This study examines the Austrian and Hungarian governments' attempts to stabilize their international, domestic, and social conditions and legitimize themselves in the new European order after World War I. Austria and Hungary, as remnant states of the Austro-Hungarian empire and thus vanquished powers were in precarious straits. Conventional wisdom, which focuses on their subsequent descent into fascism, ignores the fact that both states achieved stability by 1922; this book focuses on that achievement.