Conclusion

Abstract

Abstract The first part of the conclusion provides an overview of the emergence and developments of Austrian war victim welfare from the introduction of universal military service in 1868 to the mid-1920s, and looks at their long-term relevance for the post-1945 welfare legislation and programs. The second part of the conclusion discusses why the immediate post-1918 reform dynamics in welfare politics petered out after 1921. Participatory legislation and democratic institution-building led to two unintended consequences: the routinization and bureaucratization of welfare politics, and the fragmentation of the war victim movement. Adding the changed political constellations and the new government priorities of fiscal discipline, the momentum of grassroots war victim movement could not be sustained. Organized war victims turned to milieu-based political parties as their advocates and lost their relative political autonomy. But their precedent of welfare state-expansion and interest group-based stabilization would be repeated after 1945.