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
On the mismeasurement of sincere and strategic voting in mixed-member electoral systems
- Author(s)
- Carolina Plescia
- Abstract
Under mixed systems, voters cast two votes to elect the same legislative body: one vote for parties using proportional rules and one for candidates using majoritarian rules. Voters are said to cast straight-tickets if the candidate they vote for is of the same party as their proportional vote; otherwise, they are said to cast split-tickets. Split-ticket voting is commonly used as a measure of strategic voting as splitters are usually assumed to express their true preference in one vote but vote strategically in the other. This study challenges this practice showing that split-ticket voting does not necessarily indicate strategic voting, just as straight-ticket voting does not necessarily indicate a sincere vote. This result has wider consequences as it indicates that measuring strategic voting from observed behaviour can result in incorrect conclusions about vote choice.
- Organisation(s)
- Department of Government
- Journal
- Electoral Studies
- Volume
- 48
- Pages
- 19-29
- No. of pages
- 11
- ISSN
- 0261-3794
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1016/j.electstud.2017.05.003
- Publication date
- 08-2017
- 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/767df2aa-6a78-4c8e-9e21-83ee961d108d