Austrian Politics: 1918 to 2019

This article provides an analysis of Austrian politics over the last one hundred years, including the nation’s reckoning with Nazism and antisemitism. Founded in 1918 as the smallest successor state of the Habsburg Empire, the Republic of Austria was designed as a parliamentary democracy by political parties deeply rooted in pre-war Austria. The borders of the republic were defined by the Entente (France, Great Britain, the United States, and Italy; Russia was absent), who remade the maps of Europe and the Middle East to their advantage. Republican Austria failed in 1933 and 1934, the victim of explosive internal conflicts and authoritarian tendencies. Re-designed as a semi-fascist state, Austria was occupied and annexed by Nazi Germany in 1938. In 1945, Austria was reborn as a democratic republic—again, due to the interests of the victors of World War II. However, this time Austria flourished in the form of a stable, liberal Western democracy. Austria learned its lessons—it has accepted its independence from Germany, and it has recognized Austrian co-responsibility for the Holocaust and the crimes of Nazism. After 2000, Austrian politics changed again and the country is now more like other West European democracies, including its turn toward populism. The article concludes that ideological secularization and Europeanization are responsible for a decline of political predictability in contemporary Austria.