Polical Science Day (Tag der Politikwissenschaft)
Organization of a panel at the conference Tag der Politikwissenschaft (Political Science Day) at Vienna University.
Antisemitism as a political strategy and democratic development. The Austrian Parliament between 1945 and 2008.
The panel will present the research project on which the contributors are presently working. The Project is sponsored by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) and runs from February 2014 to July 2017.
The project explores the relationship between parliamentary debates and democratic development in post-fascist societies. The research interest lies in the investigation of the role of parliamentary debates in the (re)creation of a national identity and the development of a democratic political culture. Through case studies of antisemitic rhetoric in post-1945 National Council debates, we show how parliamentary antisemitism has marked Austrian identity and democratic culture in Austria. The source material for the analyses are the stenographic records of the National Council supplemented by various other contextually relevant material such as standing orders, legal texts, media reports, secondary literature, etc.
The panel will firstly present the methodological approach in the polarized field of critical discourse analysis, rhetoric and democratic theory and, secondly, discursive elements of Austrian national identity and antisemitism will be analysed on the basis of specific debates.
Karin Bischof
The paper undertakes an example-based study of the rhetorical presentation of persecuted emigrants in plenary sessions of the Austrian Parliament between 1945 and 2008. The central focus of the paper is on the relationship between the discursive construction of the group of “emigrants” and the construction of the Austrian demos in parliamentary debates.
Between 1933 and 1945 around 130,000 people had to flee Austria. Most were Jews who left in the wake of the Nuremberg racial laws. To this day, the stubborn myth persists that it was really only the privileged (“who could afford it”) who succeeded in fleeing Nazism. This makes of special interest the question of the presentation of these emigrants as a group which, by analogy with antisemitic stereotypes, in placed in a halfway position - neither inside nor entirely outside the national “we”; not “real victims” but undeniably persecuted; neither friend nor enemy (Zygmunt Bauman) – in short, a group that contradicts the ideal of a homogeneous and authentic national identity. This raises some further questions: in debates about emigrants, are antisemitic codes (Volkov) active and, if so, which ones? What breaks, continuities and changes can be identified through the comparison of legislative periods? How do the rhetorical strategies of the parliamentary parties and their spokespersons evolve over the course of time?
In conclusion, a detailed comparison is made between the discursive construction of emigrants fleeing Nazi persecution and that of immigrants (Economic migrants, refugees, asylum seekers) in the post-1970 period, including as regards the construction of the in-group.
Marion Löffler
“Incitement” is a constantly recurring theme in the plenary debates of the Austrian National Council. Until the 1960s the targets of the incitement were considered to be the “mass of the people” and above all “the youth” who had to be protected from either Nazi or Communist propaganda. The masses and the youth were thus envisaged as unstable, easily led and emotion-ruled quantities that could be incited into becoming a danger to the democratic order. This view was enshrined in Article 304 of the 1945 criminal code (Strafgesetzbuch – abbreviation StGB), entitled “Incitement to hatred” that appears to have been aimed primarily against the hardening of political blocs and the danger of civil war.
With the so-called “incitement paragraphs” of Article 283 of the 1975 code, the offence was defined and the criterion of infringement of human rights added. The rationale for the revision was presented by the then Justice Minister Christian Broda: “We believe that in the future no one should with impunity say ‘too few Jews were gassed in the Third Reich’!” Here, he interprets the law as an instrument in the struggle against antisemitism. The focus shifts from protection of the masses or youth from incitement to the protection of the potential victims of the incited masses. In 2011, the law was revised to expand the range of protected groups.
Against the background of these legal developments, my talk will shed light on the use of the accusation of incitement in the plenary debates. As in the offence of incitement itself, negative emotions are central to these debates, but in this case directed against political opponents. In some cases, the accusation of incitement is depicted as a criminalization strategy, in others the juridical categories of perpetrator and victim are transferred onto the forces in the parliamentary arena, with groups of deputies and individuals presenting themselves as victims who claim for themselves the right to make verbal attacks of a kind that would otherwise be frowned upon. On the basis of analyses of specific debates, I will consider the extent to which the misuse of the incitement paragraphs may have damaged the parliamentary culture of debate and thus the public legitimacy of the National Council.
Nicolas Bechter
The paper will address the question of how extra-parliamentary forms of protest have been treated by Parliament. While throughout its history post-war Austria has often seen one-off large-scale demonstrations (Borodajkewycz, Schranz, Waldheim, ...), this paper focuses on the period after 1987. This was the year of the first Opera Ball demonstration that would subsequently become an annual event. The 2000s also saw the “Thursday demos” that arose in protest at the participation of the FPÖ in government. The Opera Ball demonstrations have now ended, but they have been replaced by protests against the Academic Ball (previously WKR-Ball) organized initially by the WKR (an association of nationalist student fraternities) and now by the FPÖ-Wien.
The fact that since 1987 Austria has witnessed institutionalized annual demonstrations enables us to trace the corresponding transformations in the parliamentary discourse. The demonstrations have attracted parliamentary attention not least because of the occurrence of violent clashes. The discursive treatment of a demonstration at which violence takes place revolves around a number of different constitutional principles - right to free expression, freedom of assembly, protection of the safety of the public and those attending the Ball, right to self-defence of demonstrators and police, preventive policing, etc. – that are of decisive importance for the development of democracy.
Among the striking recurrent discursive motifs are: the “professional demonstrator”, the “German experience” and the use of anti-fascist slogans by conservative or right-wing speakers. The “German experience” does not (any longer) refer to Nazism, but to the large-scale left-wing protest movements of 1968. Just as the victim thesis slowly began to erode, a new narrative arises according to which an idyllic Austria is once again under assault from German aggression in the form of “professional demonstrators” who come here from Germany to disturb the peace. This is an aspect of a constitutive Other that bolsters Austria’s self-image as an extremism-free and consensus-based nation.
Martin Bartenberger
Recent years have seen the development, especially in the US, of a distinct body of political science literature dealing with experimental forms of policy development. Its subject is forms of politics that take a trial-and-error approach to the development of policies and display flexibility and adaptability in their concrete implementation. Keywords include “design experiments” (Stoker/John 2009), “democratic experimentalism” (Dorf/Sabel 1998; Ansell 2012) and “experimentalist governance” (Sabel/Zeitlin 2012). Areas to which this approach to politics has been applied include development policy (Banerjee/Duflo 2009), the EU’s multilevel governance system (Sabel/Zeitlin 2010) and environmental policy (Ansell/Bartenberger forthcoming).
However, the democratic dimension of these new approaches has so far remained under-studied. This paper attempts to fill this gap by analysing “experimentalism” from the point of view of the political culture of debate and the development of democracy. As a concrete illustration of the democratic relevance of the experimental approach, we use the example of a current issue in Viennese transport policy: the redevelopment of Mariahilfer Straße.
In its first part, the paper will show that the redevelopment of Mariahilfer Straße can be viewed as a case of experimental policy-making insofar as no preconceived solution has been presented and implemented. Instead, the concrete development programme has been worked out experimentally as it has progressed, has been constantly adjusted and has been concluded by a survey of local opinion. In particular, the possibility of trying out the envisaged introduction of a pedestrian zone for a certain period of time and the final and open survey of local opinion can be viewed as new forms of direct citizen participation.
In its second part, the paper will emphasize that such an approach carries both opportunities and risks. Alongside the potential for democratic innovation it also offers a point of entry for political populism. The example of Mariahilfer Straße shows how the experimental approach increases the vulnerability of decision makers to attack and can easily be interpreted by populists as “indecisiveness” and “haphazardness”.
The paper will, in conclusion, reflect on the wider viability of experimental approaches in Austria and their democratic relevance. It will put forward the hypothesis that these approaches can successfully be applied to all spheres of the multilevel political system, but are especially suitable for town planning. In this respect, transport policy has long been the sphere most open to experimentation in Austria, as can be seen not only in the Mariahilfer Straße example, but also in the trial introduction of the 80 km/h speed limit on the Salzburg urban motorway.
