ABSTRACT
In his admirable article, Tony Judt has succeeded in portraying the essential characteristics of postwar Austrian politics, including the main problems of the country’s domestic and foreign affairs. He has also dealt with the status and function of Jorg Haider’s Freedom Party (FPO), and attempted to place all these dimensions of Austrian political life in a European framework. The Innsbruck party congress of the FPO in September 1986 must be seen as a milestone in Austrian domestic politics. The change of course in the FPO towards the far right is not only visible in terms of party personnel, but also in the utterances, actions, and policies of Haider himself. The permanent, systematic, and radical criticism of the “system” of representative democracy and of the political parties refounded at the beginning of the Second Republic in 1945 is of the utmost significance.
