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.
Political Institutions
Institutions play a key role in political systems, as they define the framework conditions for political decisions...
Political Representation
Political representation describes the institutional and social processes and practices that connect citizens and voters to...
Party Competition
Party competition is an essential component of democratic systems and describes the competition between political parties for votes...
Infrastructural Projects
Infrastructural projects are an essential component of scientific research, as they create the basis for long-term data collection...
Political Behaviour
Political behaviour deals with the individual and collective attitudes and actions of citizens in a political context...
Cooperations
Cooperations are a central component of scientific research, as they promote the exchange of knowledge, resources and...
Publications
Gender Differences in Negative Campaigning: The Impact of Party Environments
- Author(s)
- Laurenz Ennser-Jedenastik, Martin Dolezal, Wolfgang Claudius Müller
- Abstract
How does gender affect the attack strategies of political actors? Do men and women diverge in their propensity to go negative and in their choice of targets? Extant research has long sought to shed light on these questions (e.g., Brooks 2010; Kahn 1993; Krupnikov and Bauer 2014; Proctor, Schenck-Hamlin, and Haase 1994; Walter 2013). Among all the possible determinants of attack behavior in elections, candidate gender has been one of the most heavily studied (Grossmann 2012, 2). However, the relevant research focuses almost exclusively on the United States and therefore on a system with candidate-centered campaigns, weak party organizations, and winner-takes-all competitions. Notwithstanding the importance of the USA as a case and exporter of campaign techniques, such context is specific and likely to bias the results. The few pioneering studies that examine the role of gender in negative campaigning outside the U.S. (Carlson 2001, 2007; Walter 2013) have addressed this question mostly by transferring the analytical framework of U.S.-based research to other political systems. Consequently, they have barely begun to incorporate the distinctive features of multiparty systems and strong party organizations as determinants of gender differences in attack behavior. The present article provides a novel argument about the role of party environments as a crucial context factor in party-centered political systems. Specifically we argue that in party-centered campaigns the gender balance within parties influences differences in the attack behavior of male and female politicians.
- Organisation(s)
- Department of Government
- Journal
- Politics & Gender
- Volume
- 13
- Pages
- 81-106
- No. of pages
- 26
- ISSN
- 1743-923X
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1017/S1743923X16000532
- Publication date
- 03-2017
- Peer reviewed
- Yes
- Austrian Fields of Science 2012
- 506014 Comparative politics
- Keywords
- ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Gender Studies, Sociology and Political Science
- Portal url
- https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/2d8ead02-ff60-417e-8cc3-73ce1ed2ea44