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
Are People More Satisfied with Democracy When They Feel They Won the Election? No
- Author(s)
- Jean-François Daoust, Carolina Plescia, Andre Blais
- Abstract
Citizens who voted for a party ending up in government are more satisfied with democracy than those who supported a party that ends up in the opposition. The assumption is that voting for a party that is included in the government produces a perception of having won the election, which increases one’s level of satisfaction with democracy. This (assumed) mediation has never been directly tested. In this research note, we provide the first empirical test of this mediation using data from the Making Electoral Democracy Work project, which includes a question tapping whether the respondent perceives the party she voted for won or lost the election. We do not find support for the mediation hypothesis. We conclude that the meaning of the higher (lower) satisfaction observed among those who voted for a party included in the government (or in the opposition) remains ambiguous. Our research has important implications for the conceptualization of what it means to win or lose an election.
- Organisation(s)
- Department of Government
- External organisation(s)
- University of Edinburgh, University of Montreal
- Journal
- Political Studies Review
- Volume
- 21
- Pages
- 162-171
- No. of pages
- 10
- ISSN
- 1478-9299
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1177/1478929921105839
- Publication date
- 02-2023
- Peer reviewed
- Yes
- Austrian Fields of Science 2012
- 506013 Political theory
- Keywords
- ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Political Science and International Relations, Sociology and Political Science
- Portal url
- https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/749900a9-0ed8-40ee-a0ba-0397eba1ca9a