District (Austria)

In Austrian politics, a district (German: Bezirk) is a second-level division of the executive arm of the country's government. District offices are the primary point of contact between resident and state for most acts of government that exceed municipal purview: marriage licenses, driver licenses, passports, assembly permits, hunting permits, or dealings with public health officers for example all involve interaction with the district administrative authority (Bezirksverwaltungsbehörde).

Austrian constitutional law distinguishes two types of district administrative authority:

As of 2015, there are 95 districts, 80 districts headed by district commissions and 15 statutory cities.

Many districts are geographically congruent with one of the country's 116 judicial venues.

Statutory cities are not usually referred to as "districts" outside of government publications and the legal literature. For brevity, government agencies will sometimes use the term "rural districts" (Landbezirke) for districts headed by district commissions, although the expression does not appear in any law and many "rural districts" are not very rural.

A district headed by a district commission typically covers somewhere between ten and thirty municipalities. As a purely administrative unit, a district does not hold elections and therefore does not choose its own officials. The district governor (Bezirkshauptmann) is appointed by the provincial governor; the district civil servants are province employees.

In the provincial laws of Lower Austria and Vorarlberg, districts headed by district commissions are called administrative districts (Verwaltungsbezirke). In Burgenland, Carinthia, Salzburg, Styria, Upper Austria, and Tyrol, the term used is political district (politischer Bezirk). National law, including national constitutional law, uses all three variants interchangeably.

A statutory city is a city vested with both municipal and district administrative responsibility. Town hall personnel also serves as district personnel; the mayor also discharges the powers and duties of a head of district commission. City management thus functions both as a regional government and a branch of the national government at the same time.

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