Komunální volby ve statutárním městě Liberci ve druhé polovině 19. století
Municipal Elections in the Statutory City of Liberec in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century

Summary/Abstract: The change of the administrative system in the Habsburg monarchy after the 1848/1849 revolution led to, among other things, the establishment of the category of statutory cities, governed by their own statutes and not by the municipal regulations valid for all other cities. One of the trends in the research of municipal governments in the second half of the nineteenth century is to analyse municipal elections, namely the electoral system, the number of eligible voters, voter turnout, etc. The city of Liberec in northern Bohemia had been a statutory city since the very beginning. It, however, resembled non-statutory cities with its electoral rules, as it had the same system for dividing voters into bodies, which produced a much less balanced proportion of voters in electoral bodies. This led to lower voter turnout, specifically in the third body, as these votes had a much lower weight. The voters did not have much power to influence the election results, and therefore only a minority of them voted. Another contributing factor to the low turnout was the frequency of elections, which were held every year in Liberec, as well as the fact that no alternative to the German liberals, who controlled the city hall, was available until the mid-1880s. Change only came with the German nationalists, who entered the municipal politics and took over the city in 1885. The turnout then increased considerably, despite the fact that the new statues released in 1889 did not bring any major changes to the electoral rules. Restrictions typical of the 1850s statutes remained in place, although they had mostly disappeared from the new municipal regulations of other cities.

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