Seminar paper from the year 2009 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Topic: Miscellaneous, grade: 2, Loughborough University (Politics, International Relations and European Studies), course: Federalism in Theory and Practice, language: English, abstract: Austria can be often found in enumerations of federal states in Europe just on the side of Switzerland and Germany but is Austria a real federal state or just a decentralized state? "Austria is a federal state. The Federal State is composed of the autonomous Länder of Bur-genland, Carinthia, Lower Austria, Upper Austria, Salzburg, Styria, Tirol, Vorarlberg and Vienna. The Federal territory comprises the territories of the Federal Länder." (Article 2 and 3, Austrian federal constitutional law). With these articles it can be seen that the Austrian constitution clearly identifies Austria as a federal state but if you take a closer look at this constitution the question will occur if the Federal State of Austria does suffer from a lack of federalism. In the first part of the essay I will explain the development of federalism beginning with the end of the monarchy in 1918. The second part will be an explanation of how federalism is supposed to work in this country and the third part will be dedicated to the efforts of reforming and renew the Austrian system of federalism.