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Concept
Politics of Austria
Summary
Politics in Austria reflects the dynamics of competition among multiple political parties, which led to the formation of a Conservative-Green coalition government for the first time in January 2020, following the snap elections of 29 September 2019, and the election of a former Green Party leader to the presidency in 2016.
Austrian politics takes place within the constitutional framework of a federal parliamentary republic, with a President (Bundespräsident) serving as head of state and a Chancellor (Bundeskanzler) as head of government. Governments, both local and federal, exercise executive power. Federal legislative power is vested both in the Federal Government and in the two chambers of Parliament; the National Council (Nationalrat) and the Federal Council (Bundesrat). The Judiciary of Austria is independent of the executive and legislative branches of government.
Following the end the Second World War and re-establishment of Austria as a sovereign state, the conservative Austrian People's Party (ÖVP) and the centre-left Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ) dominated politics and public life for decades, with only one additional party—the FPÖ—playing a significant role at the national level. More recently, the pattern of two-party dominance withered with the rise of newer parties, such as the Greens and the NEOS.
The ethnically and culturally heterogeneous nation-state of Austria is one of the many remnant states of Austria-Hungary, a vast multinational empire that ceased to exist in 1918. The Austrian Republic was preceded by a constitutional monarchy, whose legislative body was elected by, as The New York Times put it, "quasi-universal (male) suffrage" for the first time in 1897.
Austria's first attempt at republican governance after the fall of the monarchy in 1918 was severely hampered by the crippling economic burden of war reparations required by the victorious Allies. Austria's First Republic (1918–1938) made some pioneering reforms in the 1920s, particularly in Vienna, that served as models for the social-welfare states of post-World War I Europe.
Official source
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