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
Support for the Populist Radical Right
- Author(s)
- Johann Gründl, Julian Aichholzer
- Abstract
The last several decades have witnessed a structural change in politics toward cultural and identity conflicts, accompanied by the rise of populist radical right (PRR) parties. However, we know surprisingly little about the psychological or cognitive‐motivational factors underlying PRR support. We claim that uncertainty avoidance (UA)—an epistemic avoidance motivation—represents a central motive because UA resonates with the PRR platform and precedes common predictors of PRR voting. Using data from the 2017 Austrian National Election Study, we found that UA was indeed indirectly associated with a higher likelihood of PRR voting. This association is because greater UA fostered right‐wing sociocultural views, whereas associations with populist attitudes or expected government competence were more ambiguous. PRR parties appear to offer “certainty,” but as extreme parties, they also remain a “risky choice.” We conclude by discussing the contribution of a cognitive‐motivational account to explain PRR voting.
- Organisation(s)
- Department of Government
- Journal
- Political Psychology
- Volume
- 41
- Pages
- 641-659
- No. of pages
- 19
- ISSN
- 0162-895X
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.12643
- Publication date
- 11-2019
- Peer reviewed
- Yes
- Austrian Fields of Science 2012
- 501021 Social psychology, 506012 Political systems, 501004 Differential psychology, 504007 Empirical social research
- Keywords
- ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Social Psychology, Sociology and Political Science
- Portal url
- https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/4af126d6-30ae-460e-b397-94ad322663e3