Austria: Political ground zero

Austria's two leading political parties took a major beating in the September 2008 parliamentary elections and both saw their levels of support shrink to all-time lows since the end of World War II, as voters favored the more radical right-wing parties and handed out what could be seen as punishment for an ineffective previous grand coalition government.

Despite of the re-emergence of the loudly populist, albeit politically fractured right-wing, the two main-stay parties of the political center seem set on continuing their cooperation and forming the next government, simply substituting heads and installing new leaders in the process.

Since the end of World War II, Austria largely has been ruled by grand coalition governments between the two largest parties, the center-left Social Democrats (SPÖ) and the conservative People's Party (ÖVP). Yet the latest version of such a grand coalition under SPÖ Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer proved to be one of the least effective cabinets in recent memory, marked primarily by disagreements over planned reforms, sudden changes in party agendas and a general lack of substantial achievements.

As a result, the Gusenbauer government turned out to be the most short-lived in Austrian post-war history and early elections were called after only 19 months in July 2008.

The outcome of the September elections saw the SPÖ stay on as the lead party, but shrink to 29.3 percent (minus 6.0 percent compared to the last elections in 2006), the ÖVP drop to 26 percent (minus 8.3 percent) and the rejuvenated but rivaling right-wing parties FPÖ and BZÖ come out at 17.5 and 10.7 percent, respectively, each up by 6.5 and 6.6 percent. The left-leaning Greens only took a loss of 0.6 percent, yet that still was enough to drop them from the third strongest party to fifth place.

With 17.5 and 10.7 percent between them, the FPÖ of the Viennese party leader Heinz-Christian Strache and the BZÖ of the Carinthian Governor Jörg Haider were able to represent an even greater right-wing mandate than the previously still unified FPÖ had received in the 1999 parliamentary elections, when it shocked the political establishment by capturing 26.9 percent and even slightly overtook the ÖVP.

As a direct result of the 1999 elections, the ÖVP and FPÖ later formed the first center-right government in post-war Austria, amid massive domestic and international protests. The ÖVP-lead government with the FPÖ stayed in power until 2006, also winning the 2002 parliamentary elections - although in the later years of the coalition the ÖVP regained a clear-cut advantage and formal dominance of the cabinet, as the FPÖ suffered a continuous erosion of voter support and eventually split in 2005, as Jörg Haider and several of his supporters founded the break-away BZÖ.  

Strache, characterized by some as a political hooligan, and Haider - who had already achieved much international notoriety through several provocative or insensitive comments over the history of the Nazi regime and additionally gained global attention for various eyebrow raising visits to Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Muammar Gaddafi in Libya - spent most of the time before the September elections and since their mutual fall-out in 2005 attacking each other or trying to undermine each other while proclaiming they would not work together or re-unite again.

Yet despite this history of rivalry and disagreement between the two right-wing camps, the substantial gains of both parties led to quick post-election speculations over the feasibility of a new center-right government with an ÖVP-FPÖ-BZÖ three-way package.

While the FPÖ and BZÖ seemed keen to partake in serious coalition discussions with the ÖVP and even were willing to bridge some of their own differences for what they perceived as a responsibility to prevent another SPÖ-ÖVP grand coalition, the ÖVP refrained from initial engagement with the right-wing parties and instead entered into new negotiations with the SPÖ, which as the nominally strongest party had been charged by Austrian President Heinz Fischer in early October with the usual mandate to form a new government.

The Austrian right-wing then took a further blow and the BZÖ in particular received a major and unexpected shake-up when in mid-October its ubiquitous chairman Haider died in a car crash while speeding and driving under the influence near his hometown.

Through an automobile accident that sent shock-waves through the entire Austrian political establishment, the BZÖ found itself overnight without its public figure head and without its single biggest driving force.

Haider, who had so thoroughly cemented himself as the mainstay of the entire Austrian right-wing over the course of more than two decades and had become an über-politician known for his redefinition of populism and his love of controversial self-promotion, which many of his critics or political opponents saw as a combination between modern marketing and outright megalomania, made himself virtually impossible to replace or to replicate for his party heirs.

How politically viable the BZÖ will indeed remain without Haider, will only be seen over the course of time.

While the right-wing parties are hence not expected to have any immediate influence over the new government formation process or any say in a future coalition, the SPÖ and the ÖVP seem content, although not excited, on working toward building an updated grand coalition. Both parties, especially the SPÖ, have few alternatives, and for both the prospect of a renewed grand coalition offers the opportunity to re-deem several of their mutual deficiencies in the Gusenbauer government.

The lack of other alternatives especially forces the SPÖ to find a full accord with the ÖVP, also on several of the complex reform and EU issues, which led the previous government to fail in an air of political bickering and contentious disagreement. The pressure to form a viable new government and to convince the ÖVP to team up again is hence squarely on the shoulders of the SPÖ and its new party chairman and chancellor-in-waiting, Werner Faymann.

Just like the SPÖ, the ÖVP also used the shortcomings of the prior cabinet and especially the very poor election results to replace and update its leadership, installing Josef Pröll as the new party chairman and immediate successor to the previous vice-chancellor and party chair Wilhelm Molterer.

The weeks of November and December should hence prove vital and decisive to the negotiation process for a new coalition.

If the SPÖ and ÖVP can overcome their prior differences and with the installation of fresh faces and new personalities find agreement on a coalition framework, the parties should have a realistic chance to replicate the success and long-term stability that the SPÖ-ÖVP grand coalition governments already brought to the country in continuous fashion between 1986 and 2000.

In case Faymann and Pröll fail to find agreement and are not able to form a new coalition by Christmas, Austria will likely be left with a political ground-zero for the start of the New Year.