The Constitutional Crisis in Austria

Constitutionalism, in Austria, is not a new slogan. It was a phrase to conjure with during the entire lifetime of Francis Joseph, though in practice the whole history of the country down to the revolution of 1918 was its virtual negation. Only in the latter days of the monarchy, when the scepter passed from the hands of Francis Joseph to the inexperienced young emperor Karl, was a modicum of popular expression allowed to supplant the personal autocracy of the sovereign. The old Austria passed out of existence in 1918 without the successful implantation of a régime of liberal legality in any of its parts. The young Austrian Republic, coming into existence in the hour of the Empire's dissolution, thus inherited a legacy of unconstitutional government, and only the solidity of socialist and clerical party organization, bred of the stress and strain of clashing conceptions of the social order, gave support to the government in the days when social revolution swept almost to the doors of Vienna. It was under such circumstances that Austria entered, in 1918, upon the way of constitutionalism and sought, through her provisional instruments of government, to avoid the autocratic excesses of the past and avert the impending perils of a proletarian dictatorship. In a series of revolutionary pronouncements and decisions of her provisional assembly, she discarded, under socialist leadership, the arbitrary régime attendant on the monarchy, and, establishing a unitary democratic republic with far-reaching local self-government as a stepping-stone toward union with Germany, inaugurated a régime of unquestioned parliamentary supremacy, strict ministerial responsibility, virtual executive impotence, and extensive socialization.