Research
Research
In its research and teaching, the Department of Government primarily focuses on comparative and Austrian politics. Its research is concerned with political behaviour, political actors, such as political parties and politicians, political institutions, the processes governed by these institutions, as well as their outcomes. It includes work on political participation, voting behaviour, parties and party competition, coalition politics and Austrian politics in general and is mostly based on rationalist and behavioural approaches.
Our goal is to conduct high-level, internationally competitive research in the area of Comparative Politics with the collaboration of international project partners and research networks. At the Faculty of Social Sciences the department is mainly engaged in the key research area ''Political Competition and Communication: Democratic Representation in Changing Societies'.
The department’s approach places it in the discipline’s empirical-analytical core and is mostly based on quantitative social science methods. To map empirical phenomena accurately, researcher in the department focus on the continuous development of survey design, as well as on the analysis of empirical data by applying the best suited statistical model. The department aims to achieve the best work on Austrian politics and to make important contributions to the international academic literature on Comparative Government and Politics.
An overview of current publications and activities at the department can be found below and on the personal websites of our team.
Publications
A Welfare State for Whom? A Group-based Account of the Austrian Freedom Party’s Social Policy Profile.
- Author(s)
- Laurenz Ennser-Jedenastik
- Abstract
What explains the social policy profile of populist radical right parties (PRRPs)? Building on the argument made by Mudde (2007) that socio-economic policies are secondary elements within the populist radical right ideology, this paper conjectures that the primary elements of that ideology (nativism, authoritarianism, and populism) structure the PRRP's attitudes in the social policy domain. Based on a discussion of the PRRP's core ideology a number of expectations are derived as to which groups should be viewed as deserving or undeserving of support. These expectations are examined through an analysis of the social policies put forward in the election manifestos of the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) between 1983 and 2013. The analysis confirms most of the expectations and highlights an important shift in the FPÖ's social policy agenda, from welfare populist arguments and some retrenchment proposals under Jörg Haider to strong welfare chauvinism after the leadership change in 2005.
- Organisation(s)
- Department of Government
- Journal
- Swiss Political Science Review
- Volume
- 22
- Pages
- 409-427
- No. of pages
- 19
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1111/spsr.12218
- Publication date
- 09-2016
- Peer reviewed
- Yes
- Austrian Fields of Science 2012
- 506014 Comparative politics, 509012 Social policy
- Keywords
- ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Political Science and International Relations
- Portal url
- https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/0012928c-4203-40d8-b9ca-e2608ecbe41a