[3] The divide between the socialists on the left and Catholic conservatives on the right ultimately led to the Austrian Civil War and ensuing Austrofascist dictatorship, which ended after Austria's annexation by Nazi Germany.
During the ensuing 21 years, an elaborate system was set up throughout the political and public service, in which partisan officials were appointed in an attempt to give approximately equal influence to both the ÖVP and SPÖ.
[1] On its own, this is in line with common practice in many countries with coalition government, but the extent to which the parties sought to institutionalise these divisions became synonymous with Proporz.
After the success of the right-wing Federation of Independents in the 1949 election, the government sought to limit its influence by applying Proporz at all levels of administration.
From 1958 onwards, the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation (ORF) was headed by four officials – two from each party – with the ÖVP having responsibility for radio and the SPÖ for television, which at this stage was in its infancy.
[4] A bill scrapping the ORF's Proporz arrangement was ultimately passed during the single-party ÖVP government of Josef Klaus in 1966, and came into effect in 1967.
[1] Initially, this model effectively guaranteed the ÖVP and SPÖ joint dominance over state governments, as other parties were typically too small to win any more than one cabinet position.
[1] Critics of Proporz characterised it as a form of political patronage and nepotism in which officials were appointed or received benefits on the basis of their party membership.
[8] In Conflict and Freedom: Towards a Service Class Society (1972), Ralf Dahrendorf criticised the Proporz system: "The conversion of solidarity into individual action entails a withdrawal of energy from the battlefield and marketplace of politics.
"[9] Sociologist and jurist Gustav Edward Kafka said in 1958 that Proporz had become so entrenched that "one could say with good reason that most of the provisions of formal constitutional law, including republican form of government, could be changed without profound consequences, as long as this principle [Proporz] remains in force; yet the return to free political competition would be tantamount to a revolution, though it would not require changing a comma in the constitution.