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
Emotions and domestic vote choice
- Author(s)
- Sofia Vasilopoulou, Markus Wagner
- Abstract
What is the emotional impact of extraordinary events and how do they shape subsequent electoral outcomes? We posit that voters’ emotional reactions to such events influence whether they are likely to re-think their prior vote choice. We focus on the Brexit referendum as a prominent example of such an event. The referendum outcome elicited different emotional responses among voters, and these challenged party loyalties. Using evidence from an online cross-sectional survey conducted in the UK in June 2017 shortly after the UK General Election, we show that anger is associated with defection among Remainers and enthusiasm is linked to vote-switching among Leavers. Fear, on the other hand, does not have an effect. Our article contributes to our understanding of how extraordinary events and emotional reactions lead to shifting partisan loyalties and electoral change.
- Organisation(s)
- Department of Government
- External organisation(s)
- University of York
- Journal
- Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties
- Volume
- 32
- Pages
- 635-654
- No. of pages
- 20
- ISSN
- 1745-7289
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1080/17457289.2020.1857388
- Publication date
- 12-2020
- 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/aafab4a1-2523-40f4-bc08-25fa909c20b0