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
Credibility Versus Control
- Author(s)
- Laurenz Ennser-Jedenastik
- Abstract
There is a natural tension between theories of party government and theories of regulatory politics. Whereas effective party government requires that politicians have firm control over public policy, the need for credible commitment in regulation stipulates that policy-making capacities are delegated to independent agencies. While the theoretical dimension of this tension is well established, there is little research that examines its empirical implications. To narrow this gap, the analysis assesses whether legal agency independence limits the influence of parties on agency executives. To that end, it investigates the careers of 300 CEOs in 100 West European regulatory agencies. The analysis shows that high levels of agency independence protect appointees with opposition ties from early removal. This presents some of the first evidence to suggest that the institutional response to credibility pressures limits the political use of the appointment channel and, thus, has the potential to constrain party control in regulatory politics.
- Organisation(s)
- Department of Government
- Journal
- Comparative Political Studies
- Volume
- 48
- Pages
- 823-853
- No. of pages
- 31
- ISSN
- 0010-4140
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1177/0010414014558259
- Publication date
- 06-2015
- Peer reviewed
- Yes
- Austrian Fields of Science 2012
- 506014 Comparative politics
- Keywords
- ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Sociology and Political Science
- Portal url
- https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/95da7764-5d89-406f-abfe-a512b5b98e40