his right to appoint the chancellor was constrained by the National Council's power to censure the cabinet or individual ministers, meaning the president was all but required to ensure his choice of chancellor had the confidence of the National Council. He exercised many of his other executive functions on the advice of the chancellor. This move away from a government steered predominantly by a fairly large and (by definition) fractioned deliberative body towards a system concentrating power in the hands of a single autonomous leader was made in an attempt to appease the para-fascist movements (such as the Heimwehr, or later the Ostmärkische Sturmscharen and the Social Democratic Republikanischer Schutzbund) thriving in Austria at that time. In 1934, following years of increasingly violent political strife and gradual erosion of the rule of law, the ruling Christian Social Party, which by then had turned to full-scale Austrofascism, formally replaced the constitution by a new basic law defining Austria as an authoritarian corporate state. The Austrofascist constitution was in force until Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany in 1938, ceasing to exist as a sovereign state. The Constitution of Austria was eventually reinstated on May 1, 1945, Austria having reestablished itself as an independent republic shortly before Nazi Germany's definitive collapse. The modifications enacted in 1929 were not then rescinded, and essentially remain in effect until this day, although the constitution has been heavily modified and amended since then. Structure In area, the Republic of Austria is slightly smaller than Maine, Scotland, or Hokkaidō and home to a relatively ethnically and culturally homogeneous population of 8.8 million people. Given that more than one fifth of its inhabitants are concentrated in the city of Vienna and its suburbs, the nation is also naturally unipolar in terms of both economic and cultural activity. Austria's constitutional framework nevertheless characterizes the republic as a federation consisting of nine autonomous federal states: Like the federation, each of the nine states of Austria has a constitution defining it to be a republican entity governed according to the principles of representative democracy. The state constitutions congruently define the states to be unicameral parliamentary democracies; each state has a legislature elected by popular vote and a cabinet appointed by its legislature. The federal constitution defines Austria itself as a bicameral parliamentary democracy with near-complete separation of powers. Austria's government structure is thus very similar to that of much larger federal