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
Differences in negative campaigning across party communication channels
- Author(s)
- Anita Bodlos
- Abstract
This paper addresses the question whether parties behave differently in multiple communication channels due to varying communication channel characteristics. I test this argument for the influence of dynamics and target groups on negative campaigning using data from the Austrian national election campaign in 2013. Results indicate substantial differences across communication channels: there is more negative campaigning in dynamic means of communication than in static means of communication. Tests of the underlying mechanisms leading to these disparities suggest that parties adopt their attack behaviour to campaign events and their competitors’ behaviour. Mixed evidence is found that political actors vary in their negativity according to different audiences.
- Organisation(s)
- Department of Government
- Publication date
- 2015
- Austrian Fields of Science 2012
- 506014 Comparative politics
- Portal url
- https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/eb22c28c-3823-4605-8c89-36a1844f1244