National Council of Austria

The National Council of Austria or Nationalrat is one of the two houses of the Federal Assembly of Austria, the bicameral federal parliament of the Republic of Austria. In theory, the National Council and its sibling, the Federal Council, are peers; as a practical matter, however, the National Council is decidedly more powerful. The President of the National Council is, formally, Austria's second highest public official, junior only to the President proper.

Table of contents

1 Responsibilities
2 Elections
3 Current Composition
4 Related pages
5 External links

Responsibilities

The National Council is where Austria's federal legislative authority is concentrated: for a bill to become law, it first and foremost has to be passed by this body. Bills passed by the National Council are sent to the Federal Council for corroboration. If the Federal Council approves of the bill or simply does nothing for eight weeks, the bill has succeeded. If the Federal Council objects, the bill has failed, unless the National Council simply passes it again, just that this time a higher quorum must be met. In other words, the Federal Council does not have any real power to prevent adoption of legislation as the National Council being able to override it.

The approval of the National Council is also required for any of the prerogatives of the Federal Assembly to be exercised. For example, motions to impeach the President, to call for a referendum aimed at having the President removed from office by the electorate, to amend the constitution, or to declare war need a two-thirds majority in the National Council.

Even though Austria is, in theory, a presidential democracy with a executive neither dependent on nor answerable to the legislature, Austria's administration would, in practice, be almost totally paralyzed should the National Council fail to support it. It is therefore customary for the President to appoint the National Council majority leader head of his or her cabinet, meaning that a new cabinet is appointed after each National Council election. It is also customary for the National Council to dissolve itself, thereby bringing about new elections, if the cabinet decides it has failed.

Elections

The 183 members of the National Council are elected by nation-wide popular vote for a term of four years. Each Austrian eighteen years or older on the first day of the electoral year is entitled to one vote. The voting system aims at party-list proportional representation, uses the D'Hondt method and partially open lists, and is fairly straightforward:

For the purpose of National Council elections, Austria is divided into nine regional electoral districts corresponding to the nine states of Austria. Regional electoral districts are subdivided into a total of 43 local electoral districts. Political parties submit separate ranked lists of candidates for each district, regional or local, in which they have chosen to run, as well as a federal-level list.
Votes cast are first counted within their local electoral district. Since there are 43 local districts but 183 seats to fill, local districts will typically have more than one seat assigned to them. The number of seats assigned to each local district is based solely on electoral district population, as established by the most recent census; the partitioning rules are simple enough to prevent gerrymandering from becoming an issue. The number of votes required to win one seat is simply the number of votes divided by the number of seats assigned to the disctrict in question. For instance, if your party scores 204 out of 1000 votes cast in a ten-seat local district, your party wins two seats, to be taken by the first two candidates on your party's local district list. As 200 votes would have been sufficient to win two seats, four votes are left unaccounted for.
Any vote not accounted for on the local level are dealt with on the regional level, provided that the party it has been cast for has obtained at least four percent of the regional total vote. The system is analogous to that used on the district level; the number of seats assigned to a regional disctrict is simply the number of seats assigned to one of its constituent local districts but not filled during the first round of counting.
Any vote not accounted for on the regional level, either, is dealt with on the federal level, provided that the party it has been cast for has obtained at least four percent of the federal total vote. The D'Hondt method is used to allocate any National Council seats remaining to be filled.

In addition to voting for a party list, voters may express preference for one individual candidate. A candidate receiving sufficiently many personal votes can rise in rank on his her district party list; voters thus have a certain degree of influence as to which particular individual wins which particular seat. It is not possible, however, to simultaneously vote for party A but exert influence on the candidate rankings on the party list of party B.

Current Composition

Last National Council elections were held on November 22,2002.

People's Party: 79 seats (42.3% of the national vote)
Social Democrats: 69 seats (36.9%)
Freedom Party: 19 seats (10.2%)
Green Party: 16 seats (9%)

External links

Austria's National Council, as explained by the Austrian parliament itself
National Council Elections Statute, official rules and regulations (in German)