|
Austria The Green Parties
Another clear sign that the Austrian party system is
loosening up was the emergence during the early 1980s of
organized environmental, or Green, parties. A major catalyst in
the birth of the Green movement in Austria was the narrow defeat
of the November 5, 1978, national referendum on nuclear energy.
The Kreisky government, seeking to build a nuclear power plant in
Zwentendorf near Vienna, decided to let the people decide on the
question of nuclear energy
(see Domestic Issues
, ch. 1).
The victory of the antinuclear forces encouraged
environmental activists to run in local elections, and in 1982
two national Green parties were formed. The more moderate of the
two, the United Greens of Austria (Vereinigte Grüne Österreichs--
VGÖ), had a strong commitment to working within the existing
political system to change environmental policies. The
Alternative List of Austria (Alternative Liste Österreichs--ALÖ),
founded in 1982 on the fourth anniversary of the Zwentendorf
referendum, was more willing to challenge the political status
quo. In addition to championing radical changes in environmental
policy, the ALÖ also advocated a guaranteed national income, a
thirty-five-hour workweek, and greater government ownership in
certain areas of the economy.
The prospects of the Green parties are limited by their
frequent inability to form alliances for the purpose of
contesting elections. When the ALÖ and VGÖ have campaigned on a
common ticket, they usually have won seats in parliament. In
1983, the first national election in which the Green parties
participated, the two groups ran on separate lists, and both
failed to gain representation in the Nationalrat. The Green cause
received a strong boost in 1984 from the confrontation between
the SPÖ-FPÖ government and environmental activists opposed to the
plan to build a hydroelectric plant in a wetland forest at
Hainburg in eastern Austria. The government backed down from its
plan, and the incident led to an increase in support for the
Green parties from disillusioned SPÖ voters, intellectuals, and
others with strong views on the environment.
Green activist Freda Meissner-Blau ran in the May 1986
presidential election, taking a surprising 5.5 percent of the
vote, which necessitated a run off between the ÖVP and SPÖ
candidates. Encouraged by this showing, the ALÖ and VGÖ, after
long negotiations, agreed to participate in the November 1986
national election on a single list, named the Green Alternative--
Freda Meissner-Blau List. The Green Alternative took 4.8 percent
of the vote and won eight seats in parliament. This marked only
the second time in the history of the Second Republic that a
fourth party had entered the Nationalrat. (The KPÖ had been in
the parliament between 1945 and 1959.) The harmony between the
two groups was short-lived, however, as they clashed over how to
divide the federal financing that became available to the Green
movement. In the 1990 national election, the VGÖ put up its own
list of candidates, and the ALÖ ran as the Green
Alternative/Greens in Parliament (Grüne Alternative/Grüne in
Parliament--GAL). The VGÖ polled only 1.9 percent of the vote and
failed to win any seats. The GAL took 4.5 percent of the vote and
increased the number of Green deputies to ten.
As of the early 1990s, the future of Green politics in
Austria remained uncertain because of the strong differences
between the GAL and VGÖ over political strategy. The VGÖ was
committed to developing a centralized party structure along the
lines of the ÖVP and SPÖ, while the ALÖ preferred to allow
complete autonomy for its affiliated organizations in the
provinces. There were also questions about the longevity of the
Greens' appeal to voters. Studies indicated that only 50 percent
of Green voters had close ties to a Green party, and roughly 35
percent of Green votes came from floating voters who had
abandoned the two major parties. However, many Austrians felt a
lack of confidence in the abilities of the ÖVP and SPÖ to fashion
constructive policies, and as long as this doubt persists, the
Green parties will have opportunities to elect deputies to
parliament.
Data as of December 1993
|
