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
Choosing the risky option
- Author(s)
- Davide Morisi
- Abstract
In most referendum campaigns, voters face a choice between an uncertain Yes for a change and a safer No for maintaining status quo. Given this asymmetrical structure in terms of uncertainty, this study argues that individual dispositions towards taking risks play a crucial role in explaining support for referendum proposals. Analysis based on panel data and two experimental studies provides empirical evidence that in the 2014 Scottish independence referendum and in the 2016 EU referendum in the UK risk propensity significantly influenced voting behavior, since risk takers were more likely to vote for a change than risk-averse voters. However, the analysis indicates that risk propensity matters less to informed voters than uninformed voters, since only the latter are influenced by risk preferences in their voting decisions. In addition, experimental results consistently show that information affects mainly risk-averse voters, whose support for referendum proposals increases after reading a balanced set of pro and con arguments. The implications of this study extend beyond direct democracy and open future research avenues on the interplay between information and general personality traits, including risk propensity.
- Organisation(s)
- Department of Government
- Journal
- Public Opinion Quarterly
- Volume
- 82
- Pages
- 447-469
- ISSN
- 0033-362X
- Publication date
- 09-2018
- Peer reviewed
- Yes
- Austrian Fields of Science 2012
- 506014 Comparative politics
- Portal url
- https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/ba413a61-9662-4708-9497-051eafed41c3