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
Toward global citizenship?
- Author(s)
- Isabella M. Radhuber, Amelia Fiske, Ilaria Galasso, Nicolai Gessl, Michael D. Hill, Emma R. Morales, Lorena E. Olarte-Sánchez, Alejandro Pelfini, Gertrude Saxinger, Wanda Spahl
- Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted global interdependencies, accompanied by widespread calls for worldwide cooperation against a virus that knows no borders, but responses were led largely separately by national governments. In this tension between aspiration and reality, people began to grapple with how their own lives were affected by the global nature of the pandemic. In this article, based on 493 qualitative interviews conducted between 2020 and 2021, we explore how people in Argentina, Austria, Bolivia, Ecuador, Ireland, Italy and Mexico experienced, coped with and navigated the global nature of the pandemic. In dialogue with debates about the parameters of the ‘global’ in global health, we focus on what we call people's everyday (de)bordering practices to examine how they negotiated (dis)connections between ‘us’ and ‘them’ during the pandemic. Our interviewees’ reactions moved from national containment to an increasing focus on people's unequal socio-spatial situatedness. Eventually, they began to (de)border their lives beyond national lines of division and to describe a new normal: a growing awareness of global connectedness and a desire for global citizenship. This newfound sense of global interrelatedness could signal support for and encourage transnational political action in times of crises.
- Organisation(s)
- Department of Political Science, HR Operations, Department of Evolutionary Anthropology, HR Services, Department of Government
- External organisation(s)
- Technische Universität München, University College Dublin, Universidad San Francisco de Quito, Universidad Jesuita de Guadalajara, Universidad del Salvador, Flacso-Argentina, Karl Landsteiner Privatuniversität für Gesundheitswissenschaften
- Journal
- Global Public Health
- Volume
- 18
- ISSN
- 1744-1692
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1080/17441692.2023.2285880
- Publication date
- 11-2023
- Peer reviewed
- Yes
- Austrian Fields of Science 2012
- 506010 Policy analysis
- Keywords
- ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health
- Sustainable Development Goals
- SDG 3 - Good Health and Well-being
- Portal url
- https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/04ee1ed9-695e-41a3-9d0c-fc3e36437529