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In parliamentary democracies, elections distribute the seats in parliament, but who gets into government and determines the policy agenda over the course of the legislative term is decided upon after the elections, in negotiations between the political parties. This introduction to the special issue discusses research concerning dynamic approaches to coalition governments. A dynamic approach implies that what happens at the electoral stage influences the government formation stage, which in turn shapes what happens during the government's tenure, which may influence the cabinet's durability. Hence, this type of research tries to analyse various stages of a government's 'life cycle' from its 'birth' to its 'death' as interdependent processes, rather than examining them in mutual isolation. These processes may be restricted to the confines of a self-contained universe of politicians and political parties, or they may involve 'external' events, such as, for example, elections, or the state of the economy. In addition to having a dynamic approach to analysing coalitions, the contributions in the special issue use brand-new comparative data from several independent research projects investigating various aspects of coalition politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the validity of three approaches to estimate party positions on the general left–right and EU dimensions. We newly introduce party elite data from the comprehensive IntUne survey and cross-validate it with existing expert survey and manifesto data. The general left–right estimates generated by elites and experts show a higher congruence than those derived from party manifestos; neither measure clearly materializes as more valid regarding EU positions. We identify which factors explain diverging estimates. For instance, disagreement among experts has greater impact than their mere number. The substantial centrist bias of the manifesto estimates persists even when alternative documents are used to substitute manifestos. Low response rates among elites have no systematic detrimental effect on the validity of party position estimates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The design of government portfolios – that is, the distribution of competencies among government ministries and office holders – has been largely ignored in the study of executive and coalition politics. This article argues that portfolio design is a substantively and theoretically relevant phenomenon that has major implications for the study of institutional design and coalition politics. The authors use comparative data on portfolio design reforms in nine Western European countries since the 1970s to demonstrate how the design of government portfolios changes over time. Specifically, they show that portfolios are changed frequently (on average about once a year) and that such shifts are more likely after changes in the prime ministership or the party composition of the government. These findings suggest a political logic behind these reforms based on the preferences and power of political parties and politicians. They have major implications for the study of institutional design and coalition politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines aspects of election manifestos that are largely ignored by extant manifesto-based studies focusing on issue saliencies and policy positions. Drawing on the literatures on negative campaigning, retrospective voting, party mandates and personalization, we develop a scheme of categories that allows for the analysis of attacks on competitors, references to a party’s track record, subjective and objective policy pledges and the prominence of party leaders in manifestos. We also show that these elements are present in manifestos of major European parties. The relevance of these categories, we argue, should be influenced by a party’s status in government or opposition, its ideology, its size, the relative popularity of party leaders and the occurrence of early elections. Our systematic examination of 46 Austrian election manifestos produced between 1986 and 2013 demonstrates that many of these expectations are supported by the evidence. Most notably, it emerges that government and opposition parties write manifestos that differ with respect to all of the five characteristics analysed. This suggests that there are systematic differences between government and opposition party manifestos that should be taken into consideration by scholars engaged in manifesto-based research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study focuses on the allocation of politicians to cabinet offices in different institutional settings. We argue that cabinet ministers are appointed with the aim of minimizing the policy distance to the most important principal, which could be the Prime Minister, the coalition, or the individual parties that form the coalition. We advance this field of research by performing a comparative analysis of different coalition systems. We evaluate our hypotheses by estimating the policy positions of Austrian, German and Swedish politicians on the basis of a computerized content analysis of their speeches given in parliament. The results provide support for our argument and show that the policy distance towards the dominant principal is important for becoming a cabinet member. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political parties are central to modern democracy and the selection of their leaders is one of the most crucial decisions for any political party to make. Yet, the analysis of party leadership survival is still in its infancy. The pioneering research has been confined to few countries and decades and has focused exclusively on performance-related explanations. While performance is an obvious determinant of party leader survival, generations of research on party organizations suggest that intra-party factors should matter, too. We argue that, while the political performance of a party leader (winning elections, securing government participation) is important, intra-party support and the rules of leadership selection add substantively to our understanding of why party leaders survive or fall. We test these expectations on a new dataset covering all leaders of Austrian parties between 1945 and 2011. The results of our statistical analysis support our claim and show that intra-party factors have a considerable impact on party leader survival. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, election administration has become a subject of intensified debates, raising questions of how to organize elections to ensure electoral integrity. One question concerns who should serve as members of polling station boards, administer election day proceedings, and participate in the vote count. Different models co-exist in modern democracies, with some countries – among them Austria – actively involving the political parties in the election administration. Against this background, this paper examines perceptions of electoral integrity among Austrian poll workers and citizens using data from an original survey of poll workers and survey data of the voting population. The results show that poll workers have greater confidence in the election administration than regular voters but are equally or more skeptical regarding other aspects of electoral integrity. Also, their partisan background shapes perceptions of electoral integrity. To conclude, we discuss the benefits and limitations of the 'party model' for poll worker recruitment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we test rival theories of party competition. Previous research predicting party policy positions is limited to a small (and arguably biased) sample of countries. Using new data from the 2008 Austrian National Election Study, we test the proximity and directional model of voting, Grofman’s discounting model and Kedar’s compensational model of voting. We find that Grofman’s discounting model performs best predicting party policy positions. Yet, not all party policy positions are predicted equally well. The most obvious misrepresentation is that the rightist FPÖ is placed close to the centre of the policy space. This centripetal bias, which has also been found in earlier work, may result from simplifying assumptions of the algorithm used to derive Nash equilibria of party policy positions that need to be challenged. Our findings emphasize the necessity to test models of party competition using new data and to motivate further research explaining party position-taking. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Saliency theory is among the most influential accounts of party competition, not least in providing the theoretical framework for the Comparative Manifesto Project - one of the most widely used data collections in comparative politics. Despite its prominence, not all empirical implications of the saliency theory of party competition have yet been systematically tested. This article addresses five predictions of saliency theory, the central claim of which is that parties compete by selective issue emphasis rather than by direct confrontation. Since a fair test of the theory's assumptions needs to rely on data that measures party issue saliency and party positions independently, this article draws on new manifesto data from the Austrian National Election Study ( AUTNES). Analysing all manifestos issued for the 2002, 2006 and 2008 general elections, it shows that saliency theory correctly identifies some features of party competition. For instance, parties disproportionally emphasise issues they 'own'. Yet, the core assumption of saliency theory that parties compete via selective issue emphasis rather than direct confrontation over the same issues fails to materialise in the majority of cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the effects of the issue agenda and of party competence on party popularity. Based on the salience and the issue ownership literatures, shifts in party support may be attributable to two factors: changing voter perceptions of issue salience and shifts in perceived party competence. We thus hypothesize that (1) a party's popularity increases if the public issue agenda changes in its favour such that its “best” issues become more important to voters and (2) that voters' changing perceptions of party competence account for shifting party popularity. Using annual macro data on voter perceptions of the issue agenda, party competence and popularity in Austria, we find no support for the first hypothesis. Rather, voter perceptions of party issue competence vary considerably and this variation accounts for the parties' level of popular support. This suggests that party competition plays out more by what politicians actually do and what impression they give about their deeds and competence than by exercising influence on the issue agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Election manifestos are one of the most prominent sources of data for the study of party politics and government. Yet the processes of manifesto production, enactment, and public reception are not very well understood. This article attempts to narrow this knowledge gap by conducting a first investigation into the ‘life cycle’ of election manifestos from the drafting stage to their use in the campaign and post-election periods. Specifically, it investigates the Austrian case between 1945 and 2008 (with special emphasis on the 1990s and 2000s), employing a wealth of qualitative and quantitative data. While the research is thus mostly exploratory, it develops systematic expectations about variation between parties according to their ideology, organisation, government status, and characteristics of their electorates across the stages of the manifesto life cycle. Of those factors, organisational characteristics and status as government or opposition parties were found to be relevant. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Austrian party system has entered a new phase since the controversial ÖVP-FPÖ coalition came into office in February 2000. The party system literature offers two contradicting expectations about party system mechanics in multi-party systems without relevant extremist parties: competition structured by party alliances and strictly competitive relations between government and opposition parties (as suggested by Sartori 1976 ) versus competition structured by individual parties and some mix of competition and co-operation and perhaps even power-sharing in extra-governmental arenas between government and opposition parties (as suggested by Dahl 1966 ). Our empirical analysis of party system competitiveness in the electoral, parliamentary and other arenas (in particular, the corporatist arena) between 2000 and 2003 shows that the relations between the government and opposition parties were strictly competitive (i.e. of a zero-sum character) in the electoral arena. Likewise, there was no trading between government and opposition in the parliamentary arena. Finally, the government substantially increased its impact on the official sites (i.e. arenas controlled by the government) and used fire and hire methods more than any of its predecessors to build up its positions in public sector institutions. The opposition parties, in turn, perceived the government parties as a bloc and were united in their goal of undermining the government parties' majority. Yet, while relations between the government and opposition parties remained highly competitive throughout the entire period, relations between the parties on each side of the government-opposition divide became more fluid, partly for tactical considerations and partly for reasons of genuine preferences. In sum, the post-2000 Austrian party system is a weak version of a two-bloc system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In modem democracies political parties exist because (1) they reduce transaction costs in the electoral, parliamentary and governmental arenas and (2) help overcome the dilemma of collective action. In Western Europe political parties are the central mechanism to make the constitutional chain of political delegation and accountability work in practice. Party representatives in public office are ultimately the agents of the extra-parliamentary party organization. In order to contain agency loss parties rely on party-internal mechanisms and the institutionalisation of party rights in public rules and, in contrast to US parties, they apply the full range of ex ante and ex post mechanisms. Generally, the role of party is weaker the further down the chain of delegation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Until recent years, two major trends in European politics - the growth of State services and increased political participation - have complemented the central role of parties. This paper argues that this complementarity may have started to come unstuck, and questions the future viability of the mass party as a result of a shift in the balance of perceived advantages of the mass party by both leaders and members. The paper discusses several potential costs and benefits of party membership for leaders and members. Using membership statistics and survey data the reasonableness of these arguments is explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nomination: Costs and benefits of party membership reconsidered by Wolfgang C. Müller, p.169 Reflections: Party as linkage by Richard S. Katz, p171 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the political issues in Austria in 1994. It provides information on the country's cabinet system including its National Council, lower house of parliament, Federal Council, upper house of parliament, and political parties. An analysis of the campaigns carried out by the Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPO) and the Austrian People's Party (OVP) are also mentioned. It states that Austrian membership with the European Union (EU) was given much attention through the development of a referendum that was proposed on May 12. The country's position in the EU has contributed to the development of problems which affected its national politics.

The article discusses various issues related to the politics and government of Austria in 1993. The Constitution was amended to meet with the requirements of the European Economic Space. In addition, a final institutional change was introduced to continue the reform of the Chamber of Labour. Meanwhile, the Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs (FPÖ) or Freedom Party-sponsored people's initiative against immigration was supported by 416,531 signatures. The 1993 political agenda was intra-party politics in which members of the parliament of the FPÖ was disunited by both personal and policy factors.

This article links party organisation to party performance, examining their relationship over almost half a century in an in-depth case study of the Austrian People's Party (ÖVP). It proceeds from the assumption that party organisation does matter for party performance, at least indirectly, and that the adaptation of the party organisation to a changing environment is, in the long run, the only viable strategy for party goal achievement. While the ÖVP's environment was subject to important changes, all of which worked against the party, it has failed to adapt to them. This, in turn, has reduced the competitiveness of the ÖVP. Consequently its record in achieving most of its party goals has been rather poor since 1970. The reconstruction of the intra-party discussions reveals that the party leadership had access to analyses identifying the structural weaknesses of the party organisation since the late 1950s. The ÖVP's failure to adapt is explained by using the 'nested games' approach of Tsebelis (1990). In order to enhance the understanding of organisational dynamics of parties in a more general sense, the case of the OVP is related to the work of Panebianco (1988) and Janda (1990). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article evaluates the research conducted by several political scientists who explores the development of the political parties in Austria since the1980s based on its three broad areas including parties in the electorate, party organization and party behavior. It was noted that the three broadfields concentrated on the inquiries permits a general evaluation of the achievements and deficits of Austrian party research. Likewise, it was said that party research has been institutionalized to some degree in which it also reportedly displays increasing sophistication in terms of theory and methodology. Moreover, the descriptions reflect that there has been a considerable progress in party research, presumably on other fields of discipline.

The article presents the authors' views on political parties in European democracies since 1960-1990. According to them, there has been an organizational decline and a loss of organizational links which tie parties to electors. They say that raw membership count is one of the principal measures by which party membership strength can be assessed across national boundaries. They note that the pattern of party membership among the traditional liberal parties has also been erratic.

The article offers a comprehensive report in the political structure and government of Austria in 1991. It discusses the government's institutional changes and national politics issues. It presents a table which gives information consisting the changes in the party creation of the Bundesrat and the result of the land elections in Styria, Upper Austria and Vienna. Another table also shows the Cabinet composition of Prime Minister Franz Vranitzky, his political party constitution and the names of his members.

Three strategies which may emerge out of politicians' concepts of rationality (problems solving, agenda management, creation of consensus) are applied to one of the main features of Austrian politics, namely the differentation of policy sectors dominated either by political parties or interest groups. The Equal Treatment Act, which had been transferred from the corporatist arena to the arena of the party system, involved the rationalities of both political parties and interest groups. This paper analyses the extended' process of legislation of this law (including implementation). The empirical findings are then linked to the theoretical propositions about the rationalities of the respective political actors. Finally, hypotheses about the conditions of issue transfers from the corporatist arena into the arena of the party system are suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the state is relevant for explaining differences in the dynamics of West European parties and party systems, presenting a comprehensive framework illustrated by a number of empirical examples, followed by a systematic comparison of Austria and France. The state was highly relevant for party and party system dynamics in France. In Austria the state helps to explain both the long party system stability and more recent changes, offset by changes in the institutional environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is a case study of how one of the strongest mass parties of western democracies, the Austrian Socialist Party (SPO), largely replaced its mass organization with the survey method and modern means of mass communication as its major links with the general electorate. These party changes are compatible with both an `environmentalist' and a ‘purposive-action’ interpretation. However, party adaptation to environmental changes did not occur automatically, as implied by the ‘environmentalist’ approach. Rather, each innovation met resistance and was introduced only belatedly or half-heartedly. The most elaborate ‘purposive-action’ theory of party change (Harmel and Janda, 1994) fits well with the case of the SPO's organizational modernization. Leadership change, change of the dominant faction and external shocks exhaust the factors required to explain party organization change. On the basis of this case study leadership change is considered as the single most important factor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Report distinguishes party supporters and party members. Support for the two major Austrian parties, the SPO and OVP, has declined, particularly among young, well-educated, white-collar and urban voters. Recently blue-collar support for the SPO has also declined. At the level of party members both major parties have become more unrepresentative of the population at large. If party members indeed act as party 'ambassadors to the community', these changes are counterproductive for the major parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses constituency campaigning and personalization when electoral system and party organizational incentives conflict. Providing the first study of candidate campaign behaviour in Austria we show that a sizeable number of candidates in national elections engage in personalized rather than party-centred campaigns. Focussing on behavioural indicators of ‘personalized’ campaigning, we find that individual motivation and resources play an important role in how candidates conduct their campaigns. Factors such as experience in political office, the probability of winning a seat, candidate goal choice (self- or party-promotion), the district characteristic (urban or rural) and party affiliation influence the numbers of hours spent on campaigning and the kind of campaign resources candidates use and value most. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]