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
The political economy of minimum income benefits: How parties, unions and migration influence benefit adequacy
- Author(s)
- Mario Tobias Taschwer
- Abstract
How we treat the people most in need of support is a good indicator of the state of our societies. But we lack empirical evidence on how political parties affect minimum income benefits. The classic partisan difference theory leads us to expect opposite effects of governing right and left parties on benefit levels. The analysis of 16 OECD countries over the period of 1990 to 2009 shows that this hypothesis must be rejected as – if anything – right and left parties are associated with cuts. The inconsistent party effects point towards ‘new politics’ of blame avoidance strategies. A novel approach in the field of minimum income benefits is the analysis of the context of partisanship: how do unions and migration alter governments’ effects on benefits? The effect of migration on parties cannot be captured using the net migration rate; in the future we should look at how public opinion on migration influences policies. In line with the power resources approach, trade unions show a consistently strong association with higher benefits, but they cannot constrain right nor left parties in cutting benefits. The findings confirm that the politics of new social policies differ from the politics of old ones: (1) new politics are at work, (2) signs of negotiated retrenchment between unions and right governments are not robust and (3) no evidence of coalition building between left parties and unions was found.
- Organisation(s)
- Department of Government
- Journal
- Journal of European Social Policy
- Volume
- 31
- Pages
- 30-43
- No. of pages
- 14
- ISSN
- 0958-9287
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1177/0958928720933194
- Publication date
- 02-2021
- Peer reviewed
- Yes
- Austrian Fields of Science 2012
- 506014 Comparative politics, 509012 Social policy
- Keywords
- ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General Social Sciences, Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law
- Sustainable Development Goals
- SDG 8 - Decent Work and Economic Growth
- Portal url
- https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/cbbb0363-2d36-47b4-a9af-e605a0c93a8b