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

Im Tempel des Sarastro: Sollen Expert*innen politische Entscheidungen treffen?

Author(s)
Julia Partheymüller, Jakob-Moritz Eberl
Abstract

In Anbetracht der öffentlichen Debatte um die Rolle von Expert*innen wurden im Rahmen des Austrian Corona Panel Projects (ACPP) die Teilnehmer*innen der Umfrage wiederholt gefragt, was sie meinen, wie angesichts der Corona-Krise politische Entscheidungen in einer Demokratie getroffen werden sollten. Speziell wurden die Befragten dabei gebeten anzugeben, inwiefern ihrer Ansicht nach die folgende Aussage zutrifft oder nicht zutrifft: “Es ist besser, wenn wichtige politische Entscheidungen auf Grundlage wissenschaftlicher Erkenntnisse von unabhängigen Experten und nicht von gewählten Politikern getroffen werden.” Dieser Beitrag beleuchtet anhand dieser Daten, die Meinung der österreichischen Bevölkerung dazu, welche Rolle wissenschaftliche Erkenntnisse von Expert*innen bei politische Entscheidungen im Kontext der Corona-Krise spielen sollten.

Organisation(s)
Department of Government, Department of Communication
Publication date
01-2021
Austrian Fields of Science 2012
504007 Empirical social research
Portal url
https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/6637b55c-efc4-4f86-bc76-6b12bcc1a719