section_path: Government and politics
section_name: Government and politics
paragraph_text: Government and politics
  
  The Parliament of Austria is located in Vienna, the country's capital and most populous city. Austria became a federal, representative democratic republic through the Federal Constitutional Law of 1920. The political system of the Second Republic with its nine federal states is based on the constitution of 1920, amended in 1929, which was re-enacted on 1 May 1945.
  
  The president of Austria is the head of state. The president is directly elected by popular majority vote, with a run-off between the top-scoring candidates if necessary. The chancellor of Austria is head of the government. The chancellor is selected by the president and tasked with forming a government based on the partisan composition of the lower house of parliament.
  
  The government can be removed from office by either a presidential decree or by vote of no confidence in the lower chamber of parliament, the Nationalrat. Voting for the president and for the parliament used to be compulsory in Austria. The compulsion was abolished in steps from 1982 to 2004.
  
  Austria's parliament consists of two chambers. The composition of the Nationalrat (183 seats) is determined every five years (or whenever the Nationalrat has been dissolved by the federal president on a motion by the federal chancellor, or by the Nationalrat itself) by a general election in which every citizen over the age of 16 has the right to vote. The voting age was lowered from 18 to 16 in 2007.
  
  While there is a general threshold of 4% of the vote for all parties in federal elections (Nationalratswahlen) to participate in the proportional allocation of seats, there remains the possibility of being elected to a seat directly in one of the 43 regional electoral districts (Direktmandat).
  
  The Nationalrat is the dominant chamber in the legislative process in Austria. However, the upper house of parliament, the Bundesrat, has a limited right of veto (the Nationalrat can — in almost all cases — ultimately pass the respective bill by voting a second time; this is referred to as a Beharrungsbeschluss, lit. "vote of persistence"). A constitutional convention, called the Österreich -Konvent was convened on 30 June 2003 to consider reforms to the constitution, but failed to produce a proposal that would command a two-thirds majority in the Nationalrat, the margin necessary for constitutional amendments or reform.
  
  While the bicameral Parliament and the Government constitute the legislative and executive branches, respectively, the courts are the third branch of Austrian state powers. The Constitutional Court (Verfassungsgerichtshof) exerts considerable influence on the political system because of its power to invalidate legislation and ordinances that are not in compliance with the Constitution. Since 1995, the European Court of Justice may overrule Austrian decisions in all matters defined in the laws of the European Union. Austria also implements the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights, since the European Convention on Human Rights is part of the Austrian constitution.