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
Complements or Substitutes? The Interdependence between Coalition Agreements and Parliamentary Questions as Monitoring Mechanisms in Coalition Governments
- Author(s)
- Daniel Höhmann, Svenja Krauss
- Abstract
Since coalition governments are formed of at least two different parties with diverging preferences, there is major potential for shirking. Coalition parties can use various institutional mechanisms to keep tabs on their partners and detect ministerial drifts. In this article, we focus on potential interdependencies between monitoring mechanisms and analyse whether the existence of a coalition agreement affects the number of parliamentary questions (PQs) asked by the coalition partner. We argue that parties can hold the coalition partner accountable to the coalition agreement by asking questions. The more detailed the coalition agreement, the more potential targets exist for focused PQs. Accordingly, we hypothesize that the more detailed the coalition agreement, the more frequently governing parties use PQs as a monitoring tool. Empirically, we rely on a newly compiled dataset on PQs and a content analysis of coalition agreements in Germany between 1980 and 2017. The results confirm our hypothesis.
- Organisation(s)
- Department of Government
- External organisation(s)
- Universität Basel
- Journal
- Parliamentary Affairs
- Volume
- 75
- Pages
- 420–448
- No. of pages
- 29
- ISSN
- 0031-2290
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1093/pa/gsab002
- Publication date
- 2021
- Peer reviewed
- Yes
- Austrian Fields of Science 2012
- 506014 Comparative politics
- Keywords
- ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Law, Sociology and Political Science
- Portal url
- https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/6f75aa7b-ab8a-49ac-99be-1e510dd1a820