The Reform of the Chief Land Steward and the Public Administration in the Bourgeois Era

Abstract

One of the most significant reformative measures amongst the organizational solutions of public administration was the introduction of the status of Chief Land Steward in enfranchised cities, according the centralist endeavours of the Government. This was a method to ensure the efficient performance of the state mechanism constructed by the Austro–Hungarian Compromise of 1867, or, to be more precise, the effectiveness of the Government policies, which, of course, refers to public administration.

In this essay, I would like to examine the reforms in the matters of public administration of two enfranchised cities, Szeged and Debrecen. According to the relevant literature and the archive sources, it can be stated beforehand that in Debrecen, as opposed to Szeged, there is only a handful of existing sources on the appointment of the Chief Land Steward, András Patay. This nobleman ensured to be the connecting tissue between the central and the middle level public administration agencies, and by examining its origins, it can be asserted that it was not unprecedented in the constitutional history of Hungary. Even before the introduction of the 42nd Act of 1870, there were examples of political endeavours in the matter of reformation of cities to introduce an institution which possesses a similar jurisdiction as the one after the reformative measures of public administration.