Dimensions of Party System Change: The Case of Austria

For much of the post-war period, the Austrian party system was widely regarded as highly stable. In the literature describing that system up to the late 1970s, ¹ six elements figure prominently and may be considered to have constituted its‘core’ features. ² The first is the existence of two more-or-less encapsulated political subcultures, or‘Lager’, ³ each allied to one of Austria's major political parties: the Sozialistische Partei Österreichs (SPÖ) and the Österreichische Volkspartei (ÖVP) and used by them to maintain their political power, especially vis-à-vis the parliamentary party lacking such extensive networks, namely, the Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs (FPÖ). ⁴ Thus the high degree of political organisation of the SPÖ and ÖVP ⁵ was largely predicated upon the Lager, with their wide range of auxiliary associations. Prominent among the means used by the parties to retain the support of their Lager, and thus their political duopoly, were group patronage and patronage of individual Lager members. ⁶ The second and concomitant core characteristic of the Austrian party system was a persistently high degree of two-party domination of the vote. Between 1945 and 1979, the mean combined share of the ÖVP and SPÖ vote at National Council elections was 90.2 per cent (see Tables 1 and 2).