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 Conflict over Nuclear Energy: Public Opinion, Protest Movements, and Green Parties in Comparative Perspective
- Author(s)
- Paul W. Thurner, Sylvain Brouard, Martin Dolezal, Isabelle Guinaudeau, Swen Hutter, Wolfgang C. Müller
- Abstract
This chapter provides an account of the contestation of nuclear energy in Western Europe and beyond. It presents a new compilation of comparative public opinion data on nuclear energy, original data on protest behaviour directed against nuclear energy, and a systematic account of the development of Green parties. The focus is on the covariation of these factors with the behaviour of the established political parties and system properties (Kitschelt’s ‘openness’). The main function of the chapter is to show the relative strength of the ‘natural enemies’ of nuclear energy – concerned citizens, protest movements, and Green parties – in the countries covered by case studies (and beyond, where possible) and to understand how they interact. The chapter argues that neither public opinion critical to nuclear energy nor sizeable protest behaviour is sufficient to introduce anti-nuclear policy change.
- Organisation(s)
- Department of Government
- External organisation(s)
- European University Institute (EUI), Institut d’études politiques de Paris, Université Montesquieu Bordeaux IV, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
- Pages
- 65-97
- Publication date
- 2017
- Peer reviewed
- Yes
- Austrian Fields of Science 2012
- 506012 Political systems, 506011 Political history
- Portal url
- https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/49a197c8-6236-486e-84d1-5a7f2d9289ec