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Austria Consolidation of Democracy
The experience of the Anschluss and Nazi rule--which for many
Austrian politicians had included imprisonment at Dachau--
deepened the commitment of the ÖVP and SPÖ to parliamentary
democracy and Austrian statehood. The electorate remained divided
into three political camps--socialist/Marxist, Catholic, and
nationalist/liberal--but cooperation replaced extreme political
polarization.
The SPÖ ratified the moderate social democratic and
anticommunist outlook of Renner, while downplaying the legacy of
Austro-Marxism associated with Otto Bauer, the party's leader
after World War I. Over the objections of the left wing, the
party rejected an alliance with the KPÖ, endorsed cooperation
with the ÖVP, and sanctioned the rebuilding of a capitalist
economy tied to the West. It also decided to seek broad support
beyond its working-class base.
The ÖVP underwent a similar transformation. Many of its
postwar leaders, drawn largely from people associated with the
prewar CSP trade unions and peasant organizations, had developed
personal relationships with socialist leaders during their time
at Dachau. After the war, they advanced a program emphasizing
freedom and social welfare. Although essentially a Christian
democratic party, the ÖVP sought to broaden its constituency and
downplayed its confessional identification. No formal
organizational ties were established with the Roman Catholic
Church, and clerics were barred from running for office on the
party's ticket.
Denazification posed a special problem for the emerging
democratic society, often referred to as the Second Republic.
Favorable Allied treatment of Austria was based in part on the
premise that it was a liberated victim of Nazi aggression and not
a Nazi ally. Thus, the government wanted to avoid any suggestion
of collective guilt while at the same time prosecuting individual
Nazis. The party and its affiliates were banned, and ex-members
were required to register. Approximately 536,000 did so by
September 1946. The government attempted to draw a distinction
between committed Nazis and those who had joined because of
economic, social, or personal coercion. Thus, the presumably more
committed pre-1938 Nazis were dismissed from the civil service
and a variety of other professions. Special tribunals were
created to try war crimes.
Following the 1945 parliamentary election, the Allies sought
more extensive denazification. In February 1947, the Figl
government enacted the National Socialist Act. The law
distinguished between "more implicated" persons, such as high
party officials, and "less implicated" persons, such as simple
party members. Individuals in both categories were subject to
fines and employment restrictions, but with different levels of
severity. By 1948, however, political and popular support for
what was perceived as indiscriminate denazification was waning.
Ex-Nazis and their families accounted for nearly one-third of the
population, and both major parties feared that the stability of
Austrian political and civil society would be undermined if they
were not eventually reintegrated. In June 1948, the government
promulgated the Amnesty Act, which restored full citizenship
rights to the less implicated ex-Nazis before the 1949 election.
Some 42,000 people, however, those categorized as more
implicated, remained excluded from full participation in the
nation's life.
Both the SPÖ and the ÖVP actively solicited the electoral
support of ex-Nazis, but this new bloc of voters also enabled the
formation of a successor party to the prewar parties in the
nationalist-liberal camp. The SPÖ encouraged the formation of the
new party, known as the League of Independents (Verband der
Unabhängigen--VdU), expecting that it would split the
antisocialist vote and thus weaken the ÖVP. In the October 1949
parliamentary election, however, the SPÖ lost nine seats,
compared with the eight lost by the ÖVP. The VdU, with nearly 12
percent of the vote, won sixteen of these seventeen seats. The
KPÖ, with 5 percent of the vote, increased its representation
from four to five seats. Although the ÖVP thus lost its absolute
majority in the Nationalrat, it was still the largest party, with
seventy-seven seats and 44 percent of the vote. The SPÖ held
sixty-seven seats, having won nearly 39 percent of the vote. The
ÖVP and the SPÖ formed another coalition government with Figl as
chancellor, continuing what was to become known as the "grand
coalition."
To limit conflict between themselves, the coalition partners
devised a system to divide not only cabinet ministries but also
the entire range of political patronage jobs in the government
and nationalized industries based upon each party's electoral
strength. This proportional division of jobs, called the
"Proporz" system, became an enduring feature of coalition
governments.
Data as of December 1993
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