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
The fulfillment of parties' election pledges
- Author(s)
- Robert Thomson, Terry J. Royed, Elin Naurin, Joaquín Artés, Rory Costello, Laurenz Ennser-Jedenastik, Mark J. Ferguson, Petia Kostadinova, Catherine Moury, François Petry, Katrin Praprotnik
- Abstract
Why are some parties more likely than others to keep the promises they made during previous election campaigns? This study provides the first large-scale comparative analysis of pledge fulfillment with common definitions. We study the fulfillment of over 20,000 pledges made in 57 election campaigns in 12 countries, and our findings challenge the common view of parties as promise breakers. Many parties that enter government executives are highly likely to fulfill their pledges, and significantly more so than parties that do not enter government executives. We explain variation in the fulfillment of governing parties' pledges by the extent to which parties share power in government. Parties in single-party executives, both with and without legislative majorities, have the highest fulfillment rates. Within coalition governments, the likelihood of pledge fulfillment is highest when the party receives the chief executive post and when another governing party made a similar pledge.
- Organisation(s)
- Department of Government
- External organisation(s)
- Universität Hamburg, Monash University, University of Alabama, University of Gothenburg, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, University of Limerick, Bennett College, University of Illinois at Chicago, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Université Laval
- Journal
- American Journal of Political Science
- Volume
- 61
- Pages
- 527–542
- No. of pages
- 16
- ISSN
- 0092-5853
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12313
- Publication date
- 07-2017
- Peer reviewed
- Yes
- Austrian Fields of Science 2012
- 506014 Comparative politics
- Keywords
- ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Political Science and International Relations, Sociology and Political Science
- Portal url
- https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/2d25d966-19c7-461f-a76b-1621565e7b5b