Original scientific paper
Parliamentary Elections and Zagreb Electoral Bodies at the Turn of the 19th and 20th Centuries
Ines SABOTIČ
Stjepan MATKOVIĆ
Abstract
During the rule of the viceroy Khuen-Héderváry the electors
of the three Zagreb electoral counties voted mostly for the
government party, the Popular Party. As soon as the
opportunity arose to express more freely political choice,
changes occurred. Although more organised political activity
of the opposition is important, the voters play an important
role indeed. Namely, among them were on the one hand
civil servants and pensioners, who gained the right to vote by
way of their profession, which committed them to the
government, i.e. their employers, and on the other hand
craftsmen, merchants and other owners, who by fulfilling the
decree of the tax census acquired a certain independence
with regard to the authorities. It was in the latter that the
opposition found support for the1898 elections, in the
prevalently craftsmen's third electoral county. This trend
continued and thus enabled various oppositional groups to
gain control over certain electoral bodies. Thus each
electoral body in Zagreb expressed its own political identity,
depending on the professional structure of the electors: the
"civil-servant" Upper Town remained in the hands of the "pro-
-Hungarians", the "middle-class" Lower Town elected the
Croatian-Serbian Coalition, while the craftsmen's third
county chose the True Right Party, who were actually less
conservative because they sought affirmation of their
principles in more radical changes.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
16263
URI
Publication date:
30.4.2005.
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