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
Coalition Agreements as Control Devices
- Author(s)
- Heike Klüver, Hanna Bäck, Svenja Krauss
- Abstract
Why do political parties negotiate coalition agreements? Many coalition cabinets negotiate lengthy coalition contracts outlining the agenda for the time in office. Negotiating such an agreement not only takes time and resources, but compromises have to be made which may result in cabinet conflicts and electoral costs. We argue that coalition agreements are important control devices that allow coalition parties to keep their partners in line, but that their use varies with the preference configuration and the allocation of ministerial portfolios. First, we posit that parties will only negotiate about policy issues when they disagree on an issue that is important to all partners. Second, since controlling a ministry grants parties with important information and policy-making advantages, coalition parties moreover seek to particularly constrain their partners when their partners control the ministry in charge of a policy area. Finally, we argue that coalition agreements only work as effective control devices if coalition parties settle controversial issues in the coalition contract. To test our expectations, we have compiled the COALITIONAGREE Dataset that maps the content of 229 coalition agreements that were negotiated by 189 parties between 1945 and 2015 in 24 West and East European countries. We show that coalition parties systematically use coalition agreements to control their partners when policy issues are divisive and salient and when they are confronted with a hostile minister. Coalition agreements can, however, only effectively contain conflicts when coalition parties seize the opportunity and negotiate a compromise on precisely the issues that divide them.
- Organisation(s)
- Department of Government
- External organisation(s)
- Lund University, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
- No. of pages
- 284
- Publication date
- 2023
- Peer reviewed
- Yes
- Austrian Fields of Science 2012
- 506014 Comparative politics
- Portal url
- https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/0b69a3a7-9261-429e-856c-68a8f01010d8