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
Dropping the Unitary Actor Assumption: the Impact of Intra-Party Delegation on Coalition Governance
- Author(s)
- Thomas Meyer
- Abstract
What happens to cabinet governance if parties do not act as ‘unitary actors’? In this paper, I examine the consequences of intra-party dissent for coalition governments in parliamentary systems. Drawing on the principal-agent literature, I develop a model in which party agents, namely cabinet ministers and legislators rather than parties as collective actors decide on specific policies. The individuals’ amount of loyalty determines the degree of party unity. I use simulation techniques to analyze the power of an agenda-setting minister in a two-party coalition conditional on the level of party unity. The results suggest that the minister’s agenda-setting power diminishes if parliamentarians and cabinet members aim at implementing their personal policy preferences. However, the party not in charge of the respective portfolio may benefit from disunity within its own ranks. This counter-intuitive result raises doubts about the widespread view that internal unity strengthens the bargaining power of political parties.
- Organisation(s)
- Department of Government
- Journal
- Journal of Theoretical Politics
- Volume
- 24
- Pages
- 485-506
- No. of pages
- 22
- ISSN
- 0951-6298
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1177/0951629811429992
- Publication date
- 2012
- Peer reviewed
- Yes
- Austrian Fields of Science 2012
- 506014 Comparative politics
- Portal url
- https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/dae51e3d-00a5-4bd2-b67a-8c8aee687bbc