ABSTRACT
In recent years, Jorg Haider has readily adopted the notion that he is a "populist politician who simply wants to ask the people before decisions are made". In both journalistic and academic debates, populism was increasingly made out to be nothing more than a pseudo-democratic, manipulative, opportunistic, even demagogic way to market politics to an increasingly cynical electorate. Haider himself made it quite clear that the Freedom Party of Austria (FPO) wanted considerably more than a mere correction of the established political course: "What we want is an Austrian cultural revolution with democratic means, what we want is to overthrow the ruling political class and the intellectual caste". The public shock of the measures introduced by the FPO's finance minister, Karl-Heinz Grasser, in the fall of 2000 and designed to balance the budget suggests that Austria was less than prepared for a Thatcherite revolution.
