István M. Szijártó is Professor of History at Eötvös University, Budapest. He has published several books about the social and cultural history of politics in 18th-century Hungary as well as the theoretical and methodological problems surrounding microhistory.

• List of IllustrationsAcknowledgmentsIntroductionPart I: The FrameworksChapter 1. The Dualism of King and EstatesChapter 2. The Workings of the Machinery of the DietPart II: The Structures of PoliticsChapter 3. The Dualism of King and Estates Dominated by Confessional QuestionsChapter 4. Taxes and PrivilegesChapter 5. Government and Opposition at the DietChapter 6. Career Paths at the DietChapter 7. Realignments on the Estates’ Side of the Political ArenaPart III: Interpreting Hungarian Politics in the Eighteenth CenturyChapter 8. Texts and DiscourseChapter 9. County and GentryChapter 10. Historiographical Traditions and European ComparisonsBibliographyIndex

“The wonderful contribution of this work is exactly what it wanted to accomplish: to inspire historians to get into the archives and uncover the microhistories of many different sources of power. This book is a breath of fresh air in the study of eighteenth-century Hungarian history, and I strongly recommend it.” • Journal of Modern History“This study is packed with useful information, insights, and findings… Both student and scholar will find this rich account of Hungarian and Habsburg politics essential reading.” • International Journal of Parliamentary Studies“Szijártó’s outstanding monograph offers an admirable example of a work of scholarship on complex problems in the somewhat ‘exotic’ history of early modern East Central Europe which both conforms to the local (in this case, the Hungarian) historiographical tradition and meets the standards of the Anglophone academic world.” • Hungarian Historical Review“The Hungarian Diet has been grievously neglected in international scholarship. Szijártó’s study will completely transform that landscape. It demonstrates how and why the country's parliamentary system proved one of the most effective restraints on absolute monarchy and its centralizing policies in 18th-century Europe.” • Robert Evans, University of Oxford“This is a major work of original research on an important subject, one that is regrettably little known or examined in Anglophone scholarship.” • William D. Godsey, Austrian Academy of Sciences