"...the elections of February 23, 1917 [1] later came to be seen as epochal, not only due to their obvious role in the end of the Habsburg Empire as the world knew it but also due to its profound internal impact on Hungarian politics, dramatically changing the paradigm that had dominated since the 1904 breakthrough of the Kossuthites.
With Apponyi dismissed and already grievously unpopular with the Green Left for his actions on the secret ballot law, his center-right coalition of Catholic lay organizations, conservative middle-class Hungarian nationalists and other bourgeois elements who had voted for the Party of Independence and '48 as much out of contempt for the magnate political agenda as they had for Magyarism effectively crumbled, lacking a clear leader to succeed in his vision. With the Green Right essentially decapitated and the Party of Independence and '48 still the chief vehicle of the nationalist cause, Karolyi's Green Left was suddenly ascendant, buffeted by Jaszi's Radicals in an informal political alliance. The position of the Green element in the spectrum thus not only grew in terms of seats but shifted further to the left - the exact opposite of what Ferdinand had intended to accomplish in his calling of elections. The only saving grace for the Whites was that most of the gains, especially by Karolyist candidates, came at the expense of Socialists, who saw their seat count more than halved, one of the worst performances by a left-wing party in the 1910s, a decade in which they otherwise held serve or made gains across Europe in democratic elections. Limited suffrage and the open ballot had saved White seats once again, but their enemy had radicalized.
Of course, there was more to the Whites only losing two seats in the Diet than that. Hungary's minorities, especially ethnic Romanians in the east, had despised Apponyi for his education laws that had pushed Magyarization not only into the mainstream but into overdrive, but Karolyi and Jaszi were figures they genuinely feared due to their synthesis of explicit Magyarism as a political cause and their political liberalism, which often clashed with cultures that valued their traditional lifestyle, in the case of Serbs and Romanians their Orthodox faith, and their native language, all of which they suspected would be under threat by a Karolyist government. As such, the Whites performed unusually well even in their traditional strongholds of Slovak, Serb, and Romanian precincts across Hungary.
Ferdinand was thus posed with a conundrum. As mentioned before, Ferdinand hated Karolyi but he hated the magnates even more, regarding the Hungarian nobility as a major factor in the destabilization of the Dual Monarchy thanks to their intransigence, contempt for the public, and political demands. At one point in the leadup to the February 23 elections, Ferdinand wrote to Lady Sophie that he was pondering simply imposing universal suffrage upon the magnates and by decree allowing for a secret ballot and male suffrage for all men over the age of twenty-one; only his fears that this would invite a Socialist government into power stayed his hand. Nonetheless, there was no faction in Hungary that was suitable for what he really wanted - Budapest to simply bend the knee to Vienna and accede to his project of centralizing authority under himself while pursuing a very moderated version of the rising advocacy of Austro-Slavism that was emerging in many corners of Viennese intelligentsia, including from his considerably more liberal nephew Charles - and no faction that could undo his deep-rooted hated of all things Magyar.
But to appoint Karolyi would go against everything Ferdinand believed in and stood likely to only further destabilize the realm ahead of the crucial Ausgleich negotiations, and as such Ferdinand elected for a middle path. Wekerle turned him down to return, having only accepted the role of Prime Minister in order to act as a transition figure for a few months upon the death of his beloved Emperor. Figures such as Tisza, Andrassy or Hadik were likely only to inflame public opinion amongst the ethnic Magyars, and Ferdinand needed somebody he could trust in that role. As such, he chose an obscure Parliamentarian of the National Constitution Party, Istvan Bethlen, to serve as Prime Minister, and Bethlen immediately appointed a technocratic cabinet that besides including Andrassy as his Foreign Minister contained no other prominent Whites or Greens in it but rather a smorgasbord of military officers, academics, and businesspeople, including three Jews from Budapest's industrialist and banking class.
Bethlen remains a profoundly ironic figure in Hungarian history - he was not a Hungarian nationalist, but he was a political pragmatist, a Budapest liberal, an aristocratic conservative of old stock, and a much wilier political operator than anybody expected. There is a reason that his career lasted close to thirty years as one of the dominant figures of his native land, and it all started by his choice, seemingly at random and due to his unlikelihood of being anything other than a pawn in the game between Vienna and Budapest, as Prime Minister of Hungary on March 3, 1917..."
- Ferdinand: The Last Emperor
[1] Date not chosen by accident
