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
20 years of niche parties being ‘fundamentally different’
- Author(s)
- Ida Hjermitslev, Matthew Bergman
- Abstract
The literature on the concept of niche parties is rapidly growing. Characterized by a narrow electorate with extreme issue positions or salience and their responsiveness to this electorate, debate remains as to their operationalization and multidimensional behavior. This paper explores the variation in definitions used to identify niche parties or “nicheness” and analyzes their implications for the validity of findings about the strategic behavior of niche parties. Specifically, we replicate a much cited article, which argues that niche parties are more responsive to their supporters than mainstream parties while mainstream parties are more responsive to the general electorate. Using manifesto, expert, and survey data covering more than 81 European parties in the period 2006-2019, we show that this key finding is surprisingly robust to various niche party definitions. Beyond this, we demonstrate that niche parties are more …
- Organisation(s)
- Department of Government
- Journal
- Party Politics
- ISSN
- 1354-0688
- Publication date
- 10-2023
- Peer reviewed
- Yes
- Austrian Fields of Science 2012
- 506014 Comparative politics
- Portal url
- https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/f75c58d1-81b3-43fe-b24e-ed81a8332576