective passivity that spread among the Romanians after 1875 and the lack of cohesion inside the national movement - the number of Romanian MPs regressed constantly, from 31 (1869-1872) to 9 (1887-1892). A projection of the geographical distribution of their mandates also shows how the area in which the Romanian MPs were elected grew smaller, from the entire Banat, Western Parts and Maramureş in 1869 to a few scattered colleges in 1892. This regressive process was mainly a result of the violent tactics used by the Tisza government during the elections and of the Romanian elite’s withdrawal inside county administration. But it can also be regarded as a sign (among many others) of the Romanian elites’ lack of trust in the Hungarian political system, announcing the radical movement of the 1892 Memorandum.

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