At the center of this shift stands the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ), whose growing electoral strength, discursive reach, and confrontational stance toward core liberal-democratic constraints have reshaped the country’s political landscape, even as courts and coalition dynamics continue to impose limits.
A recent paper by Stecker, Vukovic, Kritzinger and Boomgaarden (2026) traces how these pressures have manifested in practice. During the 2017-2019 ÖVP-FPÖ coalition, the Interior Ministry then led by the FPÖ oversaw a police raid on the domestic intelligence service, prompting international concern and subsequent restructuring of the agency, and exemplifying an adversarial approach to institutional independence. At the same time, constitutional checks proved resilient: the Constitutional Court struck down a primary-school headscarf ban as discriminatory and rejected elements of welfare reform that disadvantaged larger families and tied benefits to German language proficiency. These rulings did not only curtail illiberal policy ambitions but also continue to shape debates over similar proposals today.
Yet the most consequential shift may be discursive: The FPÖ effectively harnessed pandemic-era discontent through anti-elite and anti-science narratives, with leaders visibly present at mass protests and framing public health measures as a democratic overreach. Beyond the streets, the party’s influence extends deep into the digital public sphere, where its social media presence especially on YouTube far outstrips competitors. It operates in symbiosis with a broader alternative media ecosystem that blends favorable coverage with conspiratorial and misleading content, amplifying polarization and distrust.
Crucially, the paper integrates the citizen perspective. Survey evidence shows that FPÖ voters broadly endorse democratic principles such as media freedom and the rule of law, but express markedly lower satisfaction with how democracy functions and significantly higher distrust in institutions, including government, parliament, and the legal system. Many also report feeling culturally censored by “political correctness”, which, combined with institutional mistrust, fosters a sense of alienation that illiberal appeals can effectively tap by promising to restore “true” democracy through weakening institutional constraints. In this gap between principles and perceived performance lies the core democratic challenge the authors identify: an incremental illiberal advance through discourse, mobilization, and voter disaffection meeting resilient but strained constitutional checks in a long-standing democracy.
