Provincial government (Austria)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The provincial government is a collegial body that executes in the respective federal state in the Republic of Austria .

Basics

The state government is elected by the state parliament and consists of the state governor , his deputy or deputies and the state councilors. The number of state councils is determined by the respective state constitution. In Vienna , the city senate is also the state government. In Vorarlberg , the deputy governor bears the title of governor . The term minister for executive bodies with cabinet rank, however, only exists at the federal level.

Incompatible with the office of a member of the state government are, in particular, the office of the Federal President , the President or Vice-President of the Court of Auditors , President, Vice-President or member of the Supreme Court , the Constitutional Court and the Administrative Court .

Form of government

The form of government of a state government can either be a proportional government (all parties represented in the state parliament make state councils according to their mandate strength, but in fact only the larger parties are considered) or as a majority or minority government . This is determined by the respective state constitution. The formation of a government by means of proportional representation only exists in the federal states of Lower Austria, Upper Austria and Vienna. Vorarlberg abolished this system as early as 1923. In 1999 Tyrol and Salzburg followed. The proportional representation system was abolished in Burgenland in 2014, in Styria in 2015 and in Carinthia in 2017.

Formally, the principle of proportional representation also applies in Vienna, but the practice prevails there that state councils (officially called city ​​councils ) who do not belong to the government majority in the state parliament do not receive a portfolio and thus become so-called "non-executive city councilors". In contrast to the other federal states, the abolition of the proportional representation system for Vienna would not only be possible under state law, since Vienna is both a city and a state and the Vienna state government therefore also forms the municipal board, which is called the city senate . The Federal Constitution provides in Article 117, Paragraph 5 of the B-VG that electoral parties represented in the municipal council are entitled to representation on the municipal executive board according to their strength. The system of proportional representation is therefore constitutionally mandatory at the municipal level and therefore, in the special case of Vienna, cannot be abolished at the state level without changing the federal constitution.

Cooperation in a proportional government is also not a sure indicator of closed joint parliamentary work, as is usual in a coalition government . In 2000, the Burgenland Governor Hans Niessl  (SPÖ) was elected to his office with the help of the votes of the green mandataries , who, however, did not constitute a Provincial Council themselves. In the 1990s, the FPÖ was sufficiently represented in the Burgenland state parliament to be able to send a state council to the state government. However, the SPÖ and ÖVP, which were working together in the state parliament at the time, curtailed the area of ​​responsibility of this government member, which then went down in history in the not-too-mountainous Burgenland as the "cable car state council".

The number of government members differs in the individual federal states:

Office of the state government

The office of the state government is the administrative auxiliary apparatus of the state government and as such is not an authority in itself . It is led by a state office director who, according to Art. 106 of the Federal Constitutional Act (B-VG), must be a legally qualified employee of the office of the state government and is at least entrusted with the management of the internal service.

Acting state government

Ruling parties in the state parliament
List status: 2/2020

See also: Acting governors and their deputies

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Federal Constitutional Law, Art. 101
  2. ^ [1] Vorarlberger Nachrichten, June 1, 2017.
  3. ↑ [2] ORF.at, June 1, 2017.
  4. ↑ Georg Renner: Let Gudenus and his team work! Article on NZZ.at from October 14, 2015.