ABSTRACT
John Boyer emphasizes the links between the Catholic Church and the radicalism which was so typical for pre-1914 Austria. Austria’s political culture can be described as the transition from centrifugal to consociational to competitive democracy. The collapse of the First Republic in 1934 was the consequence of a lack of basic consensus. The party system of the late nineteenth century is responsible for the party state which dominates post-1945 Austria. To understand the transformation of contemporary Austrian political culture, it is necessary to analyze its roots. Those are deeply ingrained in the era between 1867 and 1918, when Habsburg Austria was a semi-parliamentary, semi-constitutional system with strongly developed political parties. Austrian parties have much greater control over the government than parties in other democracies. The parties which founded the Republic and framed its constitution created contemporary Austria. The Church tried to reconcile its social existence with the democratic tendencies reaching Austria.
