This episode explores the recent national elections in Austria and the victory of a radical right-wing party. How is this development situated within the EU's broader shift to the right? And what explains the decline of the traditional center-right and the Social Democrats? Listen to hear about the issues that dominated public discourse during the campaign and about the current state of democracy in Austria.
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Shalini Randeria (SR): Welcome to a new episode of Democracy in Question, the podcast series that explores the challenges democracies are facing around the world. I'm Shalini Randeria, Rector and President of Central European University in Vienna and Senior Fellow at the Albert Hirschman Center on Democracy at the Graduate Institute Geneva.
This is the seventh episode of season nine of Democracy in Question, and I'm very pleased to welcome today Raimund Löw. He's a historian turned journalist who writes for the Vienna weekly, Falter. He's carried out historical research at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for the history of the labor movement in Austria, as well as at the International Institute for Social History in Amsterdam. He was a correspondent, and later bureau chief, of the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation, ORF, stationed in Moscow, then Washington, D.C., followed by Brussels, and most recently in Beijing. He's also written extensively on international affairs, contemporary history, and politics in Le Monde Diplomatique and the Washington Post, for example, and interviewed several world leaders, such as Bill Clinton, Gorbachev, Andrei Sakharov, and Kofi Annan, over the course of his distinguished career.
With several books in German on the European Union, on U.S. politics, and two books on China, as the rising global power, Raimund has received recognition as the Foreign Policy Journalist of the Year in 2017. I'll ask him to analyze today the outcome of the Austrian national elections, which took place on September 29.
Almost a year ago, I had the pleasure to host Paul Lendvai[i] to discuss his book titled “Austria Behind the Mask”. Professor Lendvai argued that behind the facade of democracy, Austria is a country burdened by the legacy of its history, by the paradoxes of its present, and by some legitimate concerns about its future. The recent national elections are anything but a mundane exercise in electoral routine. The landslide victory of a radical right-wing party which has, for the first time in the country's post-war history, eclipsed the traditional mainstream parties both on the center-left and, on the right, raises many uncomfortable questions about the present state of democracy in one of the most prosperous member states of the European Union.
Of course, the main losers of the race, the Conservative People's Party and the Social Democrats, could join forces in a coalition to block the far-right Freedom Party from forming a government. But they'll still have to rely on smaller parties for cooperation, and on large compromises in order to do so.
The Freedom Party, meanwhile, has claimed that their popular legitimacy at the polls should be interpreted as a challenge to the status quo. However, the Austrian president has clearly stated that he will not appoint a chancellor who doesn't respect the basic pillars of liberal democracy. I'll ask Raimund to explain the rise of the radical right in Austria's political landscape and to situate it in the broader context of the shift to the right all over the European Union. What explains the decline of the traditional center-right and also the social democrats all over Europe and especially in Austria? What issues and themes dominated public discourse during the campaign and why was anti-immigrant rhetoric so central despite a decrease in migration to the country? We'll also discuss the geopolitically delicate issue of Austrian neutrality in the shadow of Russia's war of aggression in Ukraine, and we'll talk about some of the demographic distribution of voter preferences and whether economic policy or issues of climate change were relevant in influencing the voters this time.
Finally, I'd like to ask him about some of the scandals that shook Austrian politics in recent years, and what these may reveal about some structural weaknesses of Austrian democracy.
Raimund, welcome to the podcast, and it's a great pleasure to have you as a guest.
Raimund Löw (RL): Well, it's an honor to be here at CEU. Absolutely. Very glad to be able to talk to you.
SR: For the first time in the history of Austria, since 1945, neither of the two major traditional parties, the Conservative People's Party and the Socialist Party, will be able to form a viable government on their own, or even a grand coalition together, as both have suffered serious losses. The People's Party lost more than a quarter of its parliamentary seats compared to the previous elections in 2019, and it lost almost half a million voters to the Freedom Party. While the Social Democrats have won one seat more than in 2019, they can hardly be satisfied with the third position with a mere 21.2 percent of the vote. So, without a third partner, they will not have a stable majority in Parliament. The country looks poised for months of protracted negotiations.
RL: That is sign that we have a paradox here. This has been an election that brought in the far-right Freedom Party to number one, which has never happened, not only on the federal level, but also in four federal states, parts of the country, the Freedom Party is number one.
That is certainly a turn to the right mainly because many of the people who had voted for the conservative People's Party before, now switched again to the Freedom Party. But the paradox on this, in the moment of this victory on the elections, the chances of the Freedom Party to get to power, to get into government, is reduced dramatically.
It has hardly any chances to get into government, because all the other parties refuse to form a government with the Freedom Party and the Freedom Party leader, Herbert Kickl. And that is typical Austria. You’ve had this strong position of the Freedom Party for 25 years more or less. The Freedom Party with this anti-immigrant rhetoric drove the political game in the country. More or less, you always had 25 percent who were in favor of the positions of the Freedom Party.
That is for Austria not a huge change, what happened at the last elections, because we have seen that so often. We have seen quite often that the Freedom Party is very strong.
There has been an anti-right-wing mobilization, civil society was mobilized, but it's nothing compared to what happened in France, for instance, at the last elections, when the left banded together and built a common front against Le Pen.
That did not happen. The reason is that the Freedom Party is a party of the establishment. It's a big difference, you have to understand, with the AfD in Germany, which is very strong in Eastern Germany, but it's certainly not part of the establishment. The FPÖ in Austria has been in parliament since decades, has been in governments with the Social Democrats, sometimes with the Conservatives, so it's part of the scenario.
They’ve driven the political discourse for a couple of years. And of course, under the new leader Herbert Kickl, they made a far-right turn. So that is certainly new. I mean, you had the Freedom Party getting into government 1999 under Schüssel, the conservative party and that was a big scandal in Europe and several European countries decided sort of to boycott the Austrian government. You have a far-right prime minister in Italy, you have a far-right government in the Netherlands, you have a far-right government in Hungary, not to talk about Hungary, but also Finland, Sweden, you name it.
So therefore, this is a very pivotal moment for Austria, but it's in the framework of a general turn to the right in Europe.
SR: So, two questions on that, Raimund. One, what you are describing in a sense is the normalization of the far-right, where Austria preceded all the other European countries. Does that mean that we should be more sanguine about the far-right in government because we've seen that they are in and out of government in Austria and have not caused much damage? Or should we be really worried about that given the fact that the normalization, the mainstreaming of a lot of their agendas, including their anti-immigrant and very xenophobic agenda, meanwhile, it's moved even further right.
And does this bode ill for the future of liberal institutions all over Europe and in Austria?
RL: Well, it tells us that there are huge challenges for liberal institutions and for liberal democracy. I think you have to distinguish between situations where you have a far-right party who is in government, but at the same time civil society can function, the free press can function, public radio and television can still report.
In that case, as we have seen despite all the difficulties, Poland where all that was not even possible, but still there was enough strength in the civil society, that after many dark years you have a liberal government now in Warsaw, and you would expect this also to be possible in the Scandinavian countries, in the Netherlands, and others.
It has not been possible in Hungary, because in Hungary, the Orban leadership of the Fidesz party managed in a very fast way to control the media. Public television, public radio was controlled within a couple of weeks, and the independent media were bought by rather corrupt system in Hungary. And Hungary being a country that does not have a strong tradition of liberal democracy. In Hungary it's difficult to go to the courts but as far as the European criteria are concerned, I would think that in Poland the situation with the courts was much worse than in Hungary.
All that meant that you are close to a regime in Hungary. So, it's not the right-wing party getting into power and then maybe in a couple of years getting out of power again. But it's a different system of government in Hungary than what we see in other European countries. And Austria is between east and west, pretty often. And I would not be sanguine at all if the FPÖ would get into power because they would, within months, change the leadership of ORF, of television and radio.
They hadn't done that the last time when they were together with Kurz. They would try, and that's also what they're openly saying, to implement a Hungarian system. So, I think it's important for now that the other parties, they represent more than 70 percent of the electorate, so it's not a small thing that they get their act together and get into a broader coalition, which will be very difficult because of the many different approaches, very big differences between the programs.
SR: So, what would be your prognosis as to what kind of a coalition is more likely at the end of negotiations between the parties?
RL: What the leadership of these parties are saying, People's Party, Social Democrats, Greens and Liberals is that they are ready to start discussion form a government.
These things can last very long. And you never really know what the outcome is. Look at the Netherlands. In the Netherlands, Gert Wilders won the election. So, he didn't win a majority, but he's the strongest party. All the other parties said: “We won't work with him for a coalition.” Then there were months and months of negotiations. And at the end, everybody is agreeing on a prime minister who comes from the Wilders party, but Wilders himself is not in, the other party leaders are not in, so it's a complicated construction, but still it is a right wing alliance of power. But for the moment, the paradox is here: the Freedom Party won, but the chances of getting into government are small.
SR: What explains the fact that the two major traditional parties, the Social Democrats and the ÖVP, the Conservative People's Party, who together used to have about 90 percent of the vote in Austria, have lost their traditional voter base and their attractiveness?
RL: I think you have to understand that Austrian society had undergone a dramatic change in the last decades. When I was young, when I was a student, in Vienna there was one Chinese restaurant and two Greek restaurants and there were only Austrian and Viennese restaurants.
You hardly saw any person of color in the streets. And then, it started with immigration from Yugoslavia and then it started with immigration from Poland.
And the discourse of the politicians was, we are not an immigration country. We cannot be an immigration country. We are never going to be an immigration country. So, what the people saw in reality when they went to the stores, when they looked at the construction sites, the reality was, yes, of course, there is immigration here.
But the political discourse was: “No, we are not that.” That's perhaps the Americans and Canadians, but not us. And this split between the official discourse and also the political life, it created a situation, this is chaos because we are told we are not an immigration country.
We are an immigration country. That's the reality, but we can't cope with it. And that started, I think, the downturn of the traditional parties. And this gave the possibility for the FPÖ to start with anti-immigration demagoguery.
I don't think you can underestimate that. It's a big change in the composition of society. And there was never, by the elites, any preparation for this change. We have the reality that the Austrian state deals in a much more humane way with asylum seekers, with refugees than most countries in Europe.
But at the same time, the rhetoric is anti-immigration, anti-asylum seekers. So, there is this kind of contradiction between rhetoric and reality, that led to the loss of confidence in the political party.
SR: But the other cleavage that I noticed in the election results was rural-urban.
The cities have all, by and large, voted for the socialist party. And the rural areas in Austria have voted for the Freedom Party, the far-right party. Now, the rural areas are where immigrants are the lowest in number.
RL: That is, I think, something that can be observed quite often, also in other areas. Racial hatred and antisemitism is quite often the strongest in places where people have never met a Jew. So that fact - that anti-foreigner feelings are strong in the countryside where there are hardly any foreigners - seems strange. But in most societies in the world, the countryside is more susceptible for right-wing propaganda. You have that in the United States too. So, the fact that they're divided between city and countryside is a general phenomenon in the recent development in democratic societies. What in Austria also was part of the problem is the fact that you have a huge part of the population that cannot vote. 1.5 million citizens, people who are not Austrian citizens, but citizens in the sense that they pay taxes.
SR: I'm one of them, so I know what you're talking about.
RL: So, you pay Austrian taxes, kids can go to Austrian schools, you're in Austrian social security, but you can't vote, and 1.5 million people are in the same situation and that is very acute of course in Vienna, where you have several districts where half of the population can't vote. So, what kind of democracy is that? They can't vote because they don't have the Austrian citizenship and it's very difficult to get Austrian citizenship. And the ability to vote is linked to the citizenship. It has never been tackled in Austria. Has been tackled in Germany, where the law for citizenship has been modernized, and now for kids who are born in Germany, they can become German citizens immediately. In Austria, it's not the case. You have hundreds of thousands of kids who were born in Austria, lived only in Austria, nowhere else, and they can't vote. So, this is really a problem for democracy that the parties hardly have challenged.
SR: The other demographic fact, which I found interesting, Raimund, is that like in many rich societies, almost a third of Austrian voters are over 60 years and most of them already in pension.
So, do you think that age wise, the demographic composition, not just the fact of such a large percentage of non-voters, but the fact that elections can be determined so heavily by those who are no longer part of the working population, does that affect decisions?
RL: Well, yes, but rather the other way around. I mean, the older people vote for the traditional parties. And the younger generation is more tempted by the far-right. So, let's be glad that the old folks still go to vote.
It helps us, gives us time in order to reorganize liberal democracy before an upsurge of the far-right. The far-right is popular among young people and less popular, you're completely right, in cities than in the countryside, in smaller cities more popular than in big cities.
But also, in cities, well in, Vienna, which is traditionally a red city with a social democratic government since World War II, and also before World War II. But you have inroads of the FPÖ in the migrant society. You have many former Austro-Turks or Austro-Serbs, who are voting for the far-right, and that may surprise you because how would an Austro-Turk or Austro-Serb vote for a xenophobic party?
But in multicultural societies, you have often political differentiations in all the ethnic groups. But to believe that social democrats will always get the, the votes of all the Austrians with, migration background is wrong.
SR: But has the class composition of the country changed in the last years so that the Social Democrats have lost their working-class base because of changes in the economic structure?
RL: Of course. The big industry has shrunk, the trade unions are still pretty powerful, but they don't have the same membership as 30 years ago.
And the tradition of political parties being very directly rooted in different parts of the society went down. Look, the Social Democratic Party had 500,000 members 30 years ago, under Bruno Kreisky. It's a tenth of that today. And that has to do with the fact that the huge industry does not play that role anymore. And the smaller companies are not as well-organized trade union-wise, and the economic foundation is not the same as in the time when big industry was state-owned.
You should not forget after the beginning of the Second Republic, heavy industry was exclusively government controlled. It was not the Soviet Union, but it was a phenomenon that you had in different European countries.
SR: India was very much the same.
RL: Italy, India of course, yeah. You had a big part of industrial production, which was not based on capitalist market-oriented way of operating, but which was owned by government. And the big decisions had been made by the ministry of economy and not CEOs, who needed their companies to be profitable.
SR: So, two questions taking up the themes we've just talked about. The rural urban divide. I was puzzled by the fact that we've just seen massive flooding in Austria. The Freedom Party, the far-right party, are deniers of climate change. I would have thought under this impact of the very recent floods, you would have got a much better result for the Greens, especially in rural areas, and you would have got a much worse result for those who deny any man-made climate change, and yet this didn't happen. Do you have some explanation for what is the reason for those affected most by the floods to have still gone and voted for a climate change denier party.
RL: FPÖ is let's say a climate change doubter. They would probably say, if you change the laws on how fast cars can drive this will not reduce the flooding and it will not immediately reduce climate change. I think first of all, this big flooding happened two weeks before the election. So, it's a very short time in order to digest really what happens. It does not solve the questions of what are the right instruments and the right laws to fight climate change. If you build towers to produce electricity through windmills, probably it will not reduce the next flood.
And I think the general hope, of course, of the Greens and of also of others was that climate change gets more into the center in this election campaign, which did not really happen. But floods and climate are seen by the people as something different. And of course, they know there has been flooding decades ago. I think it's complicated because each of measures that the Green party propose, also the Social Democrats propose, none of these measures in one area or even in one country can really influence climate.
Everybody understands that if people don't use their cars but go more on public transport, it's very good. What is needed in order to change the climate situation are international agreements and international measures, and those are very far away from the mindset of voters at the moment, even two or three weeks after a flood.
And that makes it complicated to win elections on a fight climate change platform, that is so far away that it often does not have an immediate influence on the election.
SR: But one international issue which did come up in the election campaigns was Russia, the war in Ukraine, the number of refugees which Austria has generously taken in. And here it was interesting, all the parties in Austria except for the Freedom Party have been supporting Ukraine.
Whereas the Freedom Party are vocal supporters of not only the Putin regime, but they are actually pleading for much less military aid to Ukraine. The only party, which sort of talked about thinking about Austrian neutrality were the NEOS. So, could you say something about the role which the Russian aggression against Ukraine is playing in Austrian politics and why neutrality still remains such a holy cow?
RL: The Freedom Party would probably tell you: “Well, we condemn the invasion by Putin. We don't support the Russian war. We just want peace.” And in order to have peace, one should not send money and arms to Ukraine. So, the discourse is not, we are in favor of Russia, but the discourse is we want peace, and in order to have peace, one should not support any side. And the Freedom Party is very clearly against their sanctions against Russia. I mean, you have the European sanctions against Russia, Austria participated in these European sanctions against Russia. You have all kinds of arguments from the Freedom Party why there should not be sanctions. One of the arguments is they don't work. Austria is not sending arms to Ukraine, is not training Ukrainian soldiers, which by law it could.
Even despite the neutrality it could, but they don't want to. So, Austria wants to be two things at the same time, to be a member of the European Union and follow all the decisions of the European Union. Also, Hungary participates in all the decisions of the European Union concerning Russia, despite the very different line followed by Orban.
Hungary has not broken any sanction regulations from the European Union. Austria has not done that either. For a political observer, it's surprising you have a change of the geopolitical situation in Europe. Sweden and Finland, former neutral countries entered NATO.
But Austria stays neutral for the next two or three eternities. Well, the explanation, I think, is that Austria does not see a threat, yeah? Austria is surrounded by NATO countries, except Switzerland and Liechtenstein, and neither of the two countries are going to invade.
So, Austria doesn't feel any consequences of the change of the geopolitical situation. So, the immediate reaction of the elites is: “Well let's not change anything.”
And it's not easy to, in all the discussions, to argue that we should change something in, a situation where national security is not threatened. So, the argument of course would be: “Well, we should be part of a collective defense in, Europe and NATO is the most important part of the collective defense.”
Therefore, we should be in NATO, but that's an argument not based on interests, but based on their ideas. And nobody's making these arguments. The only party you mentioned NEOS, rightly wants a discussion on security, but the NEOS don't dare to say we want to join NATO. They say we want to join the European army, but that doesn't exist, the European army.
And it's probably never going to exist. It's basically, I think, a conservative reflex of a society that neutrality worked in the last decades. Okay, then basically, all the other parties are in agreement. Yeah. Okay. Let's boost up our defense. Let's put more money into the Bundesheer (Austrian army). Also, let's participate together in activity with parts of NATO. which is happening.
That was a point of dispute. The Sky Shield program, a couple of European countries led by Germany want to build is a common air defense system and Austria wants to participate. And the Freedom Party was against it. I don't think for any special reason, it's just because they're an opposition party, they have to be against everything.
The Sky Shield, I think it's an important discussion because, in reality, it would mean a step in the direction of NATO and in collaboration with NATO, which exists in international missions. Kosovo, you have a NATO mission, which Austria is part of, and Austria is under a NATO command in Kosovo, something the Austrians don't like to hear if you tell them. So, I would say it's a pragmatic neutrality. The reality of neutrality is something different than the discourse.
SR: The other question which also puzzled me, Raimund, in the elections was how little a role the economy played. We've had high inflation the last two years. Austria was among the highest inflation countries in Western Europe. The growth prognosis doesn't look good. What is prophesied is a slowdown in economic growth over the next years.
So, one would have thought that questions of fiscal policy, taxation, budgetary deficit reduction would have played a much larger role than they actually did.
RL: Bad messages are never very central in election campaigns and they're, I think, on the economic front, they are mainly bad options with a difficult situation.
Each party tries to say, okay, we did everything right, and we'll be strong and full of ideas in order to cope with any new situation. The only party that didn't do that were the Social Democrats, and the Social Democrats had a rather elaborate economic program. With the idea how to solve the growing deficit in the budget, with ideas on how to boost the economy in sluggish situation through a new fund.
Their central idea, of course, was in order to cope with the financial situation, you need to change the tax system and tax the rich more than you tax them here. And the social democratic leader is a left-wing guy, Andreas Babler who is creative. I think everybody who looks at it and says, yeah, it's one of the most creative election programs that we had in a long time. But a left-wing leader of a social democratic party in the moment when the country moved to the right doesn't have the best of the world.
His insistence on economic reform didn’t really help him, is bitter for the Social Democratic Party because, of course, the ideas of justice and social justice and improvement of the situation of poor people is a core element of the Social Democratic discourse.
Maybe the picture of the country that Andreas Babler presented, was very centrally on the poverty among kids, for instance. It did not correspond to what most people see, what the middle class sees. I mean, they say, yes, there's, there are problems with the youth in schools and so on. It's not that in huge numbers children are hungry in Austria.
That's sort of a picture that does not correspond to what people see. If you think of schools, you think of the problems in classes where there are only, among 25 kids, only two kids have German as mother tongue and the rest have to learn German.
SR: So now that you mention Babler he's a recently elected leader of the Socialist Party, but it's true of all the five parties, right?
All five parties were led in this election by leaders who are new. None of them had led their own party in the 2019 elections. So, what does this point to? Is it symptomatic of volatility in Austrian politics at the top or is it a generational change we are seeing? And will it affect coalition negotiations because none of them have any experience of working with one another?
RL: Not only none of them had any experience of working with one another, each of the party leaders has a huge interest to come out as a winner in the upcoming negotiations. You have the leader of the liberal party, NEOS, Meinl-Reisinger, who clearly wants to get into government, and this is her big chance.
If she doesn't get into government now, you don't know how long she's going to be in her job. You have a Chancellor now, and the leader of the people's party, who lost a lot of votes and who can tell his party:“Well, I lost 10 percent, but can still keep us in government.” Social Democratic Party's leader, Andreas Babler, is a little bit of a different story because he is not part of the Social Democratic establishment. He is a challenger coming from the left wing of the party. For a long time, we hardly knew that there was a left wing that existed. And you have today as a situation the Social Democratic Party where you have different blocks of power, and they have to get their act together before they can try to form a government. It's not going to be easy for the Social Democratic Party to present a united front in this Government negotiations, and it's certainly not going to be easy to formulate a program in a situation, as you mentioned, the economy is poor, the money the government has is not enough. Labour is facing the same problem but with social democratic parties, at least you expect if they need money, they take it from the rich. But you have the same situation in France. You have a conservative prime minister, Barnier, who is very conservative. So, the first thing he says, well, we have to increase taxes for the rich, because the budget situation is so bad.
So, you have the same situation here, and how they're going to sort that out is not clear, it will not be clear quickly. It's an open situation, but certainly what's going to be tried now is the coalition of four parties independent from the far right.
SR: One final question, a more general one. I read a survey two years ago by SORA, the Institute for Social Research and Consulting, which claimed that 60 percent of Austrians did not think that their democracy was functioning properly. 90 percent thought that the political system was corrupt. Now far right parties of course usually benefit from these kinds of allegations of corruption, from widespread disappointment and resentment. You've been an observer long term of politics in Austria. What has democracy in Austria failed to deliver that there is so much disappointment with it?
RL: You had in the last couple of years big corruption scandals. You had a former chancellor Sebastian Kurz who had been on trial and had been found guilty of lying to parliament and has a couple of other trials waiting for him.
You have procedures because of corruption, because of mismanagement of a political authority and government authority touching the main conservative party, the ÖVP, and the FPÖ and parts of the media. Now, one would say, there have always been fishy situations, there had been corruption before. That is true.
What is also true is that you have in Austria now a justice system that's more independent than before and is not ready to cover up mismanagement and corruption and brings a lot of stuff to the fore that 40, 50 years ago would have been under the carpet. And that is a situation that other countries have witnessed, too, after decades of one party being in power all the time.
You might remember Italy, the situation at the end of the Democrazia Cristiana (DC), which was governing Italy as if it would be the private owner of Italy, and then suddenly you had the judges who started to dig into all the scandals and the DC imploded.
You have something similar here in Austria. You have a very effective anti-corruption part of the justice system, they're not intimidated. They have not been intimidated by Sebastian Kurz, they have not been intimidated by the ÖVP and, and other people in political power, and that's new, and that has destabilized certainly the conservative party, and in a certain way increased skepticism towards the political system and the politically powerful.
But I think in the long run it is something that helps Austrian democracy to function. It is true that the courts had in many countries been under the influence of a party, or of parties of the powerful, and they are less now than they used to be. And this, of course, puts into question the authority of governments, because people realize, well, these are not angels ruling us. But the reality is, yes, they are no angels, and society has to cope with the fact that you look this reality in the face.
SR: Thank you very, very much for this wide-ranging conversation and for all your insights into Austrian politics.
RL: Thanks a lot for having me.
SR: Raimund Löw is pragmatically optimistic about the post-election situation in Austria, which is marked by a historically unprecedented win for the far-right Freedom Party.
It seems to be a moment of temporary dithering for Austrian democracy, rather than the onset of a gradual withering. For despite the largest share of the popular vote, the far-right party will probably be unable to broker a majority coalition capable of governing. Unlike other European countries, where the rise of extreme right populism is a relatively recent phenomena, in Austria, a quarter of the country's population has long supported the Freedom Party, which is part of the established political landscape here and has been a junior partner in several governments. However, under its current leader, the Freedom Party has drifted further to the right, adopting a shrill antiestablishment rhetoric. It also exploits latent social tensions rooted in the discrepancy between an ideologically driven discourse in the political mainstream on immigration and the lived experiences of ordinary citizens.
Thus, for instance, the party has stoked and manipulated fears about refugees and immigrants, forcing even mainstream parties to adapt its terms of the debate. Despite significant demographic changes due to large numbers of immigrants from the former Yugoslavia, Hungary, or Turkey, as well as the presence of Afghan and Syrian, and more recently, Ukrainian refugees, the Austrian political elite has stubbornly maintained that Austria is not a country of immigrants.
The Freedom Party has garnered support, especially among rural, less educated citizens, by stoking resentment of foreigners and suspicion towards public health measures during the COVID pandemic and also climate change skepticism. It's even managed to gain support among some older immigrant communities, not all of whom vote for progressive politics. Nevertheless, it's important to remember that a very large number of Austrian residents with an immigrant background cannot have a voice in electoral politics thanks to the difficulties of acquiring citizenship. This disenfranchisement of hundreds of thousands who work and pay taxes in Austria, but are excluded politically, is a weak spot for democracy in the country.
In general, as Raimund Löw has pointed out, the era of large parties representing the interests of specific classes and easily identifiable demographic groups seems to be over. As society has become more segmented and more polarized, traditional loyalty to a political party is also no longer strong.
Another important point he made is that due to its geographical position and its EU member status, Austria can still afford to maintain a delicate balancing act in terms of military and geopolitical neutrality. Echoing Hungary's Viktor Orban, however, the Freedom Party is trying to use the pretext of neutrality and a commitment to peace to promote a rather thinly veiled pro-Russian agenda.
This should not come as a surprise either. Austria's neutrality has been a cornerstone of the country's foreign policy on the level of discursive consensus. But neutrality has been handled rather pragmatically by successive governments, as my guest pointed out. The subtle tensions between official rhetoric and the hard realities of political maneuvers continues to define Austrian society and democratic politics.
Hopefully the far-right will not be able to capitalize on these for long. In the meantime, the robust and independent judiciary, a strong anti-corruption authority, and a free press will prove to be safeguards for Austrian democracy.
This was the seventh episode of season nine. Thank you very much for listening. Join me again in two weeks’ time when my guest will be Johanna Lutz. She is Director of the Democracy of the Future Office at the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung here in Vienna.
Please go back and listen to any episode that you might have missed and of course let your friends know about the podcast if you've been enjoying it. You can stay in touch with the work of the Central European University at www.ceu.edu and the Albert Hirschman Center on Democracy at www.graduateinstitute.ch/democracy.
[i] https://www.ceu.edu/article/2023-11-22/democracy-question-paul-lendvai-austria-behind-mask