SGI 2024 | Austria | Executive Summary

Executive Summary

Recent Governments Experts

SGI experts on Austria

Ludger Helms

Ludger Helms (*1967) is Professor of Political Science and Chair of Comparative Politics at the University of Innsbruck, Austria. He has previously been a Senior Research Professor in the Department of Webster University and has held numerous visiting fellowships/professorships at, inter alia, Harvard, Barnard, Berkeley, the London School of Economics and Political Science, LUISS, Central European University, the University of Tokyo, Gadjah Mada University, and the Institute for Human Sciences, Vienna. He is a member of the editorial/advisory board of several major journals (such as Government & Opposition; Politics & Governance; and Zeitschrift für Vergleichende Politikwissenschaft) and a referee for numerous international research councils, such as the German and Austrian Academic Exchanges Services, the Conseil de recherches en sciences humaines du Canada, EURIAS, and the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research). He has published extensively on comparative political institutions, executive politics, elites, and political leadership.

Rudolf Winter-Ebmer

Rudolf Winter-Ebmer is professor for labor economics at the Johannes Kepler University of Linz (Austria) and research professor at the Institute for Advanced Studies (IHS) in Vienna. He is also affiliated with the Centre for Economic Policy Research in London and the Institute for the Future of Labor (IZA) in Bonn (Germany). His research interests are applied to labor economics, in particular issues of immigration, wage determination, unemployment, discrimination and education economics. He is also interested in empirical industrial organization. He has served as the Austrian country team leader for the “Survey on Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe” (SHARE) since 2002. He has also since 2008 been the coordinator of the National Research Network “The Austrian Center for Labor Economics and the Analysis of the Welfare State,” which is bundling labor economics research in Austria.

Reimut Zohlnhöfer (Coordinator)

Reimut Zohlnhöfer holds a chair of political science at Ruprecht-Karls-University Heidelberg (Germany), where he is also the head of the political science department. He holds an MA from the University of Heidelberg, a PhD from the University of Bremen and a Habilitation from the University of Heidelberg. Previously, he worked at the Center for Social Policy Research of the University of Bremen, at the Center of European Studies at Harvard University and at the University of Bamberg. His research focuses on economic and social policies in developed democracies.

After a period of unprecedented turbulence in Austrian politics – including several major scandals and the creation of an all-technocrat government – Austria has more recently found its way back to the calmer waters of stable democratic party governance. However, the exceptionally high turnover rate among chancellors has also marked the years of the current ÖVP-Green government, formed in early 2020, with three chancellors: Sebastian Kurz, 2020 – 2021; Alexander Schallenberg, October – December 2021; and Karl Nehammer, since December 2021.

The first participation of the Greens in a federal government stands out as a genuinely new feature of Austrian party governance. This change in the party composition of the Austrian federal government, and the persistence of the ÖVP-Green government into 2024, has had a more substantive effect on Austria’s public policies and its performance in sustainable governance than the transitions from Kurz to Schallenberg and Nehammer in the chancellery. This can be explained by the compartmentalized structure of the Austrian political executive, in which individual ministers, especially those not belonging to the chancellor’s party, enjoy considerable leeway.

Still, the changes in the chancellery had some discernible effects as well. In particular, the handling of executive-media relations and the overall leadership rhetoric have changed significantly under Chancellor Nehammer and, previously, Schallenberg, both of whom have been much less extroverted than Kurz.

Except for a few issues, such as access to official information or media pluralism, Austria has maintained high, or even very high, standards of good democratic governance across the three levels of vertical, diagonal, and horizontal accountability.

In contrast, the wider field of “governing with foresight” features several less impressive scores. Specifically, the central government has fostered strategic foresight and anticipatory innovation within its organization only to a limited extent. Additionally, the involvement of various civil society actors in public policymaking leaves room for improvement. Although the Austrian social partnership has largely lost its former centrality in Austrian politics, the social partners continue to play a more prominent role than many social welfare groups, particularly environmental groups. Despite a dense network of formal rules and regulations, there remains a strong element of informality in Austrian politics. However, this informality is not necessarily negative. Many unwritten rules have facilitated the emergence of a reasonably smooth and effective governing process, despite numerous centrifugal dynamics.

Regarding “sustainable policymaking,” Austria’s public policies toward migrants – reflecting a widespread latent xenophobia that cuts across different quarters of society – stand out as one of the country’s key weaknesses and challenges. Austria remains at the top of European countries where many migrants feel considerably less happy than the native population. In other areas, such as advancing gender equality and providing state-of-the-art digital infrastructure, the situation has improved in recent years, though there is still room for further enhancement.

As in many other countries, some of the most serious and enduring challenges in Austrian politics and society concern climate change and biodiversity issues. While the wider population is increasingly recognizing the importance of climate change, understanding the centrality of biodiversity to the overall cause of sustainability remains a key task for Austrian governments in the coming years.