Word: proporz
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...just Schlag in Vienna. The coalition was more or less forced into being to provide an alternative to the Allied occupation, and both parties chafe at it. It survives thanks to an irksome but inevitable invention called Proporz (balance of powers), under which the People's Party gets the chancellorship, but the Socialists the presidency, and every "sensitive" ministry has not only a minister, but also a state secretary from the other party to keep...
Ever since World War II-even through ten years of Soviet occupation-the Austrian government has been run jointly by the conservative People's Party and the Socialist Party, like two polite, equally weighted cousins on an inert seesaw. So scrupulously balanced is the coalition and the Proporz system of dividing up the jobs that, according to Viennese table talk, if there is one People's Party Putz-frau (charwoman) in a government building, there must be a Socialist Putzfrau too. After last November's elections, balance became stalemate; the two big parties have been haggling over...