Category Archives: Austria

Austria

Austria – Coalition agreed

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Austria’s election was held on 28 September. Recall that the Social Democrats (SPÖ) and the Christian Democratic People’s Party (ÖVP) did badly at the election, losing 10 seats and 16 seats respectively. Recall also that the Liberals (FPÖ) and the populist Jorg Haider List (BZÖ) did well, gaining 14 seats each. However, the subsequent death of Jorg Haider changed the political equation. The worsening of the financial crisis in the last couple of months also had an impact on the government formation process.

Anyway, on Sunday a new government was agreed. It will return the grand coalition of the SPÖ and the ÖVP. There will be a new Chancellor. Alfred Gusenbauer from the SPÖ will be replaced by Werner Faymann also from the SPÖ.

Austria – Legislative election

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The Austrian election result is as follows:

Social Democrats (SPÖ), 29.7%, 58 seats (-10)
People’s Party (ÖVP), 25.6%, 50 seats (-16)
Freedom Party (FPÖ), 18.0%, 35 seats (+14)
Jorg Haider List (BZÖ), 11.0%, 21 seats (+14)
Greens, 9.8%, 19 seats, (-2)
Liberal Forum, 1.9%, 0 seats
Austria Citizens’ Forum, 1.8%, 0 seats

This result means that the government formation process is likely to be very difficult. Another grand coalition of (SPÖ and ÖVP) is most likely, but this was the coalition that was badly punished in the election. The ÖVP may be tempted to work with the FPÖ, but this would not give the coalition a majority. The SPÖ will not work with the FPÖ or the BZÖ. The FPÖ will not work with the BZÖ.

Austria – government collapses, election called

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In Austria the grand coalition between the Social Democrats (SPÖ) and the Christian Democrats (ÖVP) has collapsed. The Christian Democrats withdrew from the coalition, which had been in office since January 2007, and called for early elections.

In response, the SPÖ Chancellor, Alfred Gusenbauer, has announced that an election will be held on 28 September. He has also announced that he will not seek re-election as Chancellor. He had already stepped down as the leader of the SPÖ in June.

The two Chancellor-candidates will be Werner Faymann for the SPÖ and Wilhelm Molterer for the ÖVP. At the last elections, the two parties each won about 34-35% of the vote. This time the ÖVP will be expecting to do better, even though Chancellor Gusenbauer, who is currently very unpopular, is standing down.

When should we start to consider a country as semi-presidential?

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One issue that comes up quite a bit in my research is when to begin counting a country as semi-presidential. I already alluded to this point in the posting on Turkey. Is Turkey now semi-presidential even though the current president was elected by parliament and even though he may be in office for five, or even seven years, until the first direct election takes place? I think we should count Turkey as semi-presidential now because the constitution has been changed and the definition used here relies solely on constitutional provisions. However, doing so means that we can have cases of semi-presidentialism where there has never been a direct presidential election.

Take Austria. In December 1928 Wilhelm Miklas was elected as president by parliament. In December 1929 the constitution was amended to include the direct election of the president. In 1934, the constitution was amended again and the direct election of the president was removed. In the meantime, democracy collapsed. For Polity, the last full year of democracy was 1932. So, the Austrian constitution was semi-presidential from 1929-34, but there was no direct presidential election in this period.

Another case is Burkina Faso. In 1970, a new semi-presidential constitution was adopted for the then Upper Volta. As far as I can tell, this system lasted until 1974. In this period there was no presidential election.

Another interesting example is Brazil from 1961-63. I will do a much fuller post about Brazil at some future date. For now, though, the presidential system was changed to a pure parliamentary system by a constitutional amendment in September 1961 only for the presidential system to be restored in January 1963. In this period there was no presidential election under the new system. So, for a short time Brazil had a directly elected president operating in a parliamentary constitution.

I count Brazil as parliamentary in this period in the same way that I count Austria and Burkina Faso (Upper Volta) as semi-presidential from 1929-34 and 1970-74 respectively. However, if one were to decide that a country only became semi-presidential at the point when the first direct presidential election occurred, then Austria and Burkina Faso (Upper Volta) would not be classed as semi-presidential and Brazil would be semi-presidential from 1961-63.