Administrative division of Austria

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Administrative division of Austria

The administrative structure of Austria is the vertical administrative structure of the Republic of Austria .

The highest administrative unit of the federally organized republic is the federal government , followed by the federal states , districts and municipalities . The federal government, federal states and municipalities are regional authorities and as such legal entities . The districts are purely administrative units of the federal government and the federal states and have no self-administration powers.

Federation

In Austria, the focus of the public administration of the regional authorities has traditionally been the federal government. The most important competences are transferred to this by the federal constitution through exhaustive enumeration with general clause. It is the only administrative level that has organs in all three branches of state construction. The legislation is the National Council and the Federal perceived. The highest administrative organs of the Federation are the Federal President , the Federal Chancellor , the Federal Ministers and State Secretaries (Art. 19 B-VG). With the exception of the regional administrative courts of the individual federal states, all organs of jurisdiction are federal organs.

Below the federal government, the political structure of Austria according to regional authorities works as follows:

countries

Austria is a federal state . It is divided into nine federal states . These have their own state governments , which take care of the state administration. In the course of indirect federal administration, the state governments also take care of the agendas of the federal administration, but are bound by instructions to the federal administration in these matters.

The Austrian federal states and their capitals:

The federal states of Austria
# state Capital
1 BurgenlandBurgenland Burgenland Eisenstadt
2 CarinthiaCarinthia Carinthia Klagenfurt am Wörthersee
3 NiederosterreichLower Austria Lower Austria Sankt Pölten
4th OberosterreichUpper Austria Upper Austria Linz
5 SalzburgState of Salzburg Salzburg Salzburg
6th StyriaStyria Styria Graz
7th TyrolTyrol (state) Tyrol innsbruck
8th VorarlbergVorarlberg Vorarlberg Bregenz
9 ViennaVienna Vienna Vienna

Districts

The district administrative authorities ( district authorities and cities with their own statutes ) form a further administrative level in the federal states . In contrast to the German districts , however, they have no autonomous sphere of activity. The district authorities are authorities of the state administration, which are led by a district captain appointed by the state government . A democratization of the district administrative authorities - for example through the direct election of the district captain - was already discussed in 1919, but was ultimately not implemented. In the statutory cities, the district administration coincides with the municipal administration. The mayor is then also the district administrative authority, whereby he has usually delegated his tasks to the magistrate .

Communities

The lowest administrative units are the municipalities . They take care of the communal self-government assigned to them. Matters of building regulations or the local security police are part of their area of ​​responsibility, which they take care of through the elected councilors and community representatives as well as the mayor. The municipalities are purely administrative units without legislative powers.

Unlike in Germany, for example, there are municipalities across the board, because according to Art. 116 B-VG “every property must belong to a municipality”.

Districts

Further subdivisions, such as into districts (municipality parts, local parishes, local administration parts, localities, city districts) are not prescribed by the legislature, but are quite common in local government. The mayor but usually get only very limited areas of responsibility and respect to the community organs frequently subject to directives.

Special case Vienna

Vienna is a special case in the Austrian administrative structure. It is both a federal state and a statutory city (and thus at the same time a district administrative authority and political municipality), so it also handles the levels of state, district and municipal agendas.

The state and local government are formally strictly separated, but the people involved are always the same. By virtue of his office, the mayor of Vienna is also provincial governor. By virtue of its office, the Vienna City Council is also the Vienna Landtag - however, the chairmanship of the city council meetings and the Landtag meetings is held by different people. Incidentally, the federal capital is divided into 23 municipality or city districts, which, however, cannot be compared with either the district administrative authorities or the municipalities in the other federal  states.

Further national spatial structures of the public administration

In addition to the administrative structure in the true sense of the word, there are other administrative, functional and political structures in Austria:

Regional division of space

The districts of Lower Austria and Upper Austria and the historic districts of Styria are not directly part of the administrative structure, but the constituencies, for example, refer to them.

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The districts of Eferding and Grieskirchen have formed an administrative community since September 1, 2016 .
  2. ↑ Law on the decision 99/10/0195 , Administrative Court
  3. ^ Regional divisions , Statistics Austria
  4. ↑ Agricultural production areas on statistik.at
  5. ↑ Settlement units on statistik.at