Austria’s Balancing Act: Walking the Tightrope between Federalism and Centralization

Abstract

School systems in German-speaking countries are facing new challenges, which confront the old problem of balancing the center and periphery. Austria, Germany, and Switzerland are united by language, but their social fabrics are affected by very different historical circumstances. While Austria and Germany have their roots in formerly influential monarchies, Switzerland is rooted in a strong direct democracy where citizens should have full influence on the state. Each of the three countries has a framework of a federal parliamentary democratic republic, but their experiences in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries have led to very different models for how these function in practice. The Swiss Federal Constitution limits federal influence in the formulation of domestic policy and emphasizes the roles of private enterprise and cantonal government. Germany is a parliamentary federal republic that consists of thirteen states (Bundesländer) and three city states, only seven of which existed before the end of World War II, and which were only fully joined in 1990. After the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (1918) the Austrian Republic underwent several dramatically different political phases until it became what is now known as the Second Austrian Republic (1945–present).