Presumably David Aaronovitch has not read Robert Musil's Man Without Qualities: http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/columnists/article4130262.ece
If you want an example of a modern Austria-Hungary look around you.
We are living in a duel monarchy (with Scotland in the role of Hungary); surrounded by an ambiance of faded imperial grandeur; with all posts in the government administration filled by a hereditary caste (over-privileged public schoolboys); far too ready to fall in with the machinations of a bigger ally (America); insulted by upstart Slav politicians (Radosław Sikorski); and with an overlarge capital city estranged from the country around it and filled with a cosmopolitan diversity that dazzles some and disgusts others.
On the whole I like living in the United Kingdom, and I think I would have liked pre-1914 Austria-Hungary. But we should not be blind to the dangers of such a society. Austria-Hungary was extremely unstable and eventually the tensions tore the country apart.
If you want an example of a modern Austria-Hungary look around you.
We are living in a duel monarchy (with Scotland in the role of Hungary); surrounded by an ambiance of faded imperial grandeur; with all posts in the government administration filled by a hereditary caste (over-privileged public schoolboys); far too ready to fall in with the machinations of a bigger ally (America); insulted by upstart Slav politicians (Radosław Sikorski); and with an overlarge capital city estranged from the country around it and filled with a cosmopolitan diversity that dazzles some and disgusts others.
On the whole I like living in the United Kingdom, and I think I would have liked pre-1914 Austria-Hungary. But we should not be blind to the dangers of such a society. Austria-Hungary was extremely unstable and eventually the tensions tore the country apart.
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