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
Left-Authoritarians and Policy Representation in Western Europe: Electoral Choice across Ideological Dimensions
- Author(s)
- Zoe Lefkofridi, Markus Wagner, Johanna Willmann
- Abstract
Citizens can face a difficult electoral decision when no party even broadly represents their views. In Western Europe, this applies to those citizens with left-wing preferences on economic issues and traditional/authoritarian preferences on socio-cultural issues. There are many voters with such ‘left-authoritarian’ views, but few parties. Hence, the former often have to choose between parties that only match their views on one of these two ideological dimensions. This study shows that whether these citizens privilege economic or socio-cultural congruence in their electoral preferences depends on the issues they are concerned about. In general, it is found that left-authoritarians privilege economic concerns and therefore prefer parties that are left-liberal. These findings have implications for our general understanding of electoral choice and of changing patterns of political competition in Western Europe.
- Organisation(s)
- Department of Government
- Journal
- West European Politics
- Volume
- 37
- Pages
- 65-90
- No. of pages
- 26
- ISSN
- 0140-2382
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2013.818354
- Publication date
- 09-2013
- Peer reviewed
- Yes
- Austrian Fields of Science 2012
- 506004 European integration
- ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Political Science and International Relations
- Portal url
- https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/179f176f-8e0d-494b-96bc-b862936266ab