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
Transnational Memory Spaces in the Making
- Author(s)
- Peter Pirker, Johannes Kramer, Mathias Lichtenwagner
- Abstract
The authors examine three recent large-scale mnemonic projects and transformation processes in Austrias' capital, Vienna: The staging of celebrations of May 8 as a "day of joy" at Heldenplatz in the city center, the subsequent reshaping of Heldenplatz, and the placing of pavement memorials dedicated to victims of the Shoah throughout the cityscape. The article is based on the sociological concepts of "synthesizing" and "spacing" as well as a recently conducted survey of all signs of remembrance referring to political violence during National Socialism in Vienna. In order to identify differences and similarities, the authors examine mnemonic actors that drive transnationalization, specific practices of producing spaces of remembrance that reach beyond national and municipal borders, as well as the effects of transnationality, normative frameworks, and esthetic means developed and used by agents of transnationalization. One of the key findings is that "transnationality" is rarely an explicitly intended objective of actors. Rather, it emerges through specific practices applied by actors located at diverse political scales in an attempt to achieve their objectives in a particular local political and spatial setting.
- Organisation(s)
- Department of Government
- Journal
- International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society
- Volume
- 32
- Pages
- 439-458
- No. of pages
- 20
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1007/s10767-019-09331-w
- Publication date
- 2019
- Peer reviewed
- Yes
- Austrian Fields of Science 2012
- 506010 Policy analysis
- Keywords
- ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Political Science and International Relations, Sociology and Political Science
- Portal url
- https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/a052876e-c404-4e1f-a7de-6742db850329