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
Regional coalition heuristics: government participation and party perceptions in multi-level systems
- Author(s)
- Svenja Krauss, Ida Hjermitslev, Maria Thürk
- Abstract
When parties cooperate, they are perceived as closer together in an ideological space than when they compete. This mechanism has only been tested at the national level and researchers have disregarded the complex interaction between parties competing and cooperating at various levels of a polity. This article argues that complex multi-level systems have an influence on the voters’ perceptions, especially for coalition parties. More specifically, the hypothesis is that voters perceive those national parties that are in government in their Bundesland as closer together on a left-right scale, even though they are not members of the same coalition at the national level. The hypothesis is tested by relying on GLES data from 2009–2021. National government participation and political sophistication are also taken into account as moderating variables. The results have important implications for understanding party perceptions and the effect of regional government participation in multi-level systems.
- Organisation(s)
- Department of Government
- External organisation(s)
- Universität Basel
- Journal
- West European Politics
- ISSN
- 0140-2382
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2024.2359877
- Publication date
- 2024
- Peer reviewed
- Yes
- Austrian Fields of Science 2012
- 506014 Comparative politics
- Keywords
- ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Political Science and International Relations
- Portal url
- https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/0ec94b67-9207-450e-926f-b40c6c219102