ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the role of sub-national claims in turning Carinthia into an important stronghold for the Freedom Party, which had significant consequences for national politics. Carinthia is in many ways the opposite and has been struggling to keep up with the modernization and economic growth underway in the richer parts of Austria. Carinthia is a largely alpine state, representing less than 10 per cent of the national population. Its main industries have included agriculture, forestry, manufacturing, mining, and tourism. Carinthia is known in Austria for harboring the nation’s most salient and longest ethnic conflict between the regional German- and Slovene-speaking populations. Carinthia’s ethnic and socio-cultural tensions have also served as the basis for other claims. These were directed against outside critics and served to appeal to Carinthians’ strong sense of local identity to achieve political unity and silence the political opposition.
