Changing Patterns of Party Competition in Austria: From Multipolar to Bipolar System

The Austrian party system has entered a new phase since the controversial ÖVP-FPÖ coalition came into office in February 2000. The party system literature offers two contradicting expectations about party system mechanics in multi-party systems without relevant extremist parties: competition structured by party alliances and strictly competitive relations between government and opposition parties (as suggested by Sartori 1976) versus competition structured by individual parties and some mix of competition and co-operation and perhaps even power-sharing in extra-governmental arenas between government and opposition parties (as suggested by Dahl 1966). Our empirical analysis of party system competitiveness in the electoral, parliamentary and other arenas (in particular, the corporatist arena) between 2000 and 2003 shows that the relations between the government and opposition parties were strictly competitive (i.e. of a zero-sum character) in the electoral arena. Likewise, there was no trading between government and opposition in the parliamentary arena. Finally, the government substantially increased its impact on the official sites (i.e. arenas controlled by the government) and used fire and hire methods more than any of its predecessors to build up its positions in public sector institutions. The opposition parties, in turn, perceived the government parties as a bloc and were united in their goal of undermining the government parties' majority. Yet, while relations between the government and opposition parties remained highly competitive throughout the entire period, relations between the parties on each side of the government-opposition divide became more fluid, partly for tactical considerations and partly for reasons of genuine preferences. In sum, the post-2000 Austrian party system is a weak version of a two-bloc system.