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
"If that´s so, then I´m a murderer
- Author(s)
- Walter Manoschek
- Abstract
On March 29, 1945 three members of the Waffen-SS Division "Wiking" shot to death at least 57 Hungarian-Jewish slave laborers in Deutsch Schuetzen, a small village close to the Austrian-Hungarian border.
One of the alleged perpetrators was SS-Unterscharfuehrer Adolf Storms. 63 years after the mass murder the author suceeded in interviewing Storms and two Hitler Youth leaders (HJ-leaders) who also were involved in this crime.
Conversations with Adolf Storms, the two HJ-leaders and three Jews who survived the massacre, form the backbone of the film and the book. The crime is reconstructed but not less exciting is the Austrian judicial handling in protecting Nazi criminals after the end of WWII.
Adolf Storms was accused in 2009 in Dortmund for murder and accessory to murder. He died shortly before the trial started in June of 2010.
The Nobel Prize Winner Elfriede Jelinek wrote a comment about the movie.
"I find this movie great, especially because it is so objectively."- Organisation(s)
- Department of Government
- Publication date
- 09-2015
- Austrian Fields of Science 2012
- 506008 Conflict research, 601022 Contemporary history
- Sustainable Development Goals
- SDG 16 - Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions
- Portal url
- https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/b641cee6-1662-4e1f-9f9d-5c180f4e5917