Russia and Austria governed multinational peoples directly through decrees, not parliaments.
Evidence
To describe these two despotisms, the only ones left in Europe at the outbreak of the first World War, in terms of multinational states gives only one part of the picture. As much as for their rule over multinational territories they were distinguished from other governments in that they governed the peoples directly (and not only exploited them) by a bureaucracy; parties played insignificant roles, and parliaments had no legislative functions; the state ruled through an administration that applied decrees. The significance of Parliament for the Dual Monarchy was little more than that of a not too bright debating society. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 618
Categorization
Category: Factual Claims
- XREF: The bureaucracy-that-rules-directly (suppressing party and parliament) is a concrete historical anchor for the reader’s ‘bureaucratic rationality’ scaffolding thread.