Professionalisation and career mobility

Viktor Tátrai Professionalisation and career mobility. A Prosopographical Analysis of the Recruitment of Urban Police Chiefs in the Dualism Era (1886-1918) is divided into three parts. In the first part, the study explored the aspirations of police officers themselves in the second half of the dualism period to position their profession as a separate profession, in their emancipation efforts vis-à-vis the other branches of public administration.

Laws 21 and 22 of 1886 delegated the right to appoint municipal police chiefs to the chief magistrates, but Kálmán Tisza, in a hitherto unknown confidential decree sent to the chief magistrate, 'requested' the recipients to report to him before the appointment. The second part of the study analyses the actual process of exercising power and decision-making, the criteria taken into account by the chief magistrates when selecting and appointing the heads of the municipal police forces, and the expectations that the authorities had of the police chiefs, through a group of sources (reports of the chief magistrates) that have not yet been examined in the literature.

Finally, the third part of the study examines the careers, or more precisely the career mobility, of the 85 police chiefs who headed the police departments of the municipalities of the cities in the period 1886-1918. At the end of the study, the most typical career mobility trajectories are typified: the author distinguishes 8 career types and, by analysing the changes in their frequency over time, concludes that "at the micro level, through the study of the life course and career mobility, the beginning of the process of police professionalisation can be captured in the changes in the proportions between the career types."