(Page 2 of 20) - Can Party Change Theories Explain Political Suicide? The Austrian Freedom Party�s Strategy Change in 2002 authored by Mueller, Wolfgang.

Abstract
The Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) in the 1980s and 1990s dramatically increased its electoral strength
and political significance by a strategy of right-wing populist protest. It became the second strongest
party in 1999 and thereafter joined the government. The declared goal of the party was to demonstrate its
ability to govern and to replace the protest linkage by a policy one. For that purpose it largely abandoned
its strategy of populist protest and aimed at presenting itself as a responsible party of government. Yet, in
2002 an intra-party revolt demanded a partial strategy reversal. The revolt in effect brought down the
party leadership, triggered early elections, ongoing intra-party fights, and the most dramatic decline a
party ever has faced in elections in post-war Austria. The paper investigates the capacity of party change
theories to account for these dramatic events. In so doing it looks at the life-cycle and party performance
approaches.

1. Introduction: Party Strategy Change as Political Suicide

In the summer of 2002 the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) aimed at radical change of its strategy
as a party in government. This was partly a response to its declining electoral fortunes. While the
FPÖ had come out of the 1999 elections as the second strongest party, (taking a lead of 415 votes
over the People’s Party, ÖVP), recent sub-national elections and the polls suggested that it would
lose roughly a quarter of its voters if elections were held today. In short, the strategy change was
to revive the confrontational style that had been the FPÖ’s trademark since 1986 and that had
pushed-up the party from 5 percent of the vote in 1983 to 26.9 percent in 1999. This style had
been diluted deliberately when the FPÖ assumed government office in a coalition with the ÖVP
in 2000. The FPÖ aimed at transforming its image in order to become recognized as a responsible
government party (not just a party in government). For that purpose it somewhat moderated its
style vis-à-vis the (now) opposition parties, the Social Democratic Party (SPÖ) and the Greens,
and engaged in remarkably cosy relations with its coalition partner, the ÖVP, a party that the FPÖ
had criticized earlier almost as harshly as the SPÖ.

However, the FPÖ was all but united with regard to the problem diagnosis and therapy. The party
chairwomen and Vice-Chancellor, Susanne Riess-Passer, two of the FPÖ Ministers, its
parliamentary floor leader, and indeed the majority of the parliamentary party and the party
executive were confident that the new strategy to present the FPÖ as a responsible party of
government eventually would pay off. Although these leaders expected vote losses in the
elections scheduled for the fall of 2003, they were confident that the losses would be both
unavoidable and could be kept at bay. They were considered unavoidable because the FPÖ’s
electoral alliance was mainly a negative one and they were expected to turn out moderate because
the FPÖ would gradually appeal to new groups of voters.

The opposite position was taken by the former party chairman Jörg Haider, still the real party
leader for most of the party’s rank and file, the leading figures of most of the party’s Land
organizations, and a vast majority of the mid-level elites. When they tried to force a more
confrontational strategy upon the national party leadership, Riess-Passer and their allies retired
from their party positions and announced that they would retire from their government positions