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
Rebuilding the coalition ship at sea
- Author(s)
- Thomas Meyer, Ulrich Sieberer, David Schmuck
- Abstract
In the government formation process, coalition partners make decisions about the inner workings of their future government. However, whether the initial allocation of competencies has the desired effects is uncertain, and deals may therefore be subject to change when the government is in office. This study analyses the frequency of changes in portfolio design (i.e. the distribution of competencies among government ministries and office holders) for 112 coalition governments in eight West European democracies (1970–2015). Its central argument is that in uncertain and complex bargaining situations, coalition partners have greater difficulty finding mutually beneficial deals, and changes to the initial allocation of payoffs are therefore more likely. The results indicate that preference divergence and strenuous coalition negotiations make portfolio design reforms more likely, but show no consistent effect of the familiarity among government parties. These findings show how the bargaining context during government formation foreshadows coalition governance over the cabinet’s life-cycle.
- Organisation(s)
- Department of Government
- External organisation(s)
- Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg
- Journal
- West European Politics
- Volume
- 47
- Pages
- 142-163
- No. of pages
- 22
- ISSN
- 0140-2382
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2023.2169512
- Publication date
- 2024
- Peer reviewed
- Yes
- Austrian Fields of Science 2012
- 506014 Comparative politics
- Keywords
- ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Political Science and International Relations
- Portal url
- https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/71341e25-7bfe-4892-adcc-c70265f840c1