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 relevance of empirical political science in Austria: Ask important questions, study them rigorously, and let people know
- Author(s)
- Laurenz Ennser-Jedenastik, Thomas Meyer, Markus Wagner
- Abstract
In recent years, political science in Austria has become more open, more internationally oriented, and more visible internationally. While all these developments must clearly be welcomed, they do not automatically translate into greater relevance of the discipline. In this contribution we outline four criteria that need to be fulfilled for empirical research in political science to become relevant: the importance of the problem under study, the generalizability of the findings, the appropriateness of the research design, and the extent to which it is communicated within the discipline and beyond. Based on these criteria we discuss steps that political scientists working not only in Austria but also on Austria can take to improve the relevance of their research.
- Organisation(s)
- Department of Government
- Journal
- Österreichische Zeitschrift für Politikwissenschaft
- Volume
- 47
- Pages
- 33-42
- No. of pages
- 10
- ISSN
- 1615-5548
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.15203/ozp.2740.vol47iss3
- Publication date
- 2018
- 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/40079b52-c7af-4852-b99b-d04dc6576d94