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 centre-right versus the radical right: the role of migration issues and economic grievances
- Author(s)
- Tarik Abou-Chadi, Denis Cohen, Markus Wagner
- Abstract
Radical right parties are strong competitors of the centre-right in many party systems. In this article, we first show that the centre-right's overall stability in terms of vote share masks clear patterns of competition between these two party groups. We then study the attitudinal determinants of the choice between centre-right and radical right parties, paying particular attention to the impact of the economic crisis of 2008 and the migration crisis of 2015. Using European Social Survey data from 2002 onwards, we show that the role of anti-migration views and economic grievances as predictors of the choice for radical right versus centre-right parties has strengthened over time. We then examine whether accommodating positional shifts by centre-right parties are successful in attracting potential radical right voters. Our analyses of voter transitions using election study data show that this is not the case.
- Organisation(s)
- Department of Government
- External organisation(s)
- University of Oxford, Universität Mannheim
- Journal
- Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies
- Volume
- 48
- Pages
- 366-384
- No. of pages
- 19
- ISSN
- 1369-183X
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2020.1853903
- Publication date
- 2021
- Peer reviewed
- Yes
- Austrian Fields of Science 2012
- 506014 Comparative politics
- Keywords
- ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Demography, Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous)
- Portal url
- https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/6ebcd8d9-3f1f-4426-99cb-f2022bbe0f67