The Logic of Simplifying Public Administration in Hungary, 1900–1910

The concept of ›administrative reform‹ was understood in a broad sense and was used in various contexts in contemporary Hungary. By and large, administrative reform denoted significant changes in the structure and function of public administration, necessary to remedy the functional deficiencies of the system. The »Pallas Encyclopedia«, published in 1897, defined reform as the »transformation of the old according to a new principle or idea«

A Pallas Nagy Lexikona, XIV, Budapest 1897, p. 440.

Reform understood as the ›transformation of the old‹ produced distress among defenders of Magyar constitutional traditions. Iván Moscovitz, a deputy judge, complained about the attitude that equaled administrative reform with the »burial of thousand-year institutions,« because it made it extremely difficult to dispose of outdated institutions and replace them with new, more developed, and more efficient ones.

Iván Moscovitz: Önkormányzatunk mint alkotmányos garanczia, Budapest 1893, pp. 5, 34.

The first official survey concerning public administration, undertaken in 1880, provides a striking illustration of the politicization of reform proposals. Győző Concha, an influential public law scholar, argued that the survey was not a real »enquête« because participants—mainly parliamentary deputies and deputy lieutenants—discussed general theoretical principles instead of hard facts. It was a »political discussion.«

Győző Concha, A közigazgatási enquête, Budapest 1881.

From the very beginning, the simplification law was portrayed as a technical adjustment of administrative procedures that represented a preliminary step in the comprehensive reform of public administration. Like Lajos Návay above, the public used alternately the terms ›reform‹ and ›adjustment‹ to talk about the simplification law. Yet, it was clearly distinguished from the comprehensive reform that addressed the very principles of the system. Károly Némethy, executive clerk of the law drafting department at the Ministry of Interior, labeled the law as the »simplification operation« – »egyszerűsítési actió« – and put a stark contrast between the law that addressed the defects of administrative proceedings and the comprehensive administrative reform. The former was to remedy deficiencies in administrative formalities and practices, while the latter was to create new institutions and authorities that would profit from the proposed changes in administrative technicalities.

Károly Némethy: A közigazgatási eljárás egyszerűsítése, Budapest 1903, p. 3.

The context closest to the Hungarian case is found, of course, in the Austrian part of the Habsburg Monarchy. A commission to work out and propose a comprehensive Verwaltungsreform was established in 1911 to study the organization, the cost-effectiveness, rules of procedures, and appointment policies in Cisleithanian public administration.

For the history and background of the Verwaltungsreform: Peter Becker: »… dem Bürger die Verfolgung seiner Anliegen erleichtern.« Zur Geschichte der Verwaltungsreform im Österreich des 20. Jahrhunderts, in: Heinrich Berger / Gerhard Botz (eds.): Politische Gewalt und Machtausübung im 20. Jahrhundert. Zeitgeschichte, Zeitgeschehen und Kontroversen. Festschrift für Gerhard Botz, Wien 2011, pp. 113–138; Peter Becker: The Administrative Apparatus under Reconstruction, in: Franz Adlgasser / Fredrik Lindström (eds.): The Habsburg Civil Service and Beyond. Bureaucracy and Civil Servants from the Vormärz to the Inter-War Years, Wien 2019, pp. 233–58; John W. Boyer: The End of an Old Regime. Visions of Political Reform in Late Imperial Austria, in: The Journal of Modern History 58/1 (1986), pp. 159–193; John Deak: Forging a Multinational State. State Making in Imperial Austria from the Enlightenment to the First World War, Stanford, CA 2015, pp. 215–260; Gernot D. Hasiba: Die Kommission zur Förderung der Verwaltungsreform (1911–1914), in: Helfried von Valentinitsch (ed.): Recht und Geschichte, Graz 1988, pp. 237–262.

Contemporary observers did not use the concept of innovation to describe the simplification law, and the Latin term was not current in the public sphere either. Instead, the Hungarian term »novelty« – »újítás« – was used in public discourse. Both the 1895 edition of the »Pallas Encyclopedia« and the 1914 edition of the »Révai Lexicon« only referred to the term »innovatio« as renewal, the Latin meaning of the term, which signified the new shoots of perennial plants.

A Pallas nagy lexikona, 9, Budapest 1895, p. 646; Révai Nagy Lexikona, 10, Budapest 1914, p. 583.

The law on the »simplification of administrative procedures« (Act XX of 1901)

A közigazgatás egyszerűsítése, a közigazgatás egyszerűsítése tárgyában alkotott 1901. évi 20. t. cz. és ezek alapján kibocsájtott többrendbeli végrehajtási rendeletek gyűjteménye, online: https://net.jogtar.hu/ezer-ev-torveny?docid=90100020.TV (01. 01. 2021).

The simplification law itself only contained forty-four short paragraphs that formulated abstract principles and general directives focusing on procedures in county, municipal, and district administration. Although the law applied to the whole of public administration, its implementation—the development of new rules of procedures and regulations—was done later by the relevant ministries in the form of ministerial decrees. The first section of the law systematized rules concerning legal remedies (deadlines and appeals);

1901. évi XX. törvénycikk a közigazgatási eljárás egyszerüsitéséről, § 1–12.

Kálmán Széll emphasized the distinction between executive and legislative power to justify the provisions of the simplification law. The comprehensive reform of Hungarian public administration was imminent, but the law did not intend to delay or shape it. Its impact should only consist in bettering the functioning of executive power, that is, to make the implementation of subsequent laws and the reform more effective. The goal was to change administrative procedures and not to change their content:

This conviction [the need to remedy the problems of public administration] led me to work toward the simplification and improvement of administrative procedures in the whole country. These efforts will address and remedy the lack of legal unity, will eliminate the unnecessary waste of manpower and working time, will improve the speed and reliability of administrative proceedings, and will reduce the overburdening of authorities. Simplification can be achieved without prejudice to public interest, the essential administrative orderliness, and the exercise of right and duty of supervision and control in public administration. All the more, these will be achieved to a higher standard without ever influencing the imminent systemic reforms of public administration or delaying the making and implementation of these reforms.

Képviselőházi iratok, 1896–1901, XXXVI, no. 1049, p. 144.

Széll’s comment was directed at deputies who challenged the real purpose of the law, which was, in their eyes, centralization and the nationalization of county and district administration. Károly Szalay, for instance, described the law as a first step towards the elimination of self-government. »This act starts the operation, in which the dog’s tail is cut in bits, so that the whole procedure does not hurt that much,« claimed the independence party deputy.

Képviselőházi iratok, 1896–1901, XXXVI, no. 1049, p. 237.

Széll’s strategy was thus to detach the reform of administrative procedures from the idea of a political reform of administration. Despite the opposition’s efforts, Széll well succeeded with this strategy and the simplification law was depoliticized. For instance, the »Pesti Hírlap« reported that the parliamentary proceedings of the simplification law were only delayed by longish discussions, such as Szalay’s comments, to postpone the parliamentary hearing of a more significant reform concerning the nationalization of county finances, a law deemed of important political consequences.

Pesti Hírlap, 06. 20. 1901, p. 2.

The above principles of the simplification law were implemented through a series of newly enacted ministerial regulations that addressed most public bureaus and institutions on the county and district level, one of which was the guardianship bureau. Guardianship authority was regulated by the guardianship law—Act XX of 1877—on the county level, in cities with municipal autonomy, and on the district level.

1877. XX. törvényczikk a gyámsági és gondnoksági ügyek rendezéséről, online: https://net.jogtar.hu/ezer-ev-torveny?docid=87700020.TV (01. 01. 2021).

The Minister of Interior applied two principles to revise existing regulations. The urge to simplify, unify, and introduce a proper division of labor was stated by the simplification law itself. In addition, the lawmaker tried to implement a healthy relationship between public administration and »practical life.« The former was often accused of piling up papers and being lost in bureaucratic proceedings without concentrating on the case itself. New regulations should thus create a »direct administration of life« instead of the »paper-administration« of the past.

Képviselőházi iratok, 1896–1901, XXXVI, no. 1049, p. 212.

Guardianship bureaus, according to the original 1877 regulations, were composed of a chairman (elnök, Präsident); at least two executive clerks (ülnök, Beisitzer); a notary (jegyző, Notäre); and a few assistant clerks according to the need of the local guardianship bureau.

These included the cashier (pénztárnok, Cassier), the accountant (könyvelő, Buchhalter), the legal counselor (ügyész, Fiscale), the auditor (számvevő, Rechnungsführer), the registrar (iktató, Protokollist), and the expeditor (kiadó, Expditor). See: Ügyrend az árvaszékek részére.

The registry formed the backbone of all administrative activities. The registrar had to register documents upon arrival, gather them into separate files, index them in the relevant books, organize them into dockets, send the files to executive clerks, and deposit them in the archive for subsequent use. The smooth functioning of the registry was thus the guarantee for the efficiency of the whole guardianship bureau. Executive clerks relied on the registry to be able to locate hundreds of documents each day. Indexing and filing were also their task: if a document was poorly registered, it was almost impossible to find it again in the archive. The journey of the document and the file continued in the hands of the executive clerk: the latter’s task was to draft a resolution, present the resolution to the legal consultant in case of ambiguity, and then have it approved by the guardianship council, which was composed of the president of the guardianship bureau, all executive clerks, and the legal consultant. The approved resolution was sent to the client through the copyist and the expeditor.

Gyámügyi ügyviteli szabályzat az árvaszékek részére, pp. 1498–1511; Ügyrend az árvaszékek részére, pp. 665–670.

The 1902 regulation preserved the main structure of the guardianship bureau, in accordance with the 1877 guardianship law; however, procedural technicalities were defined more in detail, and the 1902 regulation introduced several methodological innovations. The main tasks and responsibilities of clerks therefore did not change. The registrar, for instance, did not have the right to refuse the receipt of incoming documents, they were not entitled to record the oral communication of clients, and they were not allowed to leave their desk without registering all the documents that arrived until the end of office hours. These basic responsibilities remained unchanged. After receipt of a document, the registrar had to write the date of arrival and a registry number on the document. There were, however, changes in the methodology. Before 1902, the clerk decided where to write it on the document. After 1902, clerks had to use the registry stamp on the back page of the document or the last page on the top. The stamp contained the following information: the registry number of the document, the date of arrival, the registry number of the file, the clerk responsible for the file, and whether it needed urgent resolution or not (see Figs. 1 and 2.).

Gyámügyi ügyviteli szabályzat az árvaszékek részére, p. 1500; Ügyrend az árvaszékek részére, p. 667.

Figure 1

Figure 2

The 1902 regulations contained a more detailed description of administrative processes in all parts of the bureau’s functioning. For instance, the number of columns in the registry book increased to five (previously there were three) and the information to be filled in was more scrupulously defined. This restricted the freedom of clerks in developing their own way of filling in forms, records, and books. The goal was to determine all administrative steps and arrive at a more uniform administration. This, however, had some repercussions as well. The tasks of clerks were defined very precisely to the point that clerks were incapable of keeping all the provisions. Executive clerks were supposed to know the whole file before drafting a resolution. The clerk should recover all previous documents from the archive and study them thoroughly.

Gyámügyi ügyviteli szabályzat az árvaszékek részére, pp. 1516–1517.

The 1902 regulation contained a specific set of provisions on the resolution of cases that defined all the steps executive clerks had to follow, from taking over the case to sending out the resolution. Here, several clauses alluded to simplification. The executive clerk was supposed to survey all the documents of the file in question before writing a resolution—an immense work in itself—but the instructions commended them

not to make any unnecessary administrative steps that serve only to increase the number of registered documents without contributing to the resolution of the case. Clerks should generally attempt to resolve the case the earliest and with the less possible intermediate steps.

Gyámügyi ügyviteli szabályzat az árvaszékek részére, p. 1516.

This is a clear attempt to regulate »technical efficiency« that does not interfere with the goals of the public bureau in question.

Simplicity applied to the language of the resolution as well. Clerks had to write the draft in a concise, clear, precise, and ›Hungarian-ish‹ manner. They were ordered to avoid using foreign expressions, all unnecessary addresses – like nagyméltóságú, méltóságos, nagyságos, tekintetes – and all courtesy forms.

Gyámügyi ügyviteli szabályzat az árvaszékek részére, p. 1519.

As the simplification law stipulated, the new regulations introduced modern means of management, such as the check and clearing system and the post, already in use in the private economy but still missing from public offices, including the guardianship bureau. The use of the former was introduced gradually in public offices prior to the 1901 legislation. The postal savings bank started its check and clearing business in 1889, based on the provisions of Act XXXIV of 1889, and it slowly began to assist the daily cash flow of public institutions and state-owned companies. By 1891, all sickness funds of industrial and commercial employees used check accounts at the postal savings bank to make payments. In 1900 the MÁV (State Railway Company), the largest employer in Hungary at the time, started to use check accounts in all business branches, and in 1901 the Magyar Királyi Posta (Hungarian Royal Post), the second largest state-owned company, also started to use a check account. By this time, several lower-level administrative bureaus and tax bureaus used check accounts by their own preference.

József Körmendy, A magyar postatakarékpénztár, Budapest 1939, pp. 327–334.

The lord lieutenant of Kis-Küküllő County, János Sándor, provided a platform to test the functioning of the check and clearing system before the enactment of the law in 1900. The experience was successful, and Sándor suggested introducing the new method of payments in county-level administration. The system relieved public bureaus of the burdens of on-site cash management. By using the checkbooks and the deposit forms of the postal savings bank, county-level administration could manage its daily administrative work without handling cash payments and cash reserves on-site. All the more, clerks did not have to sum up the received cash, issue an acceptance form, and register the payment in the cash book. All these steps were replaced by the deposit and withdrawal forms of the postal savings bank. Furthermore, the new provision relieved chief magistrates (főszolgabíró) from the burden of officially accepting and registering all incoming cash payments. For instance, a ministerial decree in 1883 ordered them to accept all cash payments in person, register them in the cash book, and ensure that all incoming cash would be deposited at the savings bank account in forty-eight hours. The chief magistrate had to repeat the process 300 times a month. This process included various steps like writing a receipt, sending a clerk to the post, counting the cash, noting the payment in the cash books, and putting, collecting, and guarding the money in the cash box. The whole procedure was repeated when the money was sent to the savings bank account. Using the services of the postal savings bank was a significant simplification, since bookkeeping remained the only on-site task of the chief magistrate.

Magyar Közigazgatás XXII/4 (1904), pp. 1–2.

Experts quickly criticized the new regulations because changes only resulted in the unification of procedures at the expense of efficiency and altogether failed to simplify procedures. László Rábel, executive clerk at the guardianship bureau in Sopron County, denounced the simplification law in 1904, declaring that it did not simplify administrative procedures, and its only outcome was the unification of administrative procedures. For Rábel, the centralization of the accounting and financial departments was the only »novelty« (újítás in Hungarian),

Rábel: A gyámhatósági igazgatás, p. 74.

Displacing too much responsibility on clerks became a critical problem for observers. A case in point was the use of telephone services in internal communication. Clerks had to collect information from other public bureaus on the phone, but nothing guaranteed the accuracy of information gathered in that way without writing it down, as they noted with suspicion. When a resolution based on false information resulted in damage to the public, who was responsible for the mistake if there was no written evidence? Rábel’s sarcastic solution was to grab a »secret phonograph« and record all conversations in the bureau.

Rábel: A gyámhatósági igazgatás, p. 79.

In »The Politics of Backwardness in Hungary« Andrew Janos claimed that »in Hungary, the bureaucracy and the apparatus of the modern state were imposed on a backward economy« that constituted »the reversal of the historical experiences of the West.«

Andrew Janos: The Politics of Backwardness in Hungary, 1825–1945, Princeton 1982, pp. 105, 314.

The last part of my paper provides an account of how administrative practices changed in guardianship bureaus based on the management of the registry, including the introduction of the registry base number (the alapszám), and based on the introduction of the case sheet (the előadói ív) an effort to systematize the handling of cases. The 1902 regulations significantly altered how incoming documents had to be registered. Its rationale was to create a unified registry system in all county-level administration. The system of registry base number was already employed with great efficiency in county administration, and this was the reason the guardianship bureau had to adopt it as well. Beforehand, the archival number (irattári szám) was independent of the registry number of documents stored in a given file. The 1877 regulations created the file that encompassed all the documents belonging to the same ward or orphan and the folder that encompassed files by numerical order. The archival number was a unique number assigned to the file when the first document arrived to the guardianship bureau, and this number remained the same even if the file was managed for years or decades (see Fig. 3).

Ügyrend az árvaszékek részére, pp. 679–80.

Figure 3

The 1902 regulations, however, introduced the system of registry base numbers.

Gyámügyi ügyviteli szabályzat az árvaszékek részére, pp. 1580–84.

Figure 4

The guardianship bureau of Torontál County began a campaign in 1908 to undo the system of registry base number, and a few other bureaus joined the petition to the Minister of Interior requesting to reintroduce the former system. The minister, however, refused the request declaring that based on the feedback of other guardianship bureaus, there was no mutual agreement on the issue. The minister advised dissatisfied clerks to use additional auxiliary books to facilitate finding documents and files in the records office.

Belügyi Közlöny XV/35 (1910), pp. 437–450.

The 1902 regulations introduced other changes in the registry of documents, including a registry stamp that contained more detailed information than the previous stamps used at guardianship bureaus. Figure 1 shows the registry stamp used by the guardianship bureau prior to the 1902 regulations. It is a variant of the registry stamp used in Pest-Pilis-Solt-Kis-Kun County administration bureaus. On the stamp, there was only place for the name of the bureau, date of arrival, registry number, and the signature of the clerk. Figure 2 shows the registry stamp of guardianship bureaus after 1902. This stamp gave more detail concerning the file and the document: date of arrival, registry number, the registry number of the preliminary document, the clerk responsible for the file, and the number of attachments. In this particular case, the weight of attachments was 1020 grams. The change, in practice, turned out to be futile: the registrar often did not stamp to the spot prescribed by the regulation, the top left corner of the document, and did not fill in all the information prescribed by the regulations (see Fig. 5). This was not a unique case of disobedience. Clerks at the guardianship bureau did not follow instructions on many other occasions. The minutes of council meetings at the guardianship bureau did not use the forms prescribed,

MNL-PML, IV. 410/a, vol. 33.

Figure 5

A novelty of the 1902 regulations was the introduction of the case sheet (előadói ív) that provided a form on which the executive clerk had to write the resolution of the case. This was an A3 sheet folded in two; the first page contained the registry number and other relevant information on the resolution (see Fig. 6); the second page had to be left blank for further comments, and the clerk had to write the resolution on the third page of the case sheet.

Gyámügyi ügyviteli szabályzat az árvaszékek részére, pp. 1524–1526.

Figure 6

Executive clerks faced other obstacles too. New regulations made them responsible for the thorough knowledge of the file.

Gyámügyi ügyviteli szabályzat az árvaszékek részére, pp. 1516–1517.

Rábel pointed out that some headings on the case sheet were unnecessary, and others caused a great trouble for the clerk to fill in. In practice, however, clerks willingly adapted regulations to their own liking and left blank the unnecessary headings. This practice was already noted in the case of the registry stamp, and the case sheet was interpreted by clerks in a similar way. The practice of Gyula Tőkés, a clerk at the guardianship bureau of Pest-Pilis-Solt-Kiskun County, is a case in point. Tőkés was one of the most senior clerks by the time the simplification law was enacted. He graduated in law at the University of Budapest and became a notary (jegyző, Notar) at the guardianship bureau of Pest-Pilis-Solt-Kiskun County in 1880. He was elected as executive clerk in 1890 (árvaszéki ülnök, Beisitzer), and after a failed attempt in 1906, he finally became the chair (árvaszéki elnök, Präsident) of the guardianship bureau in 1915. He was pensioned in 1923 and died at the age of 78 in 1929.

Budapesti czim- és lakjegyzék I (1880–1881), p. 489; Budapesti czimés lakjegyzék VI (1890), p. 150; Pest-Pilis-Solt-Kiskun Vármegye hivatalos lapja 27/23 (1929), p. 339.

The simplification law represented a turning point in thinking about administrative reform in Hungary. In public discourse, lawmakers started to differentiate the question of administrative technicalities from the idea of a comprehensive reform of public administration, the latter being a highly politicized issue. In the Hungarian context, simplification became the buzzword for changes in administrative technicalities that addressed the unification of procedures—the homogenization of the system—as well as endeavored to increase the efficiency of administrative procedures. Simplification thus meant improving the functioning of public administration and its technical efficiency in general without touching upon structural, and more political, issues. It was to approach the Weberian ideal type of modern bureaucracy in the sense that the technical rules of procedure

Max Weber: Economy and Society. A New Translation. Cambridge, MA 2019, pp. 344–345.

In the discourse of lawmakers and senior clerks, administrative procedures themselves became dissociated from their content and function in the system. Károly Némethy, head of the department at the Ministry of Interior that prepared the simplification law, claimed in the House of Lords in 1933 that the »movement« was not called »rationalization« at the time, but »this ordinary name, simplification, was identical to nowadays rationalization in terms of means, goals, and effects.«

Magyar Közigazgatás LI/23 (1933), p. 2.

The simplification law represents a step towards the scientific management of bureaucratic procedures through concentrating on administrative technicalities; it is about ›technical efficiency‹ in public bureaucracy at its best. The 1877 guardianship regulations were still oriented towards the bureaucrat and the different departments in the guardianship bureau that carried out administrative tasks. However, the 1902 regulations were a lot more process-oriented: they contained detailed descriptions of tasks to be performed step by step by the bureaucrat. The very structure of regulations was modified accordingly. The 1877 regulations were structured according to the personnel of the bureau; each section described the procedural rules and function of each different position. However, the 1902 regulations concentrated on the tasks and steps performed by the clerks to reach a certain goal. The headings were thus called ›registry,‹ ›resolution of a case,‹ or ›annual reports,‹ instead of the previous ›president,‹ ›registrar,‹ ›executive clerk,‹ and so forth. In that sense, the urge to unify procedures at the turn of the century made it easier for the likes of Magyary to rationalize them at a second attempt in the interwar period.

›Simplification‹ was, however, only an emblem for the changes that the law altogether encompassed. From its very conception, the simplification law endeavored more to unify, homogenize, and regulate procedures, and at the same time, to introduce a few technical innovations in public bureaus like the check and clearing system and the telephone. Unification included a more tightened state control of bureaucratic processes at the lowest level. Individual civil servants were stripped of their previous freedom in conducting administrative procedures, and the particular regulations of counties were homogenized. Regulations after 1901 were significantly longer, more detailed, and more complex than before, and instead of simplifying bureaucratic work, they made processes more time-consuming. Some even complained that regulations transformed clerks into robots and slaves.

Magyar Közigazgatás XXI/1 (1903), pp. 1–2.

The simplification law was not portrayed as an administrative reform for political reasons. It did not touch upon the underlying structure and function of public administration, for it was supposed to evade political conflicts. This was a major difference in comparison to the Verwaltungsreform commission in Cisleithania, and that is the reason the Hungarian law could be implemented in public administration. The changes that it brought to public administration entailed new principles and new techniques that qualified it as a reform in the contemporary sense and an innovation in the modern understanding. The idea that administration should function more efficiently was not challenged by the lawmakers nor by civil servants. However, it was only one layer in the overall innovation potential of the law. A second layer was the introduction of technological innovation in public administration that was already in use in private bureaus at the time. These provisions—the post, the telephone, and the check and clearing system—were quickly adapted by civil servants and were rarely questioned. The only notable challenge was raised because the telephone was antithetical to the eminence of the written word in bureaucratic work. The last layer of this innovation potential concerned the micropractices of civil servants that were tightly connected to the materiality of their work, in this case, the use of various forms and stamps. Civil servants expressed their unwillingness to implement changes on this level. In some cases, their opposition was openly expressed, and they acted upon it, but it was more often in practice only – presumably without the knowledge of superiors and lawmakers – that the resistance of civil servants was articulated and materialized.

Mátyás Erdélyi is a postdoctoral researcher at CEFRES in Prague and a research fellow at the Institute of History of the ELKH in Budapest. Erdélyi specializes in the history of the Habsburg Monarchy in the long nineteenth century, and in particular has worked and published on the history of private clerks in banking and insurance (PhD in 2019 at Central European University), statistical thinking, public administration, professional education in trade and management, and social mobility. He is currently preparing a book on the social history of private clerks in Budapest, Prague, and Vienna between 1880 and 1910.