A Municipality against the State: Power Relations between State and Local Self-Government Representatives, Based on the Example of Bohemia at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century

Abstract

This paper is a case study of relations between the agents of self-government and the state administration as representatives of the local elite in the milieu of a small town in central Bohemia. Set in the context of the political crisis in the 1890s and at the beginning of the twentieth century, it follows the power relations and the struggle of self-government bodies against the district captain (representing the central government), as well as the efforts of the state to force the local elite to respect the state authority and to arrange for proper operation of the public administration.