Politische Öffentlichkeit und Zivilgesellschaft

Associations, parties and the press formed together the civil society of the day. For simple reasons of physique activities conducted by associations were restricted to a comparatively small audience. It was the press which was responsible for the political mobilization of even the most backward parts of the Habsburg Monarchy, an area in which the social and cultural development varied to a great extent. By doing so the press created a political public opinion somehow encompassing the entire area of the Habsburg Monarchy. To sum up the two parts of this volume it is fair to say that on the troublesome road from constitutionalism to mass-democracy, so difficult for any multinational state, the Habsburg Monarchy certainly was not in the lead among the European states, but it also did not bring up the rear. It is true that the course of "conservative modernization" followed by the Habsburg Monarchy retarded the otherwise vehement development of public opinion but it did not prevent political mobilization from spreading into the most backward parts of the crownlands. It thus laid the basis for a tradition of civil society which in spite of all the dramatic upheavals of the last century can be felt up to the present day.