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
New people, new policy: How personnel renewal in the party executive affects party policy change. The case of Austria
- Author(s)
- Matthias Kaltenegger, Wolfgang C. Müller
- Abstract
The party organization literature has long acknowledged that changes in a party’s internal power structure bring about changes in leadership personnel. However, empirical assessments of how such personnel changes relate to party behavior are rare. We explore personnel renewal in the party executive as a driver of party policy change and argue that focusing on these processes provides for an encompassing perspective on the connection between intra-party power and party behavior. Building on the party change literature, we theorize on personnel renewal in the party executive as a potential stand-alone driver of party policy change as well as on its interplay with other explanatory factors and test empirical implications based on all major Austrian parties (1949–2019). Findings suggest that personnel renewal in the party executive has a profound effect on party policy and that these personnel changes are in part driven by party performance.
- Organisation(s)
- Department of Government
- Journal
- Party Politics
- ISSN
- 1354-0688
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1177/13540688241293052
- Publication date
- 2024
- Peer reviewed
- Yes
- Austrian Fields of Science 2012
- 506014 Comparative politics
- Keywords
- ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Sociology and Political Science
- Portal url
- https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/240807ad-2d3f-4c97-ac5c-4514ffbbd54b