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

AUTNES TV Debates Panel Study 2013 (SUF edition)

Author(s)
Sylvia Kritzinger, David Johann, Christian Glantschnigg, Julian Aichholzer, Konstantin Glinitzer, Kathrin Thomas, Markus Wagner, Eva Zeglovits
Abstract

This dataset contains political preferences of Austrian citizens eligible to vote at the national parliamentary election on 29.9.2013 (age 16 and older). Participants were surveyed in the period 16.8. – 7.10.2013 through an interactive online questionnaire (CAWI). Three waves were conducted before the election; a fourth wave captures opinions after the election. For the first wave, 3084 respondents were selected from a pre-existing online panel based on a quota sample. This survey emphasizes the TV debates during the election campaign and the evaluation of candidates. Further important variables are political interest; interest in the electoral campaign; party closeness; party preferences; party identification; media consumption; usage of social networks; economic situation; attitudes towards immigrants; psychological self-characterization (Big 5); coalition preferences; satisfaction with democracy; and implicit associations towards the FPÖ. Additional variables capture demographics and technical information.

Organisation(s)
Department of Government, Department of Sociology
DOI
https://doi.org/10.11587/F3DRNG
Publication date
03-2020
Austrian Fields of Science 2012
508006 Communication theory, 506012 Political systems
Keywords
Portal url
https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/e3f6cd4b-66a7-4698-8f1e-fd489f104a2f