The Conservative Without Qualities
Following the downfall of Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, Europe's center-right parties need to rethink what they stand for, beyond a claim to technocratic competence. The alternative, as Kurz’s example shows, is a quasi-authoritarian politics that regards democratic institutions as pesky obstacles for a charismatic leader.
https://prosyn.org/ySDHf6a
PRINCETON – The satirist Karl Kraus observed about his native Austria in 1899: “When the constitution is violated, the people just yawn.” How upset Austrians really were last week when Chancellor Sebastian Kurz was accused of corruption is unclear. But the charges – and the public leaks of vulgar chats involving Kurz and his colleagues – were serious enough to prompt his always somewhat unlikely coalition partner, the Greens, to bring him down.