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 Content Analysis of Party Manifestos: Cumulative File (SUF edition)
- Author(s)
- Wolfgang C. Müller, Anita Bodlos, Martin Dolezal, Nikolaus Eder, Laurenz Ennser-Jedenastik, Christina Gahn, Elisabeth Graf, Martin Haselmayer, Teresa Haudum, Lena Maria Huber, Matthias Kaltenegger, Thomas Meyer, Katrin Praprotnik, Anna Katharina Winkler, Katharina Wurzer
- Abstract
Full edition for scientific use. The AUTNES dataset on party manifestos covers the manifestos of the relevant parties that competed in the Austrian national elections 2002-2017. All natural sentences within the manifestos are part of the dataset. The units of analysis are standardized statements derived from these natural sentences by means of a set of unitizing rules. The coding procedure applies the AUTNES relational approach of recording subjects, predicates, and objects to party manifestos. The subject actor is usually the party, but it can also be another actor being cited in the manifesto. There are two types of objects: issues and object actors. Issues are recorded by coders selecting from the AUTNES issue coding scheme the one issue that fits the content of the statement best. One object actor can be recorded per statement, each with their name (if an individual is present) and organizational affiliation. The issue predicate numerically records whether the subject's position towards the issue (if present) is one of (conditional) support, (conditional) rejection, or conveys a neutral stance. Similarly, the object actor predicate numerically records whether the subject's position towards the object actor is one of support, rejection, or conveys a neutral stance. In addition to the basic subject–predicate–object structure we code character traits for all subject and object actors as well as the party record and pledges. Variables: sentence (the text of the natural sentence); statement derived from the natural sentence; page number of the manifesto where the natural sentence can be found; organizational affiliation of the subject actor (usually the party); name of the subject actor if an individual; attributes of the subject actor; issue predicate (the relation between subject and issue); issue category selected for the statement; statement refers to regulation of the issue on the European level; reference to a party's own or a political opponent's past behavior or achievements at different levels of governance (national level, land level, international level, historical); pledge (subjective pledges: promises whose evaluation requires a value judgement, objective pledges: promises that can be objectively tested); object actor predicate (relation between subject and object actor); organization of the object actor (usually the party); name of the object actor if individual; characteristics of the object actor (attributes: competence, character, leadership, appearance); year of election for which the manifesto was published; party authoring the manifesto; title of the manifesto. Additionally coded was: ID number for each observation; sentence-ID.
- Organisation(s)
- Department of Government, Vienna University Library and Archive Services, Department of Developmental and Educational Psychology
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.11587/DEHBL2
- Publication date
- 12-2020
- Austrian Fields of Science 2012
- 506014 Comparative politics
- Portal url
- https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/ea3bc1b4-5644-4fd8-83a8-ab740d934f1d