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
Negative campaigning and its consequences: a review and a look ahead
- Author(s)
- Martin Haselmayer
- Abstract
Research on negative campaigning has grown rapidly in the past decades. This article reviews the literature dealing with this campaign strategy. It discusses its definition and measurement and stresses the mismatch between the academic literature and general perceptions. It then reviews why parties and candidates choose to 'go negative' with a particular focus on the rationales for negative campaigning under multi-party competition. The manuscript further discusses the literature on electoral effects and broader societal consequences of negative campaigning and emphasizes issues related to data collection and research designs. The conclusion summarizes the state of the art and outlines avenues for future research.
- Organisation(s)
- Department of Government
- Journal
- French Politics
- Volume
- 17
- Pages
- 355–372
- No. of pages
- 18
- ISSN
- 1476-3419
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1057/s41253-019-00084-8
- Publication date
- 03-2019
- Peer reviewed
- Yes
- Austrian Fields of Science 2012
- 506014 Comparative politics
- Keywords
- ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Political Science and International Relations, Sociology and Political Science
- Portal url
- https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/e25aa09d-2fb1-41b3-a2af-b3195ac4a0f4