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
The Politicization of Regulatory Agencies: Between Partisan Influence and Formal Independence
- Author(s)
- Laurenz Ennser-Jedenastik
- Abstract
The past decades have seen a dramatic increase in the number of regulatory agencies ( RAs) across countries and policy domains. To establish credible regulatory regimes, many RAs are formally shielded from direct political influence and thus enjoy high levels of legal autonomy. While granting formal independence to an agency may erect some institutional barriers to politicization, it also generates a strong incentive to appoint ideologically likeminded individuals to the agency leadership. An analysis of about 700 top-level appointments to over 100 RAs in 16 West European countries between 1996 and 2013 shows that individuals with ties to a government party are much more likely to be appointed as formal agency independence increases. Higher levels of legal independence are thus associated with greater party politicization-a finding that casts doubt on the effectiveness of formal independence as a tool to reduce political influence in RAs.
- Organisation(s)
- Department of Government
- External organisation(s)
- Leiden University
- Journal
- Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory
- Volume
- 26
- Pages
- 507-518
- No. of pages
- 12
- ISSN
- 1053-1858
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1093/jopart/muv022
- Publication date
- 2015
- Peer reviewed
- Yes
- Austrian Fields of Science 2012
- 506014 Comparative politics
- Keywords
- ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Marketing, Sociology and Political Science, Public Administration
- Portal url
- https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/909edb42-542f-4a46-883d-da1d8a87dced