ABSTRACT
The Lander had already declared their will to ‘accede’ to the new Republic shortly after the proclamation of the Republic in late 1918. The landscape of Austrian federalism has not changed radically over time. The Federal Council as the Federal Parliament’s second chamber has relatively little to say in terms of law, and less even politically. The Land constitutions are not merely symbolic documents. The number of constitutional amendments varies between several amendments per year to one amendment every two or three years which shows that the Land constitutions are living documents that are regularly updated. The possibility for Land constitutions to entrench fundamental rights is one of the most interesting fields of subnational constitutional autonomy. Supranational and international law, in their turn, have relatively little impact on the Land constitutions because they do not touch on organizational or identity issues at regional level.
