The study of legislatures and elected representatives in the Habsburg monarchy has undergone a renaissance in the last several decades. With the publication of Volume VII of Die Habsburgermonarchie 1848–1918 (Helmut Rumpler and Peter Urbanitsch, eds., Vienna, 2000) nearly two decades ago, there can no longer be any doubt that, whatever their democratic limitations, the monarchy's central parliaments and regional diets deserve to be taken seriously. By showcasing an impressive variety of current research in this area, Franz Adlgasser, Jana Malínská, Helmut Rumpler, and Luboš Velek's edited volume shows that there remains many interesting areas for further exploration. Moreover, by placing the various parliaments of Austria, Czechoslovakia, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia from 1918 to the present in this larger historical context, it promotes a renewed appreciation of more than 150 years of parliamentary history in Central Europe.

The first of four sections examines general issues in Habsburg parliamentary history. Helmut Rumpler begins with a useful survey of that history's conceptual problems and the never-resolved relationship between central and regional parliaments. Arguing that this period lays the groundwork for the difficulties of interwar parliamentarism, he thereby establishes a conceptual framework within which to consider the chapters that follow. Jiří Malíř then argues that, despite their weaknesses, the provincial diets’ significance for later parliamentary history needs to be taken more seriously, as illustrated by the development of the Moravian diet from 1861 to 1918. Franz Adlgasser surveys the changes in the political elite during the Abgeordnetenhaus's long transition from an assembly of notables to the people's representatives, noting that personal representation and local political ties remained more important than organized parties. Tomáš W. Pavlíček argues for taking both the Herrenhaus and elite political culture more seriously through a collective biography of Czech peers. Finally, Tobias Kaiser places violence in the Austrian Reichsrat and the Hungarian Diet within a broader nineteenth- and twentieth-century context, advocating for viewing such violence as a form of political communication.

The second section focuses more narrowly on specific periods and developments in Habsburg parliamentary history. Stefan Malfèr portrays the evolution of the central parliament after 1859 as a series of power struggles and attempts to persuade the kaiser that gradually led to the separation of powers. Pieter Judson argues that, between 1861 and 1865, a political culture emerged in which the actual practices of parliament transcended its formal weakness, effectively increasing its real power. Jonathan Kwan claims that parliament's responses to the kaiser's speeches in the 1860s led to increased parliamentary self-confidence and the creation of a Habermasian bourgeois public sphere. Jiří Štaif examines the history of Czech responses to Schmerling's electoral geometry in Bohemia, showing how they were able to approach proportionality by the end of the century. Peter Urbanitsch explores in depth the actual practice of elections in the urban and rural curiae in the first direct elections to the Abgeordnetenhaus. Lothar Höbelt closely examines the political divisions and interpersonal conflicts of German representatives, in response to having lost their majority in the Bohemia Diet in 1883–86. Lastly, Andrej Rahten surveys Slovene representatives to the Reichsrat to portray the evolution of Slovene national identity during the rise of mass politics.

The third section turns to the parliaments of interwar Austria and Czechoslovakia. Eva Broklová establishes a conceptual framework for thinking about the Czechoslovak parliament, arguing that it was a parliamentary democracy with leanings toward a party state, and that Czech political culture explains its relative success in that period. René Petráš appraises the criticisms of the 1918–20 Revolutionary National Assembly, claiming that it was ahead of its time in terms of minority rights. Timo Leimbach provides a comparative study of alternative party constellations in Germany's eighteen Landtage to determine whether a Westminsterian two-party system might have saved the interwar republic. Miroslav Šepták attributes interwar Austria's democratic failure to the absence of a firmly rooted liberal democratic culture. Focusing on the legacies of the 1917 war powers law, Richard Lein argues that Austria's failure cannot be attributed to a single actor or a deliberate choice. Transitioning to 1934–38, Christoph Schmetterer offers a detailed overview of the legislative process in Austria's Ständestaat, noting how the government retained multiple means of dominating that process, leading to a lower quality of legislative output.

Finally, the fourth section explores Czechoslovak, Czech, and Slovak parliamentarism from World War II to the present day. David Hubený begins with an account of efforts to simplify the party system and introduce emergency powers in the wake of the Munich Agreement. Jan Dobeš examines the Komunistická strana Československa (Communist Party of Czechoslovakia)’s rise to power in the 1945–48 Czechoslovak parliament, and the ambivalent role played by the opposition in defending democracy. Jiří Hoppe portrays parliament's failure to become a true representative body and its ever-changing role during the events of 1968. Petr Roubal reviews available sources on the 1989–92 Federal Assembly as part of a larger ongoing research project. Jan Rychlík shows how specific electoral outcomes led to the failure to find a compromise and thereby the end of the Czechoslovak state in 1992. Jan Kysela places current Czech bicameralism in the context of a legislative history going back to the Habsburg period. Lastly, Milan Zemko places present-day Slovak parliamentarism in a similarly long historical context, while assessing ongoing weaknesses that need to be addressed.

If there is anything to criticize about this volume, it is a slight substantive unevenness. A mere handful of chapters go beyond the immediate topic of Habsburg, Austrian, Czech, and Slovak political history. These chapters are not sufficient to provide a broader Central European context yet their inclusion diverts attention away from the main national and geographic foci. That, however, is a quibble, and the chapters in question nevertheless count among the more interesting ones here. As a whole, the book provides a rich overview of Habsburg parliamentary history and its twentieth- and twenty-first-century legacies, while individual chapters could easily be incorporated into history classes for students with the requisite command of German and/or English. Meanwhile, one hopes that several of the more tantalizing chapters eventually will be expanded into book-length studies on these topics.