Table II
Heil Haider! The Revitalization of the Austrian Freedom Party since 1986. Politics and Society in Germany, Austrian and Switzerland, vol. 4, nr. 3 (Summer, 1992), pp. 18-47.
by
Max Riedlsperger
Introduction On September 22, 1986 the Austrian newsmagazine profil carried a cartoon showing the newly elected chairman of the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ), Jörg Haider, in Carinthian folk dress, standing before a painting showing another, brown-shirted Haider wearing a red armband with a partially obscured, but seemingly recognizable black insignia on a circular white field. Brownshirt Haider is shown strangling his liberal predecessor, Norbert Steger, representing at least the cartoonist's interpretation of the significance of Haider's defeat of Steger for the leadership of the party the week before.
Two months later, on November 23, Austrian voters handed both major political parties stunning losses in parliamentary elections and increased the FPÖ's representation in the Nationalrat by half. Since then Chairman Haider has led his party to an unbroken string of victories in every state parliament (Landtag) election and in October of 1990 improved its 1986 parliamentary result by 60 per cent with a 16.6 per cent share of the vote. In June, 1991 Haider, then Governor of Carinthia, again roused charges of pro-Nazi sentiment with a remark widely portrayed as glorifying the Third Reich, yet ten days later his FPÖ again improved its voter share in a state election in Burgenland.
Since its founding in 1956, primarily by repentant former National Socialists, the FPÖ has been largely disdained by the major parties and has been imputed with right-radical, German-nationalist sentiment to such a degree that many observers, both domestic and foreign, can only see the sky-blue of its banner through a fifty-year old brown reform haze. The view cleared somewhat under the party's liberal course from the late 60's until 1986, but settled in again under the influence of Chairman Haider's pandering to German-nationalist sentiment in the debate over bi-lingual education in his adopted state of Carinthia and because of his unabashed reemphasis of the FPÖ programmatic assertion that '. . . by far the overwhelming majority of Austrians belong to the German ethnic and cultural community'. Indeed, an article by Hans-Georg Betz on the German Republikaner in an earlier issue of this journal cited the FPÖ as an example of ". . . a rising tide of right-wing radical parties in Western Europe" and Haider has been widely portrayed as almost a son of Hitler. If the dramatic increase in electoral support for the FPÖ were indeed the result of a resurgence of right-radical German-nationalism then there would be cause for concern.
It is, however, the contention of this paper that the electoral upsurge of the FPÖ has not primarily been the result of a resurrection of neo-nazistic, pan-German sentiment, nor do its voters have much in common with the minimally educated, anti-modernist, anti-western constituency of the Republikaner. To some degree the FPÖ's success is attributable to its exploitation of typical conservative law and order and anti-foreigner sentiment and its emphasis on traditional moral values and national identity as cited by Betz as characteristic of right-wing radical parties elsewhere. On the other hand, its neo-liberal, anti-statist stance causes the neo-Nazis, with their totalitarian inclinations, to disdain it as "national-liberal." Also, unlike the parties usually cited as part of the right-radical resurgence, neither the FPÖ nor its message is new. It is only eleven years younger than the majority parties it likes to call 'old' and its roots in the revolution of 1848 are even older than those of the Socialist, now Socialdemocratic Party (SPÖ) and the conservative Peoples' Party (ÖVP). Only its emergence as a middle-sized party of political significance is new and the fundamental reason for the breakthrough of the past five years lies not in any shift to the right in the party's ideology, nor in any radicalization of the Austrian electorate. The answer rather, is to be found in the accelerated breakdown of Austria's historic political camps (Lager) and in the new possibilities for an opposition party to capture the newly mobile voters. Disaffection with the established Lager-parties has long been apparent in opinion research, but the trend was manifested in voter behavior only after Haider's election as Chairman of the FPÖ triggered a return, after twenty years, to government by coalition of the two major parties after the parliamentary election of 1986. In a post-modernist environment marked by frustration with and anger against expensive, scandal-ridden big government, the FPÖ became the natural recipient of the votes of an increasingly independent electorate. Haider's image as a German-nationalist has made his party's success appear to be part of a Europe-wide, right-wing resurgence, obscuring the real reason for its new political significance that lies in the shift of Austria from what has been called a 'two-and-a-half' party ystem to a three- or multiple-party system. This is not to deny the important role Haider has played in making his party the alternative of choice for protest voters. His youthful, athletic good looks and aggressive, one-line attacks on the 'worn-out' politics of the established 'old parties' work well in an age of politics dictated by headlines and sound bytes and appeal to a modern, not historic populist sentiment, with just enough German-national rhetoric to hold the nostalgic vote.
Lager Theory and the Founding of the 'Third Force'
The political Lager, whose disintegration have made the recent emergence of the FPÖ possible, were first conceptualized for the Second Republic in 1954 by historian Adam Wandruszka to explain why Austria, despite the dramatic impact of rapid modernization and retarded social homogenization, remained politically stable. The answer, he postulated, lay in the fact that the heterogeneous elements of a still substantially pre-modern society had, during the last half of the nineteenth century, been assimilated into three 'naturally- or divinely-willed' Lager which were able to provide the unity necessary to a society in the process of rapid change. The military implication of the term Lager was thoroughly appropriate to describe the division and ultimately tri-polarization of the political culture into ideologically rigid, mutually hostile, and by the 1930's, armed camps. At the time of his seminal publication, Wandruszka intended to illustrate a continuity of the parties of the nascent Second Republic with the democracy that had been tenuously established in 1918 and then violently interrupted, first by 'clerical fascism' in 1934 and then by Anschluß to the Third Reich in 1938. The difference after 1945 was that the elites of Catholic-conservative and the Socialist Lager had learned through bitter experience the folly of ideological intransigence and instead founded the Second Republic on the basis of a 'social partnership'. Under the system of Proporz designed to cement this relationship the Peoples' Party and the Socialist Party divided posts in the government, the bureaucracy and public agencies of the economy between them in proportion to their representation in parliament (Proporz). This provided for a division of power and the capacity for each party to serve in a control capacity on the other. Decisions were made behind the closed doors of the coalitions committees and parliament was a meaningless debating society where votes were predetermined and parties voted as a block. Its critics called the system a Demokratur (a combination of German words for democracy and dictatorship) which was democratic only by virtue of the fact that the proportional representation of the elites running it was determined by election.
Subsequent cross-national studies of comparable political systems have come to place this system in the category of consociational democracies in which elites engage in horizontal political cooperation between the Lager while exploiting class ideological hostilities to rally the party faithful within their respective, vertically integrated pillars of society. In Austria, the lingering memories of the civil war mentality that had destroyed the First Republic forced the Peoples Party and the Socialist Party to cooperate in coalition governments for over twenty years for fear of what single-party rule might bring. Unlike consociational democracies elsewhere in Europe, that fear forced Austria into a bi-polar structure because neither coalition partner could tolerate the emergence of an opposition party that might conceivably coalesce with one against the other. 'For decades', Pelinka explains,
It was precisely this lack of an opposition that, according to Fritzl and Uitz, motivated Wandruszka to devise his concept of the Lager as a means of legitimating the reestablishment of a 'third force' linked by historical continuity to the national-liberal parties of the Monarchy and the First Republic. What Wandruszka saw in government by Proporz after 1945 was not a concerted effort to rebuild the state and the society from the ground up, but rather a selfish struggle to secure sinecures for the party faithful. He hoped that the 'League of Independents' (Verband der Unabhängigen: VdU), founded in 1949, would serve as a 'Third Force' to serve as a 'balance on the political scale' between the Socialist left and the Catholic-conservative right as had the national-liberal parties in the early years of the First Republic.
Historically, the national-liberal Lager had its origin in the revolution of 1848 when German-Austrian liberals hoped to bring at least the western part of the Empire into a united Großdeutschland. The failure of that revolution, the conservative unification of Germany in 1871, the shock of the Vienna stock market crash of 1873 and the realities of trying to make an economically backward country competitive in the increasingly integrated, capitalistic world market caused them to retreat from a liberalism that was substantially identified with ruthless capitalism, profiteering and disdain for the economic and social needs of the masses. They retained the traditional liberal emphasis on individual achievement, freedom of expression and resistance to the overwhelming role of the Catholic Church and became increasingly strident proponents of Anschluß to Germany leading many into the Nazi movement in the inter-war years. Initially, after the Second World War, the national-liberal Lager appeared politically bankrupt. Economic liberalism seemed anachronistic in the face of the massive need for state involvement in the reconstruction of the country. The decreasingly ideological Socialist Party came to represent social liberalism and the Peoples' Party the interests of property and bourgeois capital. German-nationalism was utterly discredited by its association with Nazism. What the human remnants of the national-liberal Lager most needed was integration into the new democratic society. Had the parties that made up the governing coalition been able to escape the past and trust each other as well make their peace with the former German-Nationals, it is possible that the Lager might never have revived. Indeed, when the third party movement emerged, it grew, not out of a desire to reestablish a Lager party in the classic sense, but rather as a protest against the coalition and its clumsy handling of de-Nazification from marginally incriminated, reenfranchised former Nazis, unincriminated bourgeoisie and farmers, veterans and immigrant ethnic Germans from the east. Public opinion polls by the Austrian Research Institute showing as much as thirty per cent of the electorate uncommitted to either of the Lager-based major parties, led its director, Herbert Kraus, to try and build a centrist, reform party free from the Lager mentality of the past. In 1949, Kraus who was totally free of any ties to the National Socialist regime and Viktor Reimann, who had been a political prisoner of the Third Reich, founded the VdU with the intention of creating a liberal, third-party alternative to the Demokratur of government by Proporz. In the 1949 parliamentary election, it parlayed this dissatisfaction into what was, until the FPÖ success of 1990, the largest voter share for a third party in the history of the Third Republic. Its elected representatives entered parliament hopeful of breaching the Proporz and democratizing the parliament by providing an alternative partner for either of the major parties. Instead, the prospect of a small coalition of the VdU with either of the major parties so terrified the coalition leaders, that their commitment to the antagonistic collaboration of consociational democracy was only strengthened. Austrian political culture was still too fragmented and democracy too alien to permit the kind of openness that shifting coalitions would have brought. The VdU was treated as a Nazi party reincarnate and consigned to the right bank of benches in the parliament and the right wing of the political spectrum in the minds of most Austrians. Robbed of the possibility of realizing its reform program, the VdU lost many of its supporters, who, afterall, needed the benefits that only a governing party could give them. After an attempt by the party's right wing to transform it into a German-national party failed, it fused with the movement forming around former National Socialist Agriculture Minister Anton Reinthaller to found the FPÖ in 1956.
Out of the Ghetto of the German-national Lager
In contrast to the VdU, the FPÖ was, at the time of its founding, little more than a vehicle for ex-Nazis to reintegrate themselves into Austrian politics and revive the old German-national Lager. Reinthaller, however, died less than two years after its founding and under the unlikely leadership of his successor, former Waffen-SS officer Friedrich Peter, the FPÖ began its evolution towards becoming a party of the present, not the past. As it turned out, Peter was the ideal choice for Chairman. As a former soldier for the German, albeit National Socialist nation he held the respect of the German-Nationals and the war veterans. As a pragmatist, however, he soon recognized that German-nationalism had been invalidated through its association with Nazism and committed himself '. . . to again pick up the thread of that which in Austria was broken at the end of the last century-- namely the further development of liberalism'. Although retaining the identification of Austria as a member of the German ethnic and cultural community as a link with its Lager past, the party set about establishing a new profile. Barred from significance in the parliament by the consociational tactics of the coalition, the FPÖ sought to establish itself in the public mind as the watchdog of the people against the machinations of the coalition. Its style was loudly oppositional as was evidenced in its early support for European unity and its criticism of the coalition's decision to join EFTA rather than the Common Market. Additionally, it attempted to awaken populist protest with a running commentary on corruption and scandal in government, demands for privatization of the bloated socialized sector of the economy and advocacy of increased freedom for private initiative. It mounted campaigns for the implementation of an official, secret ballot, proportionally representative electoral districts, depoliticization of the electronic media and the adoption of the ombudsman system to name a few. Although the ultimate realization of many of these demands may vindicate the party in retrospect, at the time, the exclusionary politics of the Proporz prevented the FPÖ from becoming anything more than the fraction in the 'two-and-a-half-party system.'
By the 1960's however, the coalition began to show the strains of the constant compromise necessary to hold it together. Both major parties secretly courted the FPÖ in case a small coalition should become necessary. In 1963, the end of consociational politics was presaged when the SPÖ, for the first time, broke with the practice under which the members of parliament of the coalition parties voted as a block and joined the FPÖ in opposing an ÖVP proposal to permit the return of Otto von Habsburg to Austria. The FPÖ naturally hoped that this would lead to a small coalition government with the SPÖ that would end its years in isolation, but a lack of faith in the stability of democracy and the the continued antipathy of many in both parties for the putatively right-extremist FPÖ combined to force them back together again.
If the elites of both coalition parties were still wary of a situation that might place the one of them in opposition and continued to rely on Lager-style electioneering to recruit the party faithful, twenty years of political stability and rising prosperity had erased the fears of the voters. In 1966 they voted a majority to the Peoples' Party making possible the first single-party government in the history of the Second Republic. Polls, testing voter consistency in the seven year period immediately thereafter, permit the conclusion that the decisive source of votes upon which that victory was built was not the 26 per cent of the electorate that still identified with the Lager then represented by the ÖVP, but rather the reservoir of voters uncommitted to either Lager that VdU-founder Herbert Kraus had indentified two decades before. By 1970, the identification of single-party rule with civil war had faded and both Catholicism and Marxism had sufficiently declined so as to make it possible for Bruno Kreisky tap this same reservoir of uncommitted voters and permit his SPÖ to govern alone for the next thirteen years. Building on the 33 per cent of the electorate the Socialist Lager still commanded, Kreisky refashioned the SPÖ as a majority, 'catch-all' party and in the process put Austria on the road from a consociational to a centripetal democracy. Similarly, in the mid-1960's the ÖVP moved to deemphasize its confessional origins, portraying itself as the party of 'technocratic conservatism' and after 1972 as a party of '"progressive" Catholicism with open borders to other humanistic positions' in order to court the decreasingly ideological, post-industrial middle-classes. By the mid-1980's, shifting party loyalties and latent alienation had become the dominant factors in electoral behavior.
This deconcentration of the Lager-based party system became apparent however, only in the parliamentary election of 1986 and its aftermath. Even six months before, an IFES poll found no reason to indicate that what had been thought to be a trend towards a two-party system would not continue. Indeed 73 per cent of Socialists and 75 per cent of Catholic-conservatives polled identified themselves with the Lager of their parents, while only 33 per cent of those raised in German-nationalist homes indicated a preference for the FPÖ. This caused political scientist Anton Pelinka to conclude that, '. . . this Lager is hardly still in the position to reproduce itself. The German-national Lager is coming to such a point where it is hardly sufficient to insure a stable foundation for even a small party for the long run'.
The 1986 FPÖ upsurge thus caught everyone by surprise. An analysis of this election is not within the scope of this paper, however a few facts should illustrate its significance as the effective end of Lager voting. First of all, Traar and Birk found that the decision whether to vote for the SPÖ or the ÖVP was primarily determined by materialistic concerns; of only secondary importance were social factors and ideological factors were insignificant. For FPÖ voters, personalities were the decisive factor, with the drop to 1 per cent in sympathy polls in the summer before the election tied directly to the decline in the popularity of Federal Chairman, Dr. Steger and the rise to almost 10 per cent by election day to '. . . hopes for a new, more successful course' under the new Chairman Haider. Plasser, Ulram and Grausgruber found 'negative voting' and the candidates, above all the personality of Haider, to have been the overwhelming determinants in the choice of voters for the FPÖ in the 1986 election. Ties to or identification with the party were of no significance and issues even had a negative correlation. The total absence of German-nationalist tones from the FPÖ campaign, the high degree of voter mobility, the relative youth of FPÖ voters and the fact that 27 per cent of the FPÖ voters had switched over from the ÖVP and 23 per cent from SPÖ repudiate assumptions that FPÖ victory was part of a general, western European rise in extreme right-wing nationalism. In response to belabored efforts, primarily by the SPÖ, to tar the Haider-led FPÖ as a neo-Nazi party, Die Presse caustically observed that these results '. . . may even force the foreign media to think again. No rational person could believe that disciplined comrades had become unreconcilable Nazis overnight.'
The 1986 election was not politically realigning in the sense that the relative order of the parties according to size was affected. The changes within the FPÖ and its increased strength in parliament did, however, cause a restructuring of the government. The SPÖ retained its plurality, but chose to coalesce with the ÖVP rather than continue governing with the, now, Haider-led FPÖ. Haider defiantly took the FPÖ into opposition and, in a political culture decidedly different from that at the time of its founding, led it to a string of election victories that has, at least for the moment, made it an alternative for many to the historic major parties. This electoral upsurge has been closely identified with the person of Haider since it is totally congruent with his leadership of the party. Critics are almost obsessed with Haider and seek evidence in his speeches and writings of racism, anti-semitism, pro-Nazi nostalgia and fascistic sentiments and see dark significance in the steadily rising FPÖ public popularity. Likewise, FPÖ publicity excessively personalizes its recent political good fortune, portraying Haider as almost a political Siegfried, single-handedly slaying corrupt, old dragons labeled ÖVP and SPÖ.
What these excessively personalized perceptions of the recent FPÖ successes ignore is the deconcentration of the party system that made them possible. For years, the dominance of Chancellor Kreisky and the lack of an attractive alternative masked the decline of the Lager. Since 1983 however, the unpopularity of the coalition of Kreisky's successor, the scandal-plagued Fred Sinowatz, with the FPÖ led by neo-liberal Norbert Steger, whom the opinion-making Viennese newsmagazine profil liked to call 'the stumbler', and the reconsolidation of the SPÖ-ÖVP coalition in 1987 have combined to make voters susceptible to the neo-populist politics of protest. According Plasser and Ulram,
While the Greens have also emerged in
the past five years as a protest party of some significance, it has been
the FPÖ that has been the principal beneficiary of these phenomena.
(See Tables I and II and Figure 1 below.)
TABLE I
FPÖ Results in State (LT) Elections from 1987 to 1991 Relative to Previous State and Federal (NR) Elections
Table II
the 1990 parliamentary election will illustrate the decline of the Lager and the emergence of a new political culture that now gives a 'bonus' to the opposition rather than to the traditionally governing major parties. To counter this trend, the major parties have sought to take advantage of the high name-recognition of their state and federal government leaders and market them as personalities in campaigns that have little to do with issues and virtually nothing to do with the ideologies that A survey of these state elections and a brief analysis of shaped the Lager from which they originally emerged.
While the political system had been experiencing a quiet deconcentration for some time, it was the return in 1987 to government by major party coalition that gave the FPÖ behind the pugnacious leadership of Jörg Haider, the 'opposition bonus' that has permitted it to emerge as a middle-sized party.
Another factor that can only be mentioned here, but which is of enormous significance in the emergence of the FPÖ as a viable choice for middle-class voters, is the parallel decline of the ÖVP, due in part to its structural obsolescence in a post-industrial society, its obstinate support of the presidential candidacy and presidency of Kurt Waldheim and its own inability to find a personality with a strong enough image to lead the party in competition with the attractive Socialist Chancellor, Franz Vranitzky and the FPÖ media-star, Jörg Haider. It remains to be seen whether its new Chairman, Eduard Busek, the third since the reestablishment of the ÖVP coalition with the SPÖ in 1987, can reverse what appears to be a dissolution into its increasingly incompatible component parts.
1986-1990: The Transition into a Mittelpartei? The first of the state elections that has revealed the deconcentration of the political system came in eastern Austria not quite a year after the revitalization of the FPÖ in the 1986. In Burgenland, where the SPÖ had governed alone since 1945, the FPÖ had averaged a bare 3.08 per cent of the vote since its founding and stood before the question whether it 'could manage a return to the Landtag' after a decade of being unrepresented. The major campaign tactic was a two-pronged assault on the entrenched SPÖ's federal and state policies. In this traditionally agricultural hinterland between Vienna and the Hungarian border the potential for a large protest vote was significant. The year before, farmers had mounted a tractor blocade in Vienna to demonstrate against the federal agricultural policy of the Socialists. In its election campaign, the FPÖ the appealed for farmers to demonstrate their dissatisfaction with the SPÖ, but also to vote against the ÖVP for its failure to implement the reforms it had promised in the parliamentary campaign the year before. Unemployment, which lay 3.5 per cent above the national average, was also an issue and was attributed primarily to the failure of the SPÖ governor to promote construction, while at the same time doubling the number of bureaucratic jobs given to party favorites. On the eve of the election, the FPÖ's general attack on SPÖ corruption at all levels was given local substance when Governor Kery was charged by the Accounting Office with using his influence to obtain state-subsidized, low cost mortgages for Viennese friends to build vacation homes in Burgenland. Following the party's long-standing opposition to nationalized industry, the Burgenland FPÖ found what post-election analysis showed to be a telling issue in demanding privatization of state's energy monopoly (BEWAG), which, it charged, was not only inefficient, but also spent tax-payers' money in contributions to the major political parties. When the results came in, the FPÖ had not only achieved its goal of returning to the state parliament, but won three seats in the process with a total vote of 7.32 per cent. The SPÖ lost 5.9 per cent from its 1982 majority, the ÖVP a modest 1.5 per cent and the FPÖ increased by 4.5 per cent. Polls conducted before the election as well as exit polls and cross-sectional analysis of electoral districts according to the relative strength of the parties in previous recent elections revealed that, while there were regional differences, when seen in the aggregate, the FPÖ win was fashioned by a voter shift of 1.9 per cent from the SPÖ and 1.1 from the ÖVP. Additionally, 2.1 per cent of former SPÖ voters switched to the ÖVP and .6 per cent to the Greens, while 2.5 per cent of former ÖVP voters switched to the SPÖ and .4 to the Greens. (See above, Table II.) Dissatisfaction with politics, with Governor Kery and the SPÖ in general and with the excessive influence of political patronage in the state economy were decisive factors in the SPÖ defeat and the FPÖ victory. As in the federal parliament election the previous year, the number of late-, switch-, and protest-voters climbed significantly, primarily to the benefit of the FPÖ. Because of Haider's vigorous campaigning and the trend towards the personalization of politics, the results, when seen in combination with the dramatic impact the FPÖ Chairman had had on the party's fortunes in the parliamentary election the previous year, contributed to what was becoming known as the 'Haider-Effekt'.
In Viennese city and state elections five weeks later, the FPÖ proclaimed a 'sensational' further step in the 'victory march of the Haider-FPÖ', however, the low voter turnout was at least significant in revealing the inability of the Lager to mobilize their electorates. Here, in the citadel of Austrian socialism, the SPÖ, although gaining an absolute majority of 54.9 per cent of the votes cast, received the support of only 33.4 per cent of voters eligible. The ÖVP declined 6.4 per cent to 28.4 per cent, a scant 17.3 per cent of those eligible. Both parties making up the federal coalition governing the country from the neo-classical parliament building downtown on the Ringstraße lost massive numbers of votes compared with 1983, while the FPÖ increased its total number of votes by over 15,000, raising its voter share from 5.4 to 9.7 per cent. (See Table I.) Even when taken together, the major parties which represent the remnants of Austria's traditional political Lager had managed to win the support of only 50.75 per cent of Vienna's eligible voters. Analysis of exit poll data by the Fessel Institut showed 63.7 per cent of the FPÖ vote to have come from the two major parties, 23.8 per cent from the SPÖ and 39.87 from the ÖVP. Among FPÖ voters, 26 per cent stated protest as the reason for their choice along with another 7 per cent who chose one of two specific FPÖ criticisms of the policies of the coalition parties as their motive. Another 21 per cent simply cited Haider, himself strongly associated with populistic protest. Although this was simultaneously a city and state election, in the federal capital of Vienna the dividing line between local and federal politics is murky, which the FPÖ was able to use to its advantage. The public mood regarding politics in general was negative and the SPÖ, which had won a majority in every city election since 1945 save one and had named the federal chancellor for the past seventeen years, was bound to lose votes. The FPÖ had focused its negative campaign on the Socialists, accusing them of mismanaging city government for decades and of breaking their promises of 1983 and continuing revelations of party favoritism, inefficiency and corruption in VOEST, the giant socialized industrial concern, implied the guilt of Vienna's SPÖ by association. To attract the votes of the growing middle-class sector of the electorate, the FPÖ criticized the ÖVP as the handmaiden of the Socialists and portrayed itself as the underdog, because of an electoral law that required it to win two-and-a-half times as many votes to elect a representative as the major parties. Its positive program proposed 'a new way' to a healthier, more secure, efficient and planned Vienna. While exit polls give substance to the personalization of politics that is illustrated by the preoccupation of both the party and the media with the 'Haider-Effekt', what deeper analysis of this election reveals is the importance of protest in the results, whether in increases for the FPÖ and the other smaller parties or in the enormous victory for 'none of the above'.
The next test for the Haider 'election locomotive' came a year later in Lower Austria. As in Burgenland, the FPÖ had no real party organization and since its founding had never won more than 3.2 per cent of the vote in a state election, with a catastrophic 1.7 per cent in 1983, the first year of its small coalition with the Socialists at the federal level. In contrast to Burgenland and Vienna, the ruling party in Lower Austria since the founding of the Second Republic was the ÖVP and unlike Burgenland, the question was not whether the FPÖ 'could manage a return to the Landtag', but whether it could win its first seats ever. Coming eighteen months after the formation of the SPÖ-ÖVP federal government, this election in the country's most populous state was a critical test of the popularity of the coalition. Coalition with the SPÖ had not been helpful to ÖVP across the country. Polls concluded just two weeks before the election showed the ÖVP six index points behind the SPÖ. Its Chairman and Vice Chancellor, Alois Mock, led his party by a scant .14 at +1.11 on a scale from -5 to +5, while Chancellor Vranitzky led his SPÖ by 1.36 at +2.92. This poll showing Chairman Haider at -.38 ahead of his party at -.71 would not seem to square with recent election results, but may be seen as evidence that the FPÖ's successes were not primarily due to Haider's popularity, but rather to his ability to attract the support of voters expressing their hostility to the politics of coalition. Another poll completed at the same time showed the hard cores of the SPÖ and ÖVP having dropped to 19.4 and 14.3 respectively and the potential protest vote as high as 50 per cent. The election also became a test of 'Haider-Effekt', when not quite two months before, Haider was widely reviled in the press for putatively Nazistic, right-wing extremist thinking in response to his comment that 'the Austrian nation was an ideological miscarriage, because membership in an ethnic group is one thing and in a state quite another'.
Again, the FPÖ campaign relied on dissatisfaction with politics at the federal level railing against the 'Red-Black Unity Party' in Vienna, a tactic that acquired local significance when the state chairmen of those same coalition parties both agreed to reject the FPÖ as a possible coalition partner. Led by the moderate, widely respected former businessman and short-time Defense Minister Helmut Krünes, the FPÖ appealed to farmers, charging the ÖVP's Farmers League had sold them out to the Socialists on price supports as the cost of coalition. It also tapped resentment against Vienna by demanding more local control for states and towns as a means of achieving savings and reducing taxes and criticized the ÖVP's resistance to measures to protect against ecological damage. Although he shared the spotlight of publicity with Krünes, Haider gave his usual energetic support to the state party, speaking in over 150 separate communities. Ten days before the election, a poll predicting a turn-out of only 70 per cent sent the ÖVP into a panic, fearing that this would insure FPÖ representation in the state parliament and endanger its, hitherto permanent, majority.
Although voter participation declined only 3.3 per cent to 80.6, the ÖVP's fears were nonetheless realized. The FPÖ polled a healthy 9.4 per cent. The ÖVP lost 6.9 per cent of its 1983 voter share, falling to 47.6 per cent, but due to a favorable apportionment law still won a majority of 29 seats against 22 for the SPÖ and 5 for the FPÖ. The FPÖ also won the right to send one representative in the upper house of the federal parliament costing the ÖVP its absolute majority there.
Despite Haider's 'miscarriage' remark, only a rudimentary party organization and Krünes' exclusion from the television debate of ticket leaders, the FPÖ was the only party, despite the decline in voter participation, to increase its total number of votes. The press that had roasted him so thoroughly only weeks before, again attributed the FPÖ victory to the 'Haider-Effekt' implicitly raising the question whether it represented a dangerous rising of right-wing radicalism. The more sophisticated analyses, however, continued to point to the importance of the protest vote which not only was becoming more pronounced, but also was now denied to the ÖVP as the price of ending its seventeen year status as an opposition party at the federal level. Cross-sectional analysis of the results by electoral district along socio-economic lines show that the ÖVP lost between 6 and 8 per cent of its voter share in the predominantly rural communities that had been its traditional source of strength, while among the better educated and in communities with high percentages of civil servants and people employed in service industries, the losses ranged to ten per cent and more. The SPÖ also lost voters, also with the sizes of the losses increasing proportionally with the numbers of civil servants and service industry employees, but with a lower range of percentage losses than the ÖVP. In summary, the trends of Burgenland and Vienna were continued in Lower Austria with the media attention to Haider still obscuring the structural reasons for the results. (See above, Tables I and II and Fig. 1.)
The putative breakthrough of the FPÖ to become a 'Mittelpartei' came five months later, on March 12, 1989. This was the date for the regularly scheduled election in Salzburg, but became 'Super Sunday' when SPÖ and ÖVP strategists in Carinthia and Tyrol decided to move the elections of their own state governments forward to that day as well thinking to derail the Haider 'election locomotive' by keeping him busy at home. Their plan backfired however, because it gave the FPÖ the opportunity to turn the three campaigns into a 'referendum on the coalition in Vienna'. Thus in Tyrol the historically dominant ÖVP was put on the defensive for its unpopular federal coalition with the Socialists and in Salzburg, the 'bonus' that the popular ÖVP incumbent Governor Haslauer should have enjoyed against his only minimally known FPÖ competitors for the middle class vote was substantially diluted. This strategy also played well in Carinthia, where FPÖ-Chairman Haider had been conducting guerrilla war on Vienna for years. Where issues were discussed at all, matters of regional concern, but subject to federal legislation dominated. In Tyrol and to some degree in Salzburg the FPÖ stressed its support for entry into the EC, but warned the government about the need to control transit traffic through Austria and enact strict pollution controls on commercial vehicles. In all three states, but particularly in Carinthia, the personality of Haider and his populist attacks on behalf of the 'little man' against the comfortable cooperation of the corrupt 'old parties' and demands for political renewal dominated the campaign. An electoral program derived from populist themes enunciated since 1986 at the federal level demanded the elimination of party privilege in the awarding of state contracts or appointments to public office, privatization of the state banking and insurance enterprises and more frugality in government.
The SPÖ, optimistic at being able to trade on the popularity of Chancellor Vranitzky and rebound from its second worst showing in history in Tyrol and its absolute nadir in Salzburg in 1984, was badly damaged at the outset of the campaign by the revelation of tax evasion by its ticket leader and party secretary in Salzburg, the forced resignations of Federal Interior Minister Blecha and Parliament President Gratz in response to allegations of corruption in the investigation of the sabotage sinking of the highly insured freighter Lucona and the leak of information from the Ministry of Justice that it had sufficient evidence to undertake legal proceedings against ex-Chancellor Fred Sinowatz for having lied under oath. In retaliation, the SPÖ insisted on an inquiry into the behavior of the ÖVP-inclined Bundesländer insurance group, which revealed that an official of the firm had intervened with the Ministry of Justice in 1983 to have a telling document regarding the Lucona scandal suppressed. This bickering between the federal coalition parties could only redound to the benefit of the opposition parties and even revelations of the underreporting of income by FPÖ-General Secretary Heide Schmidt, Chairman Haider and many in his state party and the admission by Haider before a parliamentary investigation commission that he had had a secret meeting with the main Lucona scandal suspect appear to have had little impact on the protest vote.
The trend against the major parties that
had been gathering strength since 1986 worked in all three elections to
make the FPÖ the party of choice among the protest voters and the
only winner. (See Tables I, II and III.) The ÖVP lost its thin majority
in Salzburg and suffered a catastrophic loss of votes and its historic
majority in Tyrol. The SPÖ's percentage losses were less drastic,
but in both Salzburg and Tyrol new all-time lows were reached while in
Carinthia its loss of the absolute majority created a opportunity for the
FPÖ, now the second-largest party, to use the downgraded ÖVP
as 'the balance on the political scale' to forge a nonsocialist coalition
with Haider as Governor.
TABLE III
LOSSES BY THE ÖVP AND SPÖ IN THE STATE ELECTIONS OF 12. MARCH 1989
In Salzburg, while dramatic relative to its disastrous 1984 results, the FPÖ victory may be seen more as restoring the party to its traditional strength than as a breakthrough. Cross-sectional analysis by electoral district shows a return of FPÖ strength in the prosperous and dynamic capital city and its suburbs as well as in outlying communities with high concentrations of public employees or strong tourist industries. More than a quarter of all 1984 voters either switched parties or abstained which worked particularly to the benefit of the FPÖ. Its traditional strength among the best educated voters improved only slightly, but a significant breakthrough was made among skilled workers and employees in service industries.
In Tyrol, unlike Salzburg where the Governor Haslauer's popularity undoubtedly mitigated the general decline of the ÖVP and limited the FPÖ's inroads into its electorate, the 15.91 per cent loss relative to 1984 was massive. Cross-sectional analysis shows a close correlation between ÖVP losses and FPÖ gains across the board, with the greatest percentages of shifts in urban industrial communities, in the capital city of Innsbruck and in rural, working class communities.
In Carinthia, personalities played an overwhelming role in the outcome. The SPÖ had to campaign for the first time in over a decade without its popular Governor Leopold Wagner who had had to withdraw because of injuries incurred in an assassination attempt. His successor, although widely recognized as coolly competent, lacked the personal appeal to collect on the incumbent's 'bonus'. On the other hand, FPÖ Chairman Haider, in his adopted home state, enjoyed somewhat of a 'bonus' of his own for having resurrected the cause of German-speaking children forced into bi-lingual elementary school classes and for his popular attacks on the 'Reds' and 'Blacks' in the Viennese intellectual and political establishments. As in Tyrol, cross-sectional analysis shows a strong correlation between ÖVP losses and FPÖ gains, with a particularly impressive 15.8 increase in the capital city of Klagenfurt and nearly as impressive showings in other urban-industrial, urban service-oriented and rural service-oriented communities.
The last state election in interval between
federal elections came seven months later in Vorarlberg on October 8, 1989.
The FPÖ had always been strong in the 'Ländle', Austria's western-most
state, but in 1984 had lost votes and its place as the third largest party
to the 'Alternatives-United Green' list at a time when it was unsuccessfully
struggling to achieve its program in its coalition with the Socialists
in the federal government. In 1989 however, with the momentum of six successive
state election victories and Haider's naming as Governor of Carinthia behind
it and the Greens in disarray, the party's mood was optimistic. The ÖVP
made preservation of its absolute majority the focus of the campaign and
its popular Governor used the threat of resignation in order to win his
incumbent's 'bonus'. Unlike the campaigns earlier in the year, the FPÖ
focus in Vorarlberg was on local issues, including support for a number
of environmental protection proposals and above all on breaking the ÖVP
majority. With a percentage increase of 5.62 per cent of the total vote
and a doubling of its representation in the state parliament, the FPÖ
claimed a 'continuation of its victory march', with Haider as the 'father
of the success'. Exit polls showed the FPÖ winning 2.3 per cent of
the 1984 ÖVP vote while losing only .4 per cent -- 1.2 per cent from
the SPÖ with no corresponding loss, .6 per cent from the Greens with
a .3 per cent loss and a 1.6 gain of new voters and former abstainers,
with only a .4 per cent loss. Subsequent cross-sectional analysis shows
parallels with the sources of FPÖ victories in other state elections,
but indicates that in Vorarlberg the FPÖ gains were not only to be
seen as due primarily to ÖVP losses. (See Table IV)
TABLE IV
STATE PARLIAMENT ELECTION IN VORARLBERG 1989 VOTE IN PER CENT BY COMMUNITY ACCORDING TO SOCIO-ECONOMIC STRUCTURE
Despite these gains, the FPÖ did not achieve its goal of overturning the ÖVP majority, but at 16.12 per cent and only 5 points and two seats below the SPÖ, the FPÖ had arrived at the point where it could hope to challenge the SPÖ for second place as it had already successfully done in Carinthia.
Space does not permit here a detailed analysis of the 1990 parliamentary election, but the results summarized below will illustrate the confirmation of the trends in the state elections discussed above. Defying the Austrian and Europe-wide trend against traditional major parties the SPÖ escaped with a loss of only .34 per cent for a total voter share of 42.79 per cent. This feat was achieved by hiding the scandals and other problems of twenty years of entrenched rule behind the telegenic face of Chancellor Franz Vranitzky. An ingenious write-in campaign that implied that one could simply vote for the Chancellor and not his party succeeded in snaring a full 40 per cent of the votes posted to the SPÖ and was given credit in post election analysis for having stopped what might otherwise have been a substantial voter defection. The ÖVP had no such media star to arrest its collapse and the trend against it that had become apparent in the state elections since 1986 was confirmed with a catastrophic loss of 9.23 percent for a total voter share of 32.06 per cent, its worst in history. The FPÖ claimed 16.64 per cent of the vote for its best result and therewith the status of a 'Mittelpartei'. Its campaign was a continuation of the themes of the past four years and featured attacks on the coalition parties for their complicity in scandals, criticism of promises not fulfilled, demands for tax reform, more individual freedom, less bureaucracy, environmental protection, privatization and a freer marketplace. The only issue which could possibly lend credibility to charges that the FPÖ was appealing to the radical right was Haider's challenge to Austria's thirty-five year tradition of neutrality. The choice of Munich on the day of the ratification of the treaty for German reunification for his declaration that neutrality was a 'home-made stumbling block' in the way of EC admission seemed almost designed to court nostalgic, German-national sentiment. Certainly this is the way it was seen by his political opponents back in Austria who accused him of appealing to old and neo-Nazis and with 'propagating Anschluß sentiment'. As a campaign issue however, neutrality was seen as important by only 9 per cent of undecided, primarily middle-class voters and if Haider had deliberately planned his comment as an campaign ploy, it backfired, causing 14 per cent of those interested in the matter to to decide for the ÖVP. Personalities dominated the campaign and in this sense the FPÖ benefited from the attractive youthfulness of its ticket leaders, parliamentary fraction chairman Norbert Gugerbauer, General Secretary Heide Schmidt and of course sportclothes-model handsome Jörg Haider.
In 1990 however, more important even than personalities was the public's receptivity for the FPÖ's brand of anti-government populism resulting from dissatisfaction with the coalition's responses to new problems posed by the eastern European revolutions of the previous year. Refugees were coming into the country at a rate above that that had swelled requests for asylum in 1989 to 21,882. In April, the Socialist Minister of Interior had already reported that the 2.4 per cent increase in the crime rate in 1988 had been due to the increased immigration from eastern Europe. The 5 per cent further increase for 1989 and the acceleration that in 1990 ultimately pushed crime up 8 per cent incensed Austrians and brought applause for the FPÖ's charges that the SPÖ-led Ministry of Interior was soft on crime and that the ÖVP-led Foreign Ministry was too lax on the refugee problem. Seizing on this burning issue, the FPÖ grudgingly supported the right of asylum for the politically, religiously and racially persecuted, but stated that Austria, for social, cultural and ethnic reasons must not become a refugee camp for all of Europe. Governor Haider then rejected a SPÖ plan agreed to by the governors of the other eight states to disburse 18,000 refugees, temporarily quartered in eastern Austria, proportionally among all the states and the FPÖ campaign exploited the fears of the 'alien flood', demanding 'no importation of crime, immigration only in cases of need on the labor market and where adequate housing exists, introduction of seasonal status for foreign labor'. Although leftist critics saw this as more evidence of the FPÖ's right-ward tilt, the new, global wave of immigration had made such appeals part of the political mainstream in most of the prosperous countries of Western Europe in 1990. In Austria, such concerns were most evident in the erstwhile socialist citadel of Vienna where the new immigrants were the most numerous. There, the local party's exhortation, 'Vienna must not become Chicago', played not very subtly on the anxieties of voters who voted FPÖ in particularly large numbers where the eastern European invasion was the most apparent. In 5 out of 23 clearly working-class precincts, the FPÖ passed the ÖVP to become the second largest party. Here, in contrast to most areas of Austria, the 1990 electoral upsurge appears to have been a consequence of the particularly pointed local FPÖ exploitation of the crime issue in combination with the high incidence of foreigners in the city. Elsewhere, the percentage increases were quite in keeping with the trend in the state parliament elections since 1986. (See Figure 1 above and Table V below.) The political alienation and dissatisfaction with the SPÖ-ÖVP coalition that the FPÖ had successfully exploited in its state election campaigns had again brought it victory. In 1990, 16.2 per cent of the total FPÖ electorate switched over from the SPÖ and 27.6 per cent from the disintegrating ÖVP. In contrast, 1.9 per cent of former FPÖ voters were convinced by the SPÖ write-in campaign for 'Kaiser Franz', while a miniscule .2 per cent switched to the ÖVP.
TABLE V
FPÖ RESULTS IN 1990 PARLIAMENTARY (NR) ELECTION
RELATIVE TO PREVIOUS STATE (LT)
AND NR ELECTIONS
The FPÖ did best among the young
who were less likely to be influenced by Lager considerations, winning
19 per cent of all first-time voters and 18 per cent of those under thirty
years of age. Some reflection of the FPÖ's appeal to latent German-nationalism
may be found in its 19 per cent support among voters over 70 in sharp contrast
to the below-average 13 per cent of the generation that came of political
age during the early years of the Second Republic. The remaining age cohorts
between 30 and 60 supported the FPÖ at a 15 per cent rate. By occupation,
skilled workers, with one in four voting for the FPÖ, were the largest
group of supporters, followed by the traditional back-bone of the national-liberal
Lager, self-employed professionals, at 21 per cent. Even among civil servants
for whom party affiliation could be important in appointment and promotion,
the FPÖ increased its voter share from 8 to 14 per cent. Cross-sectional
analysis by community according to economic profile and past preference
showed increases in a range from 5.1 to 6.2 per cent across the board except
in megalopolitan areas where the increase was 9.2 per cent. In the results
of a poll probing the motives of FPÖ voters (see Table VI below),
only motives 3 and 6 do not in some way indicate dissatisfaction with the
major parties or the policies of the coalition.
Table VI
MOTIVES OF FPÖ VOTERS IN PER CENT (MORE THAN ONE CHOICE POSSIBLE)
Populist protest is the dominant factor
here and only in the responses to motives 2 and 4 can even remote right-radical
sentiment be inferred. Clearly, in the past four years the FPÖ had
defined itself as the party of protest, which is further demonstrated by
the fact that a full 76 per cent of its voters had decided before the final
two weeks in contrast to the 51 per cent of late deciders in 1986. In 1990,
the FPÖ was, without question, the beneficiary of the structural changes
that had loosened traditional party ties and made it an acceptable alternative
to the parties that made up the governing coalition. All this was, however,
obscured by the overwhelming personalization of the campaign to which the
FPÖ contributed with its decision to pit Haider against the SPÖ's
write-in campaign for Vranitzky despite his absence from the head of the
FPÖ ticket. Thus, when the FPÖ again increased its voter share,
the victory was attributed to a continuation of the 'Haider-Effekt'. Grounds
to challenge this facile explanation of yet the latest victory of the FPÖ
arouse in 1991 out of an unexpected series of events and an unscheduled
state election that permit the electoral success of the party to be differentiated
from the significane of its charismatic and controversial Chairman.
Conclusion
The Burgenland Landtag election, although falling beyond the timeframe originally conceived for this study, has relevance because its results appear to confirm the thesis presented at the outset. It was held in Burgenland June 23, 1991, fifteen months before normally scheduled, as a consequence of the ruling SPÖ's desire for a vote of confidence for its chairman, Governor Sipötz who stood accused of having spied on candidates for appointive office and for its native son and ex-Chancellor Fred Sinowatz who had just been convicted of perjury with the implication that the entire state Executive Committee was also guilty. The FPÖ, with the momentum of more than four years of 'Haider-Effekt' and an eighteen per cent standing in the polls, agreed, thinking to make even more gains at the expense of the ÖVP. The ÖVP was in a particularly unfavorable position for the campaign. It had suffered a disastrous loss in the 1990 parliamentary election with a particularly worrisome erosion in traditionally strong agricultural sectors and stood at only 29 per cent in the polls. Additionally it had to bear the burden of running its campaign in the middle of a bitter mud-slinging battle for the federal chairmanship between warring factions of the party.
The mission of the FPÖ campaign was to again deny the Socialists their absolute majority and state Chairman Rauter expressed as his personal goal the winning of two seats additional seats which would bring his party into the government and earn for it the status of a Mittelpartei even in Burgenland. Haider gave his usual energetic support with the standard attacks on socialism and corruption given specific focus by the recent embarrassments of Sinowatz and Sipötz. Suddenly, only ten days before the election, Haider, who had frequently violated the accepted norms of political correctnes, made a statement that converted the 'Haider-Effekt' into a boomerang. The incident occurred during a speech to the Carinthian parliament when he suggested that the reduction of unemployment benefits to persons offered acceptable alternative employment would be an incentive to return to work. When the chairman of the opposition SPÖ fraction shouted that this was akin to the forced labor of the Third Reich, Haider retorted:
He continued that it was the SPÖ, and implicitly not the FPÖ, that for almost forty years had been led by high-ranking members of the Hitler Youth and then returned to his speech. After he had finished, an ÖVP speaker opened his remarks with a criticism of Haider's outburst, but then continued with the discussion at hand with no further incidents. About fifteen minutes later, after coming to realize the potential opening that Haider's remarks had made in the ranks of the FPÖ-ÖVP coalition, the SPÖ fraction leader used a point of order to call for a meeting of the fraction chairpersons
When the session resumed, Haider distanced himself from this implication attached to his earlier statement saying that he '. . . in no way had intended a positive evaluation of the labor practices of the Third Reich' and that he regretted ever making the statement. Despite this retraction, Haider's many enemies leaped at his indiscretion, making him the focal point of a storm of criticism from the press and the major parties. Chancellor Vranitzky demanded his resignation as Governor, the federal government debated damage control and the judiciary considered whether to charge him with a violation of the anti-Nazi law. Then, two days before the Burgenland election, the ÖVP joined with the SPÖ and voted no confidence in Haider, thus forcing his resignation as Governor.
Within the FPÖ, the reaction to Haider's statement was mixed. Third Parliament President Heide Schmidt and fraction leader Gugerbauer called it 'unacceptable' and other prominent FPÖ figures were also critical of their frequently uncomfortable Chairman. The Federal Executive Committee did however, after a bruising eight hour meeting, rally behind Haider with a resolution condemning the 'scandalous political and media campaign' against the FPÖ and its Chairman. In Carinthia there was a mass demonstration of support for Haider and a public opinion poll commissioned by the FPÖ showed the party there with a 38 per cent popularity standing, close behind the SPÖ. In Burgenland, Haider-sycophant Rauter, ignoring the pleas of many of his colleagues, stood firmly behind his Chairman expressing his disgust at the criticism of a man who had simply 'told the truth'.
Austria-wide, and presumably also in Burgenland where the FPÖ had never had any strength until 1986, Haider plummeted from 47 per cent in March to a 33 per cent in July in the continuing poll testing whether 'this politician should play a more important role in the future'. Haider-critic Heide Schmidt however, soared to 53 per cent and the FPÖ generally lost only 2 points from March, a scant .65 per cent below its election results the previous October. In the Burgenland election, the FPÖ, despite an overall drop in voter participation, increased its number of votes by thirty percent relative to 1987 (See Table I) while the major parties again declined. A precise assessment of the impact of Haider's 'remark' must await the results of the in-depth studies of voter behavior and the judgment of time. Nevertheless, some tentative conclusions can be reached:
Landtag elections in two further states, voting for the first time since beginning of the timeframe established for this study, need to be mentioned. On September 22, despite numerous predictions of an electoral disaster and reports of scandal and dissension within the state party, the Styrian FPÖ exceeded its most optimistic hopes of a ten per cent voter share, leaping from 4.59 per cent in 1986 to 15.38 per cent. The ÖVP was unable to maintain its absolute majority of thirty years, losing a massive 7.52 per cent, while the SPÖ declined 2.71 percent. Two weeks later, the Upper Austrian FPÖ improved even on the Styrian success, jumping to 17.7 percent from its record low of 5.03 per cent in 1985 and exceeded even its voter share in the federal parliamentary election at the peak of the 'Haider-Effekt' in 1990. The ÖVP and the SPÖ declined 5.92 per cent and 6.56 per cent respectively, with some of the losses attributable to the FPÖ's exploitation of anger with the federal coalition's policies on immigration and asylum as it had so successfully in Vienna in the parliamentary election twelve months before. Taken together, these three state elections of 1991 may be seen as a continuation of the trends in voter behavior manifested in the other state elections since 1987 and a confirmation of the contention made at the outset of this article: namely that the FPÖ electoral upsurge since 1986 has been due to the breakdown of the Lager and to the perception of protest voters that the FPÖ is their best means for speaking out against the 'tyranny of the majority' as exercised by the coalition parties.
Over the previous five years Jörg
Haider's charismatic and aggressively critical style had been particularly
well-suited to win the votes of many who otherwise might have cast blank
ballots or stayed at home. That the FPÖ's success since 1986 is not
to be attributed to a rise in right-radical voting sentiment in Austria
appears to be evidenced by the fact that Haider's popularity plunged following
his remark about the employment policies of the Third Reich while sympathy
for the FPÖ remained stable. To be sure, among Haider's recruits have
been former right-wing FPÖ voters who had defected to the neo-nazistic
NPD during the years of FPÖ's liberal emphasis and above all during
its three year coalition with the Socialists. The major growth of the FPÖ
in the past five years however, has been shown by election analysis not
to come from any revitalized national-liberal Lager, but to have been built
on an electorate that spans the political spectrum '. . . from right-fringe
groups, to anti-government protest voters (among them former ÖVP-
and SPÖ core voters) and to the apolitical "trendy voters"'.
Understandably, given its roots in the German-national Lager, the FPÖ,
like the German Republikaner, captures the nostalgic vote of German-nationalists
and former Nazis. Also, like the Republikaner, the FPÖ has become
the Austrian party of protest against the political establishment with
particularly strong support among the young. Here, however, the parallels
cease. The new FPÖ constituency is largely to be found among the better
educated, upward-striving, service-sector employees of the cities and towns
who have been the winners in the modernization of post-industrial society.
They are pro-capitalist, pro-modernist, pro-Western and pro-European in
their sentiments and the FPÖ's continued affirmation of Austria's
place in the German cultural and ethnic community seems irrelevant when
compared with the new sources of the party's support and the issues which
animate its voters. They may resonate to modern, populist appeals, but
there is little to suggest that they are right-radical, much less neo-Nazi.
Whether its recent electoral successes makes the FPÖ the 'Mittlepartei'
that Heide Schmidt triumphantly proclaimed after the last parliamentary
election or a party at all remains in question. Its constituency is broad
and for the moment has little binding it together except protest against
the ruling coalition. Jörg Haider has personified these cynical, critical
and above all youthful voters. The remark that lost him his position as
Governor of Carinthia may yet turn out to be the mistake that makes him
unacceptable as a political leader. Indeed, ever since Haider's emergence
as Chairman and his formation of almost a Führer cult around him,
there has been dissatisfaction at the highest levels that could not be
openly expressed for fear of killing the "Haider-Effekt" that
has benefited them all. On the other hand, the reaction of the voters,
whose support has brought about the revitalization of the FPÖ, was
far less censorious than that of the media whose coverage of Haider's embarrassment
was regarded as exaggerated by 42 per cent of those polled. The fact that
44 per cent did not see the "remark" as damaging to the reputation
of Austria and one-third even felt it was an acceptable statement of the
facts may in fact enhance his capacity to capture the votes of those wanting
to protest the major parties' domination of the government, the intellectual
establishment and the media. It is too early to consign the enormous political
talent of Jörg Haider to the history of the party, yet regardless
of his fate, as long as the SPÖ-ÖVP coalition survives, the 'opposition
bonus' for protest parties will be available. The most recent research
on the political cultural of the country shows Austrias to be characterized
by 'a difuse attitude of protest, public cynicism, emotional agression
and populistic resentment'. Under these circumstances and with attractive,
critical leaders like the Third Parliamentary President Heide Schmidt,
floor-leader Norbert Gugerbauer and others in the parliamentary fraction,
the FPÖ will continue to have the potential to elect enough of its
candidates to remain a party of significance in a political environment
increasingly dominated by personalities and populistic protest.
References