Budování lokální a regionální organizace Národní strany v Čechách v 60. a 70. letech 19. století
Building the Local and Regional Structures of the Czech National Party in Bohemia in the 1860s and 1870s

Summary/Abstract: The paper focuses on building a vertical organisational structure of notable parties in the Habsburg Monarchy in the 1860s and 1870s on the example of the National Party (Old Czech Party). It analyses contemporary press, announcements of political offices, correspondence of political leaders and the protocol¨s of the parliamentary club. The key issue is the motivation of the leadership of emerging notable political parties (deputies, political leaders) to expand the party organisation from the top down (to town, district, and regional level) and its urgency in the context of forming a new political system and emerging national political conflict in Bohemia. The paper outlines a gradual building of connections between the political centre (the Prague leadership of the National Party) and local, or regional, centres; searching for so called local trustees and the problem with their mobilisation during elections. The author deals also with organisational and structural changes of the political relations between the centre and the peripheries in the first twenty years after reintroduction of constitutionalism and parliamentarism in the Habsburg Empire (from recruiting local trustees, through assembling local election committees, to founding local and regional political societies). This development is put into the context of forming district government and of Bohemian election battles, which in the 1870s took place virtually every year.

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