ABSTRACT
A study of the political culture that took hold in Austria-Hungary after 1850 has relevance for Americans today in that the history of the Dual Monarchy may be viewed as a failed experiment by a state that attempted to sustain itself by reconstructing itself on the basis of its newly discovered cultural diversity. It needs no saying that today cultural diversity is an issue all Americans face. What this issue will bring to Americans cannot be foreseen. But old Austria, for her part, never found a formula whereby her diversity might be accommodated; granting its disparate parts civil recognition within a popular and liberal political framework brought about a fatal balkanization of the state as a whole, and so the state ultimately disintegrated into various combinations of its components under circumstances that robbed old Austria's inhabitants of the fruits of her vibrant civilization.
