We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
To save content items to your account,
please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies.
If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account.
Find out more about saving content to .
To save content items to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org
is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings
on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part
of your Kindle email address below.
Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations.
‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi.
‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Although contemporary Austrian politics seem remarkably peaceful, the predecessors of the three major parties were implacable opponents whose animosities caused the fall of the First Republic between 1934 and 1938. Their ideological Lager or ‘camps’ have influenced the thinking of present day parties. It is particularly appropriate therefore to study post-war party programmes to discover how and to what extent attitudes have come to resemble each other. It is also interesting to discover if the separation between parties remains the same in some areas while diminishing in others.
Of course the historical experience of civil war, collapse and external takeover itself affected the behaviour of parties in the post-war period. The formation of a Grand Coalition by the Socialists and the People's Party – so vital to political stability in Austria, and probably also to regaining independence – reflected the need to give at least two major political camps government responsibility.
The political parties that presently exist are the following (Pelinka 1981; Sully 1981):
The People's Party (Österreichische Volkspartei, ÖVP) is clearly the successor of the pre-war Christian-Social-Conservative camp. The Christian Socials as a party were moulded by political Catholicism (Diamont 1960) and – although the ÖVP claims to have made a new start in 1945 – its post-war development was again characterized by ties to Catholic associations.
[…]
Recommend this
Email your librarian or administrator to recommend adding this to your organisation's collection.