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
A Thin Line
- Author(s)
- Verena Brändle, Olga Eisele
- Abstract
In response to the recent crises in Europe many governments have tightened their border controls despite considerable criticism from the EU Commission and civil society. While borders are at the core of recent crises, we lack systematic evidence of how governments publicly inform about border politics and justify measures. Therefore, we ask: How do EU governments communicate about borders?
We analyse a comprehensive sample of press releases of the Austrian and German governments over 12 years (2009-2020). Applying a mixed-methods design, we employ automated text analysis, specifically Latent Semantic Scaling (LSX) to scale documents regarding how they communicated permeability (openness and closedness) of borders and the state of affairs regarding a state of crisis and routine. Based on this quantitative analysis, we then apply qualitative text analysis to explore the nuances and patterns of this communication to gain in-depth insights into governmental stances about borders.- Organisation(s)
- Department of Communication, Department of Government
- Journal
- Journal of Common Market Studies
- Volume
- 61
- Pages
- 597-615
- No. of pages
- 19
- ISSN
- 0021-9886
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1111/jcms.13398
- Publication date
- 2022
- Peer reviewed
- Yes
- Austrian Fields of Science 2012
- 508020 Political communication
- Keywords
- ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Economics and Econometrics, General Business,Management and Accounting, Political Science and International Relations, Business and International Management
- Portal url
- https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/40615eeb-30bd-4b44-a22f-5f184004dc4b