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.
Political Institutions
Institutions play a key role in political systems, as they define the framework conditions for political decisions...
Political Representation
Political representation describes the institutional and social processes and practices that connect citizens and voters to...
Party Competition
Party competition is an essential component of democratic systems and describes the competition between political parties for votes...
Infrastructural Projects
Infrastructural projects are an essential component of scientific research, as they create the basis for long-term data collection...
Political Behaviour
Political behaviour deals with the individual and collective attitudes and actions of citizens in a political context...
Cooperations
Cooperations are a central component of scientific research, as they promote the exchange of knowledge, resources and...
Publications
Voting at National versus European Elections: An individual level test of the second order paradigm for the 2014 European Parliament Elections
- Author(s)
- Hajo Boomgaarden, David Johann, Sylvia Kritzinger
- Abstract
The second-order paradigm is the dominant framework for research on electoral behavior in European Parliament (EP) elections. In this study, we assess to what degree voting patterns in the 2014 EP election were characterized by second-orderness. While most studies of second-order voting behavior rely on macro-level accounts or suffer from potentially conflated vote measures, this study relies on panel data from the 2013 national and the 2014 EP election in Austria. We study change patterns in electoral behavior and, more importantly, assess the motives behind differences in vote choices between first- and second-order elections. Overall, the findings point towards a persisting relevance of the second-order framework for explaining voting in the 2014 EP election.
- Organisation(s)
- Department of Communication, Department of Government
- Journal
- Politics and Governance
- Volume
- 4
- Pages
- 130-144
- No. of pages
- 15
- ISSN
- 2183-2463
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.17645/pag.v4i1.472
- Publication date
- 02-2016
- Peer reviewed
- Yes
- Austrian Fields of Science 2012
- 506012 Political systems
- Keywords
- ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Sociology and Political Science, Public Administration
- Portal url
- https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/a102d4d0-a90d-45b0-9783-a16439916f06