ABSTRACT
Austria’s identity has many contradictory aspects: It is sometimes seen from the viewpoint of its imperial past—as a great European power, foil of stories of the Habsburgs and their rule over most of Central Europe for so many centuries. For historians and social scientists, especially for political scientists, this Austria of the Second Republic is of particular interest. The Austrian Empire, even after 1867, was in the same league of constitutional latecomers as Russia and Turkey and Germany: monarchies with an underdeveloped form of parliamentarism—that is, with an underdeveloped form of democracy. As Austria stands poised on the brink of a new century, it is losing its peculiar characteristics, losing its special features. The collapse of the Communist regimes changed Austria’s geopolitical position dramatically. Austria is participating in the general European trend toward new concepts of internal as well as external security, especially through its membership in the European Union.
