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
Affective polarization and coalition signals
- Author(s)
- Markus Wagner, Katrin Praprotnik
- Abstract
Affective polarization between partisans is potentially troubling for liberal democracy. Hence, recent research has focused on how affective dislike between partisans can be reduced. Using a survey experiment in Austria, we test whether elite signals matter. Respondents exposed to fictional news stories implying that their in-party might form a coalition with an out-party show reduced dislike toward supporters of that out-party. Our experiment also shows that coalition signals can influence out-party affect even if neither of the two parties signaling cooperation are an in-party. We conclude that cooperation between rivals has an important role in reducing affective polarization.
- Organisation(s)
- Department of Government
- External organisation(s)
- Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz
- Journal
- Political Science Research and Methods
- Volume
- 12
- Pages
- 336-353
- No. of pages
- 18
- ISSN
- 2049-8470
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1017/psrm.2023.33
- Publication date
- 2023
- 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/354b4af5-f444-465f-b888-c684e82fc150