The United States and Austria

Differences in Political Geography

Introduction

I am going to compare and contrast the political geographies of the United States and Austria. I chose Austria for two reasons. First, like the United States, Austria is a democratic-capitalist Western nation. However, second, the United States is a very large country, while Austria is quite a small one. I believe that size does matter to political geography.

Purpose Statement

My purpose is to show that, while two countries can have similar political and economic theories, big differences in size can have important political ramifications. One of those ramifications, which I will discuss, is that size affects whether a single, central government or a system of governments (such as a federal system) works best.

Key Points: Austria Compared to the United States

There is an enormous difference between the area of the United States and the area of Austria.

The continental United States of America, or “lower 48,” has an area of 3,119,984 square miles. If it were a nation, it would be the 5^th largest nation of the world. It is 2,902 miles from New York City to San Francisco. Alaska adds another 663,268 square miles, and Hawaii 10,931, and those two states are quite distant from the other 48, making the United States truly enormous in terms of the locations of its people.

Austria has an area of 32,386 square miles. That is 1% of the area of just the continental United States. Austria is slightly larger than Maine and slightly smaller than Indiana. The East-West distance across Austria is 372 miles. That is slightly more than 1/8^th the distance from New York City to San Francisco.

One issue posed by the large size of the United States is that people can feel that they have a government that is far away, that their leaders are out of touch with them, and that they are being ignored or not even noticed. The United States tries to deal with this with a federal system, with 50 state governments, which are somewhat closer to the people. However, since the New Deal of the Great Depression Era of the 1930s, the central government, meaning the federal government headquartered in Washington, DC, has become vastly more important, and the states have become relatively less important. Thus, the actual system of government has evolved from a decentralized one, of 50 states, to a single centralized government. One explanation for the results of the 2016 Presidential Election is a widespread alienation of voters from the central government. The central government system of the United States may be showing signs of a loss of legitimacy, because of size and distance.

Theoretically, Austria’s government is also a federal system, with nine states. However, this has long been a matter of form only, as the state governments have no legislative authority over important matters. Instead, the central government, the federal government, exercises all important governmental functions. One can travel to Vienna, the capital of Austria, by car or train, in two to four hours at most. Moreover, the great majority of people live much closer to Vienna than that. It seems likely that Austrians do not see their government as distant. It also seems likely that they do not feel ignored or unnoticed.

The United Kingdom, while not nearly as large as the United States, is much larger than Austria. The UK underwent the political upheaval of Brexit.