‘Austria First’ revisited: a diachronic cross-sectional analysis of the gender and body politics of the extreme right

ABSTRACT

In this paper, Rheindorf and Wodak provide a discourse-historical analysis of extreme-right cultural politics in Austria, ranging from the blatant racism in the speeches of Vienna’s former Deputy Mayor Johann Gudenus (now MP in the Austrian parliament) to the construction of an idealized national body in the election campaigns of the Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs (FPÖ), its programmatic agenda in handbooks and pamphlets, and the performances of far-right pop singer Andreas Gabalier. Rheindorf and Wodak argue that such cultural politics use a wide spectrum of discursive strategies both inside and outside established party politics and that the accompanying production of an ideal extreme-right subject is informed by nativist ideology. The cross-sectional analysis demonstrates that the cultural politics of the Austrian extreme right ranges from appropriated national symbols to coded National Socialist iconography. These politics pervasively construct a gendered and racialized national body, policed by a ‘strict father’ and nurtured by a ‘self-sacrificing mother’, vis-à-vis an apocalyptic threat scenario identified with migration, intellectual and political elites, cosmopolitanism and progressive gender politics.     

Social structure and voting in the Austrian party system

An analysis of electoral behaviour in the Austrian party system shows that the cleavages, social class and religion, are still playing a major role—their total impact seems higher than in most Western democracies. In the seventies a declining influence of both dimensions can be registered; but after closer inspection, most of it seems to be due to structural changes.Particularly the expansion of intermediate and higher education can be hypothesized to dissolve the traditional Lager-structure, which made for a very stable vote throughout the electoral history of the Second Austrian Republic. But the question remains, whether the increase in floating vote really supersedes the class and religious cleavages, or only produces more oscillating election outcomes.The analysis also makes clear why regional cleavages are of minor general impact in Austria: on the one hand, historical West-East differentiations prevail over urban-rural cleavages, on the other hand, Austria seems to be too small to give way to major cultural drifting between regions. None the less, the impact of social structure upon voting behaviour seems to be significantly higher than in most Western nations.     

Corporatism in Crisis: Stability and Change of Social Partnership in Austria

While recent developments in Western Europe provide numerous examples of the instability and decay of corporatist arrangements in the face of economic crisis, Austrian social partnership still exhibits remarkable stability. The article tries to explain this stability of corporatist politics in Austria. The Austrian case is also used to demonstrate some limitations of the academic literature on the breakdown of corporatism. However, stability in the Austrian case does not mean that nothing has changed. Changes have occurred within the existing institutional framework. Two main factors in the transformation of Austrian social partnership are pointed out, namely socio-cultural and political changes. Finally, some future perspectives of Austrian corporatism are outlined.     

A tale of firsts: the 2019 Austrian snap election

Abstract

The 2019 Austrian snap election, held on 29 September 2019, was preceded by a series of scandals. Most prominent among them was the so-called ‘Ibizagate’ involving the former Vice-Chancellor and FPÖ party leader, Heinz-Christian Strache. The scandal eventually led to the collapse of the ÖVP-FPÖ coalition in May 2019 and the formation of a caretaker government. The election day in September brought a clear victory for the ÖVP with an increase of almost six percentage points, compared to its vote share in the 2017 election. The second big winner was the Green party which scored the best result in the party history with 13.9 per cent of the vote. Amid scandals, the FPÖ saw its support fall to only 16.2 per cent; the election also resulted in an all-time low for the SPÖ achieving only 21.2 per cent. The article presents the background, the election campaign and the results of the 2019 Austrian election, discussing the wide range of ‘firsts’ that characterized them, including the formation of the first ÖVP-Green coalition government in Austria.     

A study in contrasts

In this personal view of a 'second generation' psychoanalyst in Vienna, private life events are counterposed to political and social developments in Austria over the last twenty-five years, leading up to the phenomenon of Jörg Haider and the recent formation of the new Austrian government including his Freedom Party (FPÖ). In particular, de Mendelssohn discusses the resurgence of openly antisemitic utterances and racist electoral platforms, both against the larger background of historical precedents and against the smaller one of a psychoanalytic study group set up to enquire into the unconscious motives and fantasies involved in this resurgence. Although the emergence of public prejudice is an alarming sign, de Mendelssohn points to mitigating factors. On the one hand there is the possibility of seeing Austria as a 'test case' for similar, often more actively violent eruptions in other European countries, one in which coping strategies may be developed while there is still time. Here he sees the EU sanctions against Austria as fully justified. On the other hand there is an active and younger generation and a solid history of civil protest that may help strengthen Austria's rather weak democratic traditions. As an analogue to Freud's individual psychoanalysis, in which the 'return of the repressed' is seen as a painful experience but necessary for insight and growth, the resurgence of quasi-racist politics in Austria may be seen as a necessary result of long years of being more or less taboo, with the hope that there can be a 'working through' of inter-generational dislocation and social amnesia.     

Vom Rand in die Mitte – „Schamlose Normalisierung“

In this paper, I discuss the swing to the (far-)right in (Austrian) party politics during the election campaign and national election on October 15, 2017. This transformation is caused, I claim, by a process of normalisation, an accommodation to the, sometimes also extreme-right, agenda of formerly right-wing populist parties such as the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ). The election campaign of both the Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) and the FPÖ focussed primarily on migration and refugee politics, based on a politics of fear and resentment. After first attempting to define the phenomenon of right-wing populism, I trace how tabooed and extreme right contents slowly became acceptable, as soon as the ÖVP shamelessly integrated some (not all) aspects of the FPÖ’s election program.     

Austria: A Federation without Federalism

Austria is an understudied case in comparative federalism. Thereare, however, interesting theoretical observations concerningthe workings of Austrian federalism. In particular, analysisof the Austrian federal system is likely to call attention tothe relationship between political institutions and the socialstructure in the study of comparative federalism. This essayseeks to expose the centralizing tendencies related to societalhomogeneity that exert broad pressures on Austria's federalsystem. Empirical evidence shows a pan-Austrian national frameworkof reference employed by political actors even when the policyareas in question are within exclusive Länder jurisdiction.Without the territorially based distinctiveness necessary tosustain a federal outlook, the Austrian federal system has movedin a centralist direction.     

Finland's Parliamentary Election 2015: Certainty of the Result with Uncertainty of the Outcome

The winner of the Finnish parliamentary election 2015 was certain long before the elections. The Centre Party of Finland would win, but for the composition of the government and future societal changes, it was more interesting who would be the runners-up. With eight parliamentary parties and with eight different political agendas, the Finnish political system forms a hard to predict political landscape. Key issues for the Centre Party, rebounding from the catastrophic elections of 2011, were to find a coalition with trust between its members and to generate trust in getting things done. One evident societal outcome of the election is the deceleration of centralization policies furthered by the previous government. The disagreement over regional politics and devolution and related cleavages within the country brought the coalition government between the Centre Party, the National Coalition Party and the Finns Party to the verge of falling after only six months.     

Do campaign strategies and tactics matter? Exploring party elite perceptions of what matters when explaining election outcomes

In research on political campaign communication, it is often assumed that campaign strategies and tactics are highly important for explaining election outcomes. In contrast, most research in political science tends to emphasize the importance of political substance, long‐term factors such as party identification, and real‐world conditions for explaining election outcomes. Although political parties in practice treat election campaigns as highly important and consequential, there is virtually no research on how party elites perceive the importance of campaign strategies and tactics when explaining election outcomes. Hence, drawing on a survey among Swedish members of parliament, this study investigates party elite perceptions of what matters when people decide which party to vote for and of what matters when explaining election outcomes. In brief, the results show that members of parliament perceive campaign strategies and tactics as significantly less important than the substance of politics. In the concluding analysis, the implications of the results are analyzed. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

‘Party competition and dual accountability in multi-level systems’ the independence echo: the rise of the constitutional question in Scottish election manifestos and voter behaviour

ABSTRACT

Since the formation of the Scottish Parliament, the idea of Scottish independence increased in salience and popularity among Scottish voters to such an extent that it now constitutes the country’s defining political cleavage. Given that Scottish politics is increasingly organized around this constitutional question, support for either side of the debate among voters and elites drives political engagement, election turnout and public attitudes to other major issues. Although much popular and academic work has sought to explain the rise of support for independence, few scholars have explored changes in elite behaviour or its consequences for public opinion. From an elite-driven perspective, the increased salience of independence may be but an echo of elite and partisan attention. Developing hypotheses from this approach, we predict that voters identifying with parties developed stronger views on independence following increased attention in parties’ campaigns. We examine these hypotheses by performing computer assisted, unsupervised content analysis of Scottish Parties’ election manifestos. We then use estimates from a structural topic model to predict change in voter support for independence from the British Election Study. The theory and results suggest that increasing salience on alternative dimensions of politics likely closely relates to elite-driven choices in their election campaigns.     

Scotland Out the Union? The Rise and Rise of the Nationalist Agenda

The election of the Scottish National party as a majority government in 2011 is as challenging to the British state as it was unexpected. While explanations for SNP success focused on Labour's faulty campaign and poor leadership, the last half‐century has seen the rise and rise of the nationalist agenda in Scotland. Scotland's politics are now more different from England's than at any time since the 1950s. The Scottish parliament is the effect of that change rather than its cause, while party competition between Labour and the SNP north of the border has shifted political gravity centre‐left in contrast with England. It is not inevitable, however, that Scots would vote for Independence in a referendum. Nevertheless, Scotland is a more semi‐detached country than at any point in the history of the Union, and the future of the British state, at least in its present form, cannot be taken for granted.     

The Scandinavian Welfare State: The Institutions of Growth, Governance, and Reform. Review Article

In a review of five recent works on Scandinavian politics and public policy, it is shown that the basis for talking about a Scandinavian model is unfounded. Politics and policies diverge from country to country and within each country from sector to sector as a result of institutional variation. This variation is embedded in institutional history which accounts for strong national path dependency in public policies. However, the institutional set-up at a given point in time also provides political actors with incentives for change. Two of the works reviewed take up this lead as they argue for institutional reform, in one case to protect the welfare state against political erosion, in the other case to facilitate renewed economic growth and improved living standards. The review concludes by arguing for the positive prospects for systematic comparative analysis of Scandinavian politics, providing a mixture of institutional and political similarities combined with theoretically relevant variation.     

The 1988 Presidential Election in Finland

The article aims to describe and analyse the 1988 presidential election in Finland. The parties and candidates in the election are presented and the electoral system is discussed. For the first time a double-vote system was used in which there are two ballots, one for the direct election of the president and one for the elector of the president. If a candidate wins more than 50 percent of the vote, then that candidate is elected. If, however, no candidate receives 50 percent or more of the vote, then the electoral college elects the president. Although it was fairly certain that the incumbent president Mauno Koivisto would be re-elected, the campaign was a heated one, with the electorate very politically engaged. It is concluded that despite the fact regional differences between north and south Finland were aggravated—the candidate for the opposition, Paavo Väyrynen, received considerable support especially in northern Finland-the presidential election showed that the Finnish political system functions relatively smoothly and that its overall effect is highly legitimizing.     

National electoral cycles and European elections 1979 and 1984

How were the results of the European Elections related to national political patterns? This article adopts a cross-national comparative perspective. It concludes that government parties, irrespective of being on the right or on the left of the political spectrum, and irrespective of representing the more ‘pro-European’ or the more ‘anti-European’ forces of their country, lost the European election of 1984. European elections have proved to be additional second-order elections (like local or provincial elections), important for the ripples they create on the national political scene. The systematic relationship between voting in firstorder and second-order elections is explored in detail. On the whole, it appears that the 1984 European elections have to be seen largely as tests of opinion on domestic politics.     

How has Radical Right Support Transformed Established Political Conflicts? The Case of Austria

In many European party systems, the radical right has challenged established patterns of political competition. This article studies the consequences of this by using the case of the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) and data from Austria’s first national election study (AUTNES). It is found that the FPÖ has weakened Austria’s previously highly stable system of socio-structural and ideological divisions as expressed by the two mainstream parties, the People’s Party and the Social Democrats. In socio-structural terms, the FPÖ has undermined the Social Democrats’ support base. In ideological terms, FPÖ voters have distinct views on newer issues such as immigration, European integration and dissatisfaction with the political system, but its supporters’ views on Austria’s traditional conflicts surrounding the economy and social and religious values cannot explain the party’s success. These findings further our understanding of the transformation of political conflicts not just in Austria, but in Western Europe in general.     

Pension Reform in Germany and Austria: System Change vs. Quantitative Retrenchment

This article first outlines the differences in outcome of pension reform in Germany and Austria. The 2001 German pension reform cut benefits very little, but it started a system changing transformation process by strengthening the second (occupational pensions) and third pillar (private pensions). The 2003 Austrian pension reform, pushed through against major opposition from the labour unions, contains very few elements of policy innovation, but benefits have been cut back much more significantly than in the German case. The paper explains the difference in outcomes (system change in Germany, retrenchment in Austria) by looking at the structure of political institutions. The federal government in Austria is much less constrained by formal veto players than the German government, which had to engage in extensive coalition-building to get the pension bill through the second chamber of parliament. Therefore the influence of informal veto players (mainly unions) was much higher in Germany. The impact on the reform outcome was the positive discrimination of occupational pensions and less severe cuts in the benefit levels. The concluding thesis is that for successful and long-term sustainable welfare state reform, a small number of formal veto players is a valuable resource. A large number of formal veto players is an obstacle to retrenchment reforms, although it might encourage policy innovation, because political actors will look for other policy venues to increase their leverage.     

The Spanish electoral cycle of 2019: a tale of two countries

Abstract

In 2019 alone, Spanish citizens went to the polls at least four times – two general elections, European elections, local elections and, for some, regional elections. Moreover, in the 2016–19 legislature, the country witnessed a successful vote of no confidence that replaced a Conservative prime minister with a Socialist one; experienced an important constitutional crisis over the 2017 referendum on Catalan independence; observed the emergence for the first time of a viable far-right party; and ended with the first coalition government in the modern democratic history. The November 2019 election, the last in this long electoral cycle, left a fragmented and polarized political landscape and a left-wing cabinet – PSOE and Podemos – that does not have a majority in the chamber. This article presents the background, the results of the different elections and discusses how and why Spanish politics experienced a radical transformation likely to have an impact in the next years.     

What Is Political Science? What Should It Be?

This paper examines the five myths that govern political science: that it studies politics; that it is scientific; that one can study politics cut off from the other social sciences and history; that the state is neutral; and that the bulk of the work in the discipline furthers the cause of democracy. Within political science, there have been three main approaches to criticizing these myths: a moderate one that treats the elements in these myths as more or less disconnected; a radical one that sees a systemic connection between these elements; and a Marxist one that names this system "Capitalism" and privileges the role of the capitalist state in explaining both politics and political science.     

Uninterested Youth? Young People's Attitudes towards Party Politics in Britain

Following the outcome of the 2001 and 2005 general elections, when the numbers of abstainers outweighed the numbers of Labour voters on both occasions, much attention has focused upon the state of British democracy and how to enthuse the electorate, especially young people. Whilst the government is exploring ways to make the whole process of voting easier, it may be failing to tackle the real problem – that youth appear to find the business of politics uninviting and irrelevant. This paper examines data derived from a nationwide survey of more than 700 young people in order to shed light on what lies at the heart of young people's apparent disengagement from formal politics in Britain – political apathy or a sense of political alienation. The findings reveal that they support the democratic process, but are sceptical of the way the British political system is organised and led and are turned off by politicians and the political parties. However, there is no uniform youth orientation to politics, and the data indicate that views differ according to social class, educational history and also gender. However both ethnicity and region of the country in which young people live seem to have little influence in structuring political attitudes and behaviour.     

Canadian Federalism, The Charter of Rights, and the 1984 Election

The federal election of 1984 may prove to be a critical eventin the evolution of Canadian federalism. The election createda political climate favorable to a restructuring of the Canadianpolitical agenda away from the "territorial politics" that hasdominated it for several decades, toward a politics of national,non territorial issues. Such a transformation of the politicalagenda had been sought by the Liberal government of Pierre Trudeau,which saw the new Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms as amechanism for promoting a more national politics. The climateof intergovernmental confrontation that characterized the Trudeauera, however, may very well have undermined the Charter's nationalunity potential. Ironically, that potential is more likely tobe realized under the Mulroney Conservatives than it would havebeen under a continuation of the Trudeau regime.