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
National Election Studies
- Author(s)
- Sylvia Kritzinger
- Abstract
National election studies have become important data machineries for social science research in general and for electoral research in particular. In this note I will focus on the aims, consequences and challenges of national election studies by considering recent methodological developments with regards to both the data collection efforts and the type of data that is collected. I will then consider some of the institutional constraints national elections studies face to date and its repercussions on funding opportunities. I will do so by highlighting the Swiss national election study (Selects) and the Austrian National Election Study (AUTNES) - two election studies that collect comprehensive data on elections, provide a wide selection of data points that are freely available and can be used for single country as well as comparative research projects.
- Organisation(s)
- Department of Government
- Journal
- Swiss Political Science Review
- Volume
- 24
- Pages
- 565-574
- No. of pages
- 10
- ISSN
- 1662-6370
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1111/spsr.12334
- Publication date
- 12-2018
- Peer reviewed
- Yes
- Austrian Fields of Science 2012
- 506012 Political systems
- ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Political Science and International Relations
- Portal url
- https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/5823074f-47ad-4e0d-aa14-189cb9536427