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
Which issues do parties emphasise? Salience strategies and party organisation in multiparty systems
- Author(s)
- Thomas Meyer, Markus Wagner
- Abstract
Party system issue agendas are formed by the topics that individual parties decide to address, and these salience decisions are likely to be strategic. Two key strategies are commonly discussed in the literature: parties' focus on (1) issues that they have ownership over and (2) issues that currently concern voters. Yet it is not known what explains the extent to which parties pursue each of these strategies. This paper argues that aspects of party organisation influence which salience strategy is pursued. Parties that have more resources will be able to 'ride the wave' of current concerns while parties with fewer resources are more likely to focus on their best issues. Furthermore, policy-seeking parties with strong activist influence will be less likely to 'ride the wave' and more likely to follow issue ownership strategies. An analysis of 105 election manifestos from 27 elections in 17 countries shows that aspects of party organisation are indeed strong and robust moderators of issue ownership strategies. Limited, albeit mixed, evidence is also found that party organisation affects the use of 'riding the wave' strategies. These results have important implications for our understanding of electoral campaigns, party competition and voter representation.
- Organisation(s)
- Department of Government
- Journal
- West European Politics
- Volume
- 37
- Pages
- 1019-1045
- No. of pages
- 27
- ISSN
- 0140-2382
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2014.911483
- Publication date
- 06-2014
- Peer reviewed
- Yes
- Austrian Fields of Science 2012
- 506014 Comparative politics
- ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Political Science and International Relations
- Portal url
- https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/83d4771b-ae32-43c3-a6d8-03a6112defe6