ABSTRACT
In Austria, more than in other liberal democracies, politics has been dominated by political parties and the interest groups affiliated with them. The major traditional parties were responsible for determining the rules of the game—those of the constitution and especially those of the political culture, which is based more on loyalty to ideological camps than on loyalty to the republic or its constitution. Austria is a party state developed to the extreme, a political system in which parties tend to become identical with the constitutional government and to dominate all of society. A party recruitment function comprising all of society and extending far beyond the political sphere in the narrower sense: The parties—especially the Socialist Party of Austria and OVP—controlled access to management positions in banking and industry as well as access to teaching and administrative positions in schools.
