02 October 2024

Project Syndicate's Kisilowski: Austria’s Far Right Did Not Win

Across Europe, far-right populists consistently frame elections as a stark choice between an indistinguishable assortment of corrupt mainstream parties and themselves. But if those are the stakes, a mere plurality victory for the populist party is actually a loss, and should be treated that way.

Commentators have been unanimous in describing Sunday’s legislative election in Austria as a victory for the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ), and pressure is now mounting on the progressive president, Alexander van der Bellen, to give the populists a chance to form a government. But this narrative misconstrues the electoral outcome and risks handing anti-democratic forces an unearned windfall.

To be sure, the FPÖ had a strong showing, winning more than 1.3 million votes (29.2%). But this is not unprecedented. In four of the last five elections, far-right parties attracted more than a million supporters, reflecting the fact that a significant minority of mostly rural Austrians (representing roughly one-quarter of the electorate) has consistently supported uber-conservative political projects. Austria’s constitutional system, with its considerable regional decentralization, has always been able to manage this unfortunate reality. The narrative of a far-right “victory” seems to rest on the fact that the FPÖ won a plurality of votes among the five factions that gained seats in the National Assembly. In Vienna, the capital and the most populous state of Austria’s nine states, the Social Democrats won decisively, increasing their share of the vote. And, nationally, the Christian Democratic Austrian People’s Party finished second, with 26.5% of the popular vote. Nonetheless, supporters of the far right in Austria have seized on global headlines to claim that any outcome other than a cabinet headed by the FPÖ’s pro-Russian leader, Herbert Kickl, would amount to a betrayal of democratic values. This is not the first time we have heard such arguments following a plurality victory within a proportional multiparty system. Last year, Poland’s right-wing president spent weeks delaying the transfer of power from the populist Law and Justice (PiS) party to the democratic opposition based on an analogous rationale. And soon thereafter, commentators raised alarms about the supposed populist mandate in the Netherlands, where Geert Wilders’s far-right Party for Freedom became the largest of the 15 parliamentary factions, winning 23.5% of the popular vote.

In none of these countries do constitutional provisions require entrusting a plurality winner with the task of forming the government. Such a rule would be absurd. Far from magically conferring a popular mandate, winning a plurality is mainly a function of how fragmented a country’s political party system is.

In this Austrian election, for example, 9.1% of the vote went to the New Austria and Liberal Forum (NEOS), which gained two additional seats in the Assembly. Formed in 2012, NEOS wants to revitalize the economy and strengthen support for Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression. Had it not been around, the People’s Party probably would have overtaken the FPÖ in the elusive quest for a plurality... 

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