Local politics during the First World War

This article focuses on the interdependencies between local political activities and war order. Did the state of emergency and other legal aspects of war order open a space of total power for the state? Based on the experience of the Austrian Armaments Centre Wiener Neustadt, the author argues that local politicians as important mediators between state and townspeople possessed power too. As formal political players and local authorities, they played an important role in establishing and keeping up the war order in terms of administration and morality. Three political parties sent out politicians to serve as members of the local council: Deutschnationale (German Nationals), Sozialdemokraten (Social Democrats) and Christlichsoziale (Christian Socials). As members of the local council, the politicians concentrated on organizing town life during war. As party-political players, they followed their party-political agendas. By aligning with the government’s war order, the three parties were able to make the First World War “their” war. Based on the perspective of governmentality understood as organized practices by which people are governed, this paper analyzes how Party Political Discourses produced and reproduced ideas of war and how to behave during war, as well as how social structures and spaces supported party political positioning

Political economy · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Sociology · State (computer science · Communism, Protests, Social Movements · European history and politics · European Political History Analysis · Law · Public Administration

• The Great War and the Twentieth Century

  Stanley Hoffmann, Jay Winter et al.•Foreign Affairs•2001

  Add to list

• Foucault, Management and Organization Theory

  Alan Mckinlay, Ken Starkey et al.•Foucault, Management and…•1998

  Add to list