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
Voting at 16 in Practice: A Review of the Austrian Case
- Author(s)
- Julian Aichholzer, Sylvia Kritzinger
- Abstract
This chapter reviews the case of Austria, a country that has implemented a general voting age of 16 in 2007, in an effort to assess the medium-term real-world impact of this policy measure. After providing a review of Austria’s policy implementation and the existing research on voting at 16, novel data is presented that allows for a comparison of 16- and 17-year-olds to older voter cohorts on several important political indicators. Overall, the evidence is encouraging to supporters of voting age 16. Even though 16- to 17-year-olds exhibit somewhat lower general interest in politics and lower internal efficacy, turnout is generally higher compared to older first-time voters and similar to the electorate’s average, they follow electoral campaigns to the same extent as do other young voters, and they exhibit considerably high levels of external efficacy and satisfaction with democracy. The chapter closes by discussing implications of the results for policymakers as well as avenues for further research on the long-term impact of implementing a voting age of 16.
- Organisation(s)
- Department of Government
- Pages
- 81-101
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32541-1_5
- Publication date
- 11-2019
- Peer reviewed
- Yes
- Austrian Fields of Science 2012
- 506012 Political systems
- Keywords
- Portal url
- https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/5a112221-8e10-415a-8334-27a5a72bf388