ABSTRACT
The progressive shrivelling of the social democratic and conservative networks, of their reach into Austrian society, does not amount to a crisis of the country's democratic institutions. The Greens and the Freedom Party, and after 1993 also the Liberal Forum, delighted in exposing the latent, and sometimes open, corruption that often resulted from the cozy relationship between Social Democrats and Conservatives. Social Democrats and Conservatives have agreed to pull back the borders of state and party influence. Political guarantees were designed to make it difficult for one party to try to oppress the other; this was the reason for carving up the state into zones of party influence. On the national level, such a coalition would probably be committed to maintaining the welfare state, stress environmental reform, take a more secular approach to matters of religion, sex and morality and reduce party influence outside the immediate area of politics.
