Election in Austria

Election in Austria : The end of one of Europe’s « populist »? CONTENTS “POPULISM’ 5 POPULISM IN AUSTRIA 8 AUSTRIA’S HISTORIC LEGACY 10 LESSONS FOR AUSTRIA (AND FOR EUROPE) 12 By Emma Aubert 2 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Last Sunday, Austrians were voting for the second time to elect their president. The past elections, in May, had been annulled by the constitutional court following irregularities in the counting procedure in several constituencies. Alexander Van der Bellen, a Green politician who ran as an independent, had then won the elections with a very small margin of 31000 votes ahead of the extreme right wing candidate, Norbert Hofer, from the Freedom party (FPÖ). Sunday’s vote resulted in Van der Bellen winning 53.3 per cent of the vote to Hofer’s 46.7 per cent. The atmosphere was tense in Austria and everywhere else in Europe as Hofer’s victory would have been the first election of an extreme right wing president in Western Europe since the second World war. The FPÖ is indeed a very controversial party in Austria; on the one hand, it carries a very strong neo-Nazi image and holds xenophobic ideals, while, on the other hand, around 35 % of the population supports it – making it the most popular party of the country. It has notably participated in various governments with the social democrats between 1983 and 1986, and with the conservatives between 2000 and 2007, illustrating the double standards of some mainstream parties and the growing “dediabolisation” of the party within the country. Dediabolisation has indeed been one of main characteristic of the extreme right wing parties’ recent rise in Europe. The term has been widely used in France where Marine Le Pen has tried to give her party, the National Front, a more acceptable image than the one carried by her father, the founder of the party. 3 “[His] victory is a heavy defeat of nationalism and anti-European, backward-looking populism” Martin Schulz Hofer has been highly criticised during his campaign by most European mainstream political actors and media for attracting voters on the back of a populist discourse. Likewise, for many observing this election, the results served as an important “test of populism” – the outcome of which might worryingly demonstrate a growing political trend in Europe toward the far-right. Many feared that Hofer’s victory could encourage similar parties in the coming elections in the Netherlands, France and Germany. Illustratively, on Sunday the president of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz, congratulated Van der Bellen on Twitter, referring to this tendency: “[His] victory is a heavy defeat of nationalism and anti-European, backward-looking populism”. 4 “POPULISM”? After Brexit and Trump’s elections, the word “populism” has indeed been used and misused to explain the unexpected vote of millions of citizens. The term “populist” is controversial; Populism is a polymorphic construct: it changes its targets according to its goal. It corresponds to the use of demagoguery and cleaving discourse that promises the people the defence of their interests while taking into account their difficulties. This term can therefore encompass many different trends and behaviour. Many critics have hence rightly claimed that we could not categorize dozens of political actors and political discourses under one umbrella; under one label. They argue that if we wanted to combat politicians’ attempts at gaining votes by simplifying complicated issues through generalisation and stereotypes, we should not generalise their support-base ourselves. « [Populist] claims to represent the silent majority, the forgotten, “the real people” » 5 Yet, labelling and generalising is often necessary to understand trends. Indeed populism takes many forms, but it has one simple and general design that can help us understand its mechanisms and flaws. Firstly, it claims to represent the silent majority, the forgotten, “the real people”. Secondly, it claims that the people’s problems and fears are based on simple issues that the elite has refused to take into account. Finally, it proposes solutions to those issues that don’t bring “the people” together but divide and oppose them. It is indeed the exploitation of people’s fears and nature of the solutions proposed that are the most distinguishing and problematic marks of populism. 6 The recent populist trend in Europe is characterised by this exact model: political actors – more often from the extreme right than the extreme left – claim that the people have been forgotten by their government; a government which instead favours the European Union (EU) and refugees over them. By pointing towards these problems, those parties are exploiting the fear of being left out from a globalising and changing world. Their solutions are straightforward, divisive and dehumanising of much of the population, both within the country and without. They want to go backward, to that time when the “true people” had the power. They encourage a collective pessimism based on the idea that we are heading in the wrong direction. They don’t want external actors, notably institutions, to have a say in the in the internal life of the country. And more importantly, they don’t want external actors, notably refugees, to have a place in the country and change its dynamic. « It gives dangerously easy answers to disillusioned people ». Yet, we cannot simply “go back” to that time (if that “time” ever existed). We live in a globalized world where Unions with other countries is not an option, where migration has always been fundamental in the advancement of our species, and is not a process that will simply “disappear” – it will even probably increase. Promising that isolation and individualism are values that will make countries “great again” cannot bring about anything positive; the only thing it will likely achieve is polarization. It gives dangerously easy answers to disillusioned people. 7 POPULISM IN AUSTRIA Hofer’s rhetoric almost perfectly fits the definitions mentioned above. He has endlessly claimed to represent the real people arguing against Van der Bellen: “you have the haute-volée, I have the people behind me”, which really reminds us of Farage’s statement following Brexit referendum a “victory for real people”. Similar to Farage in Britain or Le Pen in France, he has also claimed that Austrian leaders were steering the country in the wrong direction: that Islam, the EU and globalisation were threatening the country’s values and its future. He has used Austrians’ worst fears in order to make them listen to him. As mentioned in the definition, his solutions are looking backward, to a faux “golden era” when “real Austrians” had “real power”. His solutions are therefore simple: he is strictly against the opening of Europe’s borders to refugees and has adopted a strong anti-Islam rhetoric. He has also proposed a referendum on Austria’s membership with the EU if its integration or enlargement were to be extended. Division seems to be for him the key to success. 8 His vision of society and his solutions are indeed simplified for the purpose of this article as it would need to be much lengthier to summarise his ideas properly. It is also important to remember that millions of people have voted for him and, similarly, millions of people have voted for Trump and for Brexit. Dismissing these votes as “the vote of the uneducated” would be the worst thing to do. As this “populist trend” is growing, we should not spend all of our energy discussing the consequences of the vote on our societies but on the causes that made citizens choose their candidate. Hofer has indeed managed to convince electors from very different backgrounds: not only the xenophobes hoping to “protect their culture”, but also those left behind in the rural areas, the unemployed in the cities, and the employed who are simply scared of a different future. Conversely, Van der Bellen had the lowest level of working class support among all parties and found his backing came from women (62%), young people and urbanites. More than 60% of people living in cities of over 200 000 inhabitants (Vienne, Graz, Linz, Innsbruck, Salzburg) voted for Van der Bellen. On the contrary, rural parts of Austria turned out en-masse for Hofer. Hence his support is following a similar trend to the national front in France; he manages to attract more and more working class individuals – those starting to be disillusioned with the liberal policies that have characterised recent political history in those countries. Yet, Austria is currently doing better than France. It enjoys one of the highest per capita income levels in the EU and has an extensive, well-functioning welfare system. Another key factor differentiating them is their history, and to understand a country’s issues, understanding its past is necessary. 9 AUSTRIA’S HISTORIC LEGACY Since 1945, Austria has always been governed by one of the two largest parties: either the center right Christian democratic party – the Austrian People’s Party (OVP) – or the center left Social Democratic Party; sometimes both at the same time, as is the case today. Austria is in fact the only country in Western Europe that forms a joint government that often. The reason is societal: the country has for long been characterised by polarisation between the “red” left leaning capital, and the “Black” con- servative and catholic countryside. Division between the two factions had resulted in a brief civil war in 1934 before the Catholics installed an authoritarian regime followed by Hitler’s Anschluss in 1938. After the liberation by the Allies, and to avoid future conflicts, the “Red and Blacks” decided to set up a system of proportional representation in almost all sphere of the country’s political and social life.

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