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
Filling the Void? Political Responsiveness of Populist Parties
- Author(s)
- Carolina Plescia, Sylvia Kritzinger, Lorenzo De Sio
- Abstract
This paper examines the responsiveness of populist parties to the salience of issues amongst the public focusing on a large number of issues on which parties campaign during elections. The paper investigates both left- and right-wing populist parties comparatively in three countries, namely Austria, Germany and Italy. We find that while populist parties carry out an important responsiveness function, they are only slightly more responsive than their mainstream counterparts on the issues they own. The results of this paper have important implications for our understanding of political representation and the future of the populist appeal.
- Organisation(s)
- Department of Government
- External organisation(s)
- Libera Università Internazionale degli Studi Sociali "Guido Carli"
- Journal
- Representation-the Journal of Representative Democracy
- Volume
- 55
- Pages
- 513-533
- No. of pages
- 21
- ISSN
- 0034-4893
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1080/00344893.2019.1635197
- Publication date
- 2019
- Peer reviewed
- Yes
- Austrian Fields of Science 2012
- 506012 Political systems
- Keywords
- ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Sociology and Political Science
- Portal url
- https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/fcd85b5c-3231-4abe-a38c-3af07a877d21