ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the coalition paper of the People’s Party-Freedom Party (FPO) government, which has been in office since February 4, 2000. It provides examples of FPO discourses and their exclusionary practices to give readers some impressions about every day discourses in Austria since 1986. To understand the rhetoric of the coalition paper, it is important to consider the functions of the genre of a coalition paper. The rhetoric of globalization and competitiveness has become an argumentative vehicle for disciplining the aims of social justice and welfare by "economic" arguments. Politics becomes ersatz economics just as, from the contrary perspective, economics becomes ersatz politics. The specific Austrian past and theories about collective memory and legitimation are necessary for the explanations of the FPO's success. The Federal Government supports the Charter of European Political Parties for a Non-Racist Society and commits itself to work for the exemplary realisation of its fundamental principles in Austria.
