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
What drives partisan conflict and consensus on welfare state issues?
- Author(s)
- Laurenz Ennser-Jedenastik
- Abstract
Left-right partisan conflict has been a key driver of welfare state expansion and retrenchment over time and across countries. Yet, we know very little about how left-right differences in party appeals vary across social policy domains. Why are some issues contentious while there is broad consensus on others? This paper starts from the simple premise that partisan conflict is a function of how popular a certain policy is. Based on this assumption, it argues that the left-right gap should be (1) larger for revenue-side issues than for expenditure-side issues, (2) larger for policies targeted at groups that are viewed as less deserving and (3) larger for more redistributive programs than less redistributive ones (e.g. means-tested versus earnings-related benefits). These expectations are tested on fine-grained policy data coded from 65 Austrian party manifestos issued between 1970 and 2017 (N = 18,219). The analysis strongly supports the revenue–expenditure hypothesis and the deservingness hypothesis, but not the redistribution hypothesis.
- Organisation(s)
- Department of Government
- Journal
- Journal of Public Policy
- Volume
- 41
- Pages
- 731-751
- No. of pages
- 21
- ISSN
- 0143-814X
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1017/S0143814X20000240
- Publication date
- 09-2020
- Peer reviewed
- Yes
- Austrian Fields of Science 2012
- 506014 Comparative politics, 509012 Social policy
- Keywords
- ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law, Public Administration
- Portal url
- https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/eb100eb1-8206-4a77-8b81-3f93ca86f59e