The history of social policies in the late era of the Habsburg monarchy continues to arouse both scholarly interest and conflicting images. The prevailing view in history has rather been one of skepticism about the stagnation of social protection that followed a promising upswing in the 1880s. Thomas Süsler-Rohringer conceives his monograph as an ambitious polemic with views of the decline of reform efforts during the last two decades of the empire’s existence.
The author distinguishes between two common approaches in historiography. The first is the legal-historical perspective, which focuses on the development of legal regulation. Given that a spectacular transformation like the one that occurred in the 1880s with the approval of accident and sickness insurance was never repeated in the history of the empire (on the contrary, all attempts to introduce old-age and disability insurance ended in deadlocked bickering in parliament), the legal-historical perspective necessarily evokes an image of stagnation. The second widespread approach is transnational, seeking to capture the networks of actors through which the ideas of social reform were transferred to the Austrian and Hungarian environment.
As much as transfer may occasionally be of interest to the author (e.g., in the case of the disabled, Krüppelfürsorge), it is not his main research interest. The central category of his analysis is governance, that is, the study of the relationships and their institutionalization between the different levels of public administration and politics, and how they interact with each other and with non-state actors. The book thus corresponds to the approach to the history of the Habsburg monarchy represented in contemporary historiography by, for example, Jana Osterkamp, who focuses on the analysis of Cisleithanian governance in terms of constitutional practice, or, in relation to the history of social welfare, research on the mixed economy of welfare (e.g., Stefano Petrungaro and Michele Mioni). Moreover, his approach also corresponds to the contemporary trend of studying social phenomena from below, through an actor-centered perspective, which he openly espouses in several places. For this reason, various perspectives permeate his book—expert debates, disputes over the setting of legal rules, the subjective experiences of war victims.
It is beneficial that the issue of veterans’ welfare is at the center of Süsler-Rohringer’s focus, whereas many studies of welfare states treat it as a topic secondary to the development of civilian programs. To be able to fulfil his broad ambitions, which extend in subject matter and conceptual scope, the author divides his book into three parts. The first deals with the long-term trends of development before 1914; the second describes developments during the First World War; and the third focuses on the question of the reintegration of war victims. While the first part mostly emphasizes the issue of setting governance, the third part mostly considers the subjective experiences of actors and their creative maneuverings within the existing rules of the game.
The author does not intend his book to answer the troubling speculative question of whether the successful social reform attempted by the governments of 1904 to 1914 would have been able to save the existence of Austria-Hungary. This question evokes the importance of universal social insurance implemented under the central administration, which could potentially have made a significant contribution to the stabilization of the Cisleithanian part of the monarchy. The author rather seeks to show that the image of a stagnant and backward monarchy is not an adequate explanatory framework even for the last two decades of its existence.
Instead of stagnation, the author argues that this era was one of kriseninduzierte Kontinuität, loosely translated as “crisis-enforced continuity,” and diskrete Anpassungen, or “discrete adaptation.” The political crises of Cisleithanian parliamentarism regularly posed insurmountable obstacles to reform efforts other than social insurance. Yet governments were able to be creative and, in the event of intractable obstructions in the representative assemblies, to circumvent the law by using prescriptive jurisdiction. And just as often, there was a tacit adaptation of existing practice to changed conditions.
Where the legal historian sees stagnation, Süsler-Rohringer finds dynamism. And his sources enable him to do so. Once we begin to study Austria-Hungary from the perspective of the transformations in the mental map of actors, we recognize from expert and political debates and the development of multi-level governance, a colorful dynamic story emerges that can be anything but backward-looking stagnation.
The stable framework of social reforms was the lack of financial resources. Already in the reform era of Eduard Taaffe this created a pattern that persisted in every subsequent reform effort. The state tried to impose universal rules from above while simultaneously seeking to ensure that it did not have to participate financially at all or only minimally in their implementation. This was a rationality that was already written into Austrian accident and sickness insurance, and the question of financial participation in the planned old-age and disability insurance was the central problem that hindered its enactment. This indirectly shaped the Austrian mixed economy of welfare, in which other entities besides the state played a steadily important role, especially municipalities, higher tiers of local government, special public legal entities (e.g., accident insurance companies) and, in addition to these, civil society in the form of various non-governmental organizations, which participated in the implementation of the state’s objectives in the field of social welfare. This was very much true for youth welfare, which, however, receives only marginal attention in this book. However, the activity of these groups was also essential in the care of war victims. It is in this branch of social welfare, together with the insurance branch, that the author shows best how inappropriate it is to speak of the stagnation of late imperial Austria.
Efforts to reform the care of war victims were necessitated by the hardship and mortality during the First World War. Through it, the author also succeeds in reconstructing the mental maps of the actors, sensitively portraying the intersections of medical discourse with the prevailing economic, moral, and political ideas of the time regarding what was right and desirable. Empirically, this approach proves most useful when, in the third part, he discusses the reintegration of war victims and their “social healing” (soziale Heilung).
The book corresponds to contemporary trends in social history research on the Habsburg monarchy and offers a useful perspective on the workings of public policies and their transformations. The author’s approach is also applicable to other countries; however, if we want to move away from a rather lifeless institutional and legal perspective in the history of social security. Indeed, the history of social protection, as this book shows, does not have to be described as a teleological linear narrative toward an ever-increasing volume of entitlements and financial burdens on the state.
