Political background for Austria, April 2019

No, this is not an attempt to compete with Wikipedia's entry on Austria.

I'm posting it so that I can reference it as background in posts about current events and issues in Austria.

(German version of this post here.)

Austria is a small country with a population of around nine million. It is officially neutral and not formally part of a military alliance, and its military strength can reasonably to described as negligible compared to European countries like France, Britain, and Germany. (This 2018 ranking shows Austrian military strength as #22 out of the top 25 European military powers: Christopher Woody, NATO and Russia are flexing their military might right next to each other — here are the 25 most powerful militaries in Europe Business Insider 02.11.2018.) It is a rich country with high per capita income and important international business and financial ties. Its main diplomatic influence is assumed to be in the Balkan area. It is also currently trying to actively cooperate with the Visegrad countries - Hungary, Czechia, Slovakia, and Poland.

This means that Austria only tends to make international news when there is some national disaster or some awful political incident. Even in Germany and Switzerland, the news carries relatively little news from Austria.

The three largest political parties are the Social Democrats (Sozialdemokratische Partei Österreichs, SPÖ), the (Christian Democratic) People's Party (Österreichische Volkspartei, ÖVP), and the Freedom Party (Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs, FPÖ). There are also smaller parties , including the Greens, Jetzt (essentially a competing Green party), and the NEOS (Das Neue Österreich und Liberales Forum, a democratic liberal party, liberal in the European sense).

At the European level, they also participate as members of their respective European and other international party alliances:

• SPÖ: Socialist International, Progressive Alliance, Party of European Socialists
• ÖVP: European People's Party (EPP)
• FPÖ: Movement for a Europe of Nations and Freedom (MENF)
• Greens: Global Greens, European Green Party
• Jetzt: None as of 04/24/2019; this is a fairly recent split-off group from the Greens and currently not represented in the European Parliament
• NEOS: the Liberal International and the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe Party (ALDE Party).

The FPÖ has been controversial ever since it was formally established in 1955 because it focused on drawing the support of former Nazis and people who still found the Nazi program and policies appealing. There is a German word Ehemalige ("formers") that in Austria and Germany was used ironically to refer to ex-Nazis and Nazi sympathizers who had not de-Nazified their political perspectives. The SPÖ and ÖVP also included former Nazis in the postwar period, some of which were dubious choices for party membership.

There was nothing inherently wrong in including (genuinely former) Nazis in the postwar democratic parties. There was a large percentage of the Austrian male population who had been Nazi Party members. Excluding them all from parties and elected offices would not have been practical nor particularly democratic. The Nazi Party itself was banned in postwar Austria, as also in Germany, and it was and still is illegal to try to revive the Nazi Party or any group with equivalent politics. "Denazification" in Austria and Germany was not nearly as extensive or effective as most Americans probably think it was. But the laws did mean that every Austrian Nazi became technically a former Nazi, since the party itself was outlawed.

But the FPÖ has been distinctive in continuing to this day to focus on attracting far right voters and for flirting with symbols and rhetoric that were associated with the Nazis.

A national government with the ÖVP as the senior partner and the FPÖ as the junior partner took office in December 2017. It is referred to as a "black-blue" government, from the respective party colors for the ÖVP and FPÖ. The ÖVP Chancellor Sebastian Kurz has formed an informal but distinctive faction of his own within the ÖVP, referred to as "turquoise." So the coalition is also called "turquoise-blue," especially when emphasizing policies on which the government draws criticism for many ÖVP leaders and voters.

The FPÖ Vice Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache has been emphasizing anti-immigrant themes for years, well before the unusually high influx of refuges in 2015. And he makes sure that the FPÖ is constantly pushing the Overton window on what is considered respectable political language and policies to the right. Kurz has generally competed with Strache as to which of the two appears more hostile to immigrants.

The state (provincial) governments currently have the following configurations (senior partner listed first):

• Burgenland: SPÖ/FPÖ
• Carinthia: SPÖ/ÖVP
• Lower Austria: ÖVP/SPÖ/FPÖ
• Salzburg: ÖVP/Greens/NEOS
• Styria: SPÖ/ÖVP
• Tirol: ÖVP/Greens
• Upper Austria: ÖVP/FPÖ
• Vienna: SPÖ/Greens
• Vorarlberg: ÖVP/Greens

Coalitions of the SPÖ and ÖVP are also called Grand Coalitions, whichever party is the senior one.