Reclaiming national sovereignty: the case of the conservatives and the far right in Austria

Abstract

This article investigates how and why Austrian parties have (re)constructed claims of national sovereignty and brought them to the centre of political competition. Theoretically, claims for national sovereignty are directed at recovering the people’s autonomy from ‘sinister’ elites and ‘harmful’ outsiders like immigrants. As such claims vary in terms of policy content, salience, and discursive means, this article uses the analysis of manifestos and speeches to ascertain how the radical-right populist Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) constructed sovereignty claims in 2013 and 2017. Furthermore, it shows how the mainstream right Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) adopted these claims, significantly narrowing the gap to the far-right FPÖ on the national and economic dimension of sovereignty, and largely renounced its pro-European and anti-sovereignist positions by 2017. In a second step, we examine whether the claims by these two parties match the preferences of their voters. Here, the findings suggest that the FPÖ’s sovereignty claims broadly correspond to the demands of its voters whereas ÖVP voters only partially express support for such claims, mainly on the national sovereignty investigating in detail the form and conditions of their occurrence.