what distinguished Austria from Sweden, for example, was the near-universal allocation of employment, influence, favours and funds according to political affiliation. This appropriation of the Austrian state and its resources to stabilize the market in political preferences had less to do with social ideals than with the memory of past traumas. In the wake of their inter-war experience, Austria’s socialists were more interested in stabilizing their country’s fragile democracy than in revolutionizing its social policies.
