Svenja Krau
Biographic Data
| ID | 4378240 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Svenja Krau |
| GIVEN NAMES | Svenja |
| FAMILY NAME | Krau |
| SIGNATURE | KRAU S |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Vienna |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5949-8531 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 148 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 20 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2018 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Asset or Liability? The Effect of National Approval Ratings on Regional Election Results
An attentive audience? If and how voters evaluate coalition formation
Coalition governments have traditionally been criticized for creating low clarity of responsibility and thus impairing voters’ ability to hold representatives accountable. Recent scholarship has suggested that voters are actually evaluating the coalition behavior of individual parties—not only at the end of the government period but also at the government formation stage. The answers to an open-ended question included in the Austrian National Ele…
Regional coalition heuristics: Government Participation and Party Perceptions in Multi-Level Systems
When parties cooperate, they are perceived as closer together in an ideological space than when they compete. This mechanism has only been tested at the national level and researchers have disregarded the complex interaction between parties competing and cooperating at various levels of a polity. This article argues that complex multi-level systems have an influence on the voters’ perceptions, especially for coalition parties. More specifically, …
In for a Penny, in for a Pound?” Evidence That Government Support Parties Cannot Dissociate Themselves from the Prime Minister’s Party
The Persistence of Memory: Evidence that Perceptions of Support Parties Update Gradually
Previous research has demonstrated that citizens use heuristics in their ideological perceptions of the placement of governing partners. Yet what about the perceptions after the government termination from non-government support parties? To what extent is updating evident and is there heterogeneity in the response? We examine these questions using a Spanish Survey Panel over 6 months in 2018–2019 after the termination of the Rajoy II government. …
Issue ownership and government participation: Explaining parties’ issue attention at the subnational level
The level of attention parties devote to specific issues is one of the key factors in parties’ electoral campaign strategies. Research so far only scarcely focused on parties’ attention towards specific issues at the subnational level—even though some issues are primarily dealt with at this level. Building on a novel data set covering 679 regional election manifestos in Austria and Germany between 1990 and 2019, we assess the influence of party-s…
Duration of coalition formation in the German states: Inertia and familiarity in a multilevel setting
Only gradually, scholars began to show interest in party competition at the sub-national level. Yet, we still know very little about how long it takes until a regional government gets into office. To narrow this research gap, we examine the effect of previous government experience between parties at the regional and national levels. Government formation processes are expected to be faster if parties currently govern together—i.e. have inertia—or …
The closer, the better – How perceived ideological proximity between parties affects the emergence of coalition preferences
While coalition governments have been studied extensively, there remains a lack of understanding of how coalition preferences emerge and what factors are the most influential. Utilising coalition formation theories, this study posits that voters tend to prefer coalitions with a narrower range of ideological differences between 1.) the parties involved and 2.) between the voter and the party perceived to have the greatest ideological distance from…
The formalisation of minority governments
The vast majority of elections in parliamentary systems result in minority situations. During cabinet formation, parties have three options: building a winning coalition, a genuine substantive minority cabinet without support, or a formal minority with institutionalised long-term support partnerships. Even though the use of permanent support partners has increased substantially, there is still comparatively little knowledge about the circumstance…
Take the Streets or Take the Parliament? Political Participation Choices of Radical Left Individuals
Voters across Europe have become increasingly polarised on both ends of the political spectrum in the last decade. While radical right parties were able to mobilise voters on their salient topics, radical left parties were only sporadically successful. In this article, we analyse why radical left parties fail to benefit from increasing polarisation by examining their potential voter base. Radical left individuals should have a lower incentive to …
Perceptual Consequences of Portfolios: How Allocation Affects Left–Right Placement
Recent research suggests that party leaders can strategically impact the perceived left–right position of their parties by changing their selective emphasis on certain issues. We suggest that a party's ideological image can also be altered by the portfolio allocation of the coalition government in which the party participates. By controlling a portfolio, the party will have a more direct influence on the related issue and will frequently communic…
Cabinet Formation and Coalition Governance: The Effect of Portfolio Allocation on Coalition Agreements
While coalition agreements are significant in structuring government behaviour, their comprehensiveness varies considerably across cabinets. We argue that the average correspondence between parties' priorities and portfolio allocation is important in explaining the comprehensiveness of coalition agreements because coalition parties that have obtained their preferred portfolios have less incentive to negotiate a detailed coalition agreement. We te…
Whose bread I eat, their song I sing? How the gender of MPs influences the use of oversight mechanisms in government and opposition
This article is the first to show that gender shapes the degree to which legislators use formal mechanisms to oversee government activities. Extensive scholarly work has analysed the use of oversight instruments, especially regarding who monitors whom. Whether, how, and why the conformity of men and women with institutional roles differs, has not yet received scholarly attention. We hypothesise that women become more active than men in overseeing…
Electoral strategies in multilevel systems: The effect of national politics on regional elections
Elections are at the heart of representative democracies. Whereas the study of national elections is a prominent field in comparative politics, we still know little about subnational political actors’ behaviour. We seek to close this gap by applying a dictionary coding approach to analyse parties’ issue-based content of 743 subnational manifestos in Austria and Germany. We show that subnational parties emphasize regional topics less if regional e…
Stability of minority governments and the role of support agreements
How does the minority status of a government influence cabinet duration? This article analyzes the influence of minority status on cabinet duration by differentiating between different types of minority governments. Minority governments are not in general less stable than majority ones but different types of minority governments have different effects on cabinet duration. The main theoretical argument is that substantive minority governments with…
Complements or Substitutes? The Interdependence between Coalition Agreements and Parliamentary Questions as Monitoring Mechanisms in Coalition Governments
Since coalition governments are formed of at least two different parties with diverging preferences, there is major potential for shirking. Coalition parties can use various institutional mechanisms to keep tabs on their partners and detect ministerial drifts. In this article, we focus on potential interdependencies between monitoring mechanisms and analyse whether the existence of a coalition agreement affects the number of parliamentary questio…
Topic Coverage of Coalition Agreements in Multi-Level Settings: The Case of Germany
Scholars mostly concentrate on those agreements that are written at the national level when analysing coalition agreements. However, there are also a considerable amount of coalition agreements that are written at sub-national levels. This paper analyses the commonalities and differences in coalition agreements in the German multi-level system at the national, regional and local level. From a legal jurisdiction perspective, one would expect that …
Extra-coalitional policy bargaining: Investigating the Power of Committee Chairs
Previous research found that coalition partners do not only control each other within the government, but also use instruments of the legislative arena. While the literature has mainly concentrated on parliamentary scrutiny, much less is known about the power of committee chairs in the policy-making process. Therefore, thispaper examines if parties use committee chairs to control their coalition partner. Wehypothesize that cross-partisan committe…
How women in the executive influence government stability
Does the gender of prime ministers and cabinet ministers influence cabinet duration? We argue that the risk for early termination of cabinets decreases with women's presence in the executive. As scholars of social psychology indicate, women apply more consensual and compromise-oriented conflict resolution strategies. Disputes between or within governing parties, which ultimately lead to early termination, should therefore be less likely to emerge…
Stability through control? The influence of coalition agreements on the stability of coalition cabinets
Why do some coalition cabinets terminate early and others run until the end of the legislative term? This article analyses whether coalition agreements lower the risk of early government termination. The main argument is that coalition agreements can increase the stability of coalition cabinets as they lower the probability of intra-cabinet conflict. The theoretical expectations are empirically evaluated on the basis of a newly compiled comprehen…
Stability through control? The influence of coalition agreements on the stability of coalition cabinets
Why do some coalition cabinets terminate early and others run until the end of the legislative term? This article analyses whether coalition agreements lower the risk of early government termination. The main argument is that coalition agreements can increase the stability of coalition cabinets as they lower the probability of intra-cabinet conflict. The theoretical expectations are empirically evaluated on the basis of a newly compiled comprehen…
Stability of minority governments and the role of support agreements
How does the minority status of a government influence cabinet duration? This article analyzes the influence of minority status on cabinet duration by differentiating between different types of minority governments. Minority governments are not in general less stable than majority ones but different types of minority governments have different effects on cabinet duration. The main theoretical argument is that substantive minority governments with…
Electoral strategies in multilevel systems: The effect of national politics on regional elections
Elections are at the heart of representative democracies. Whereas the study of national elections is a prominent field in comparative politics, we still know little about subnational political actors’ behaviour. We seek to close this gap by applying a dictionary coding approach to analyse parties’ issue-based content of 743 subnational manifestos in Austria and Germany. We show that subnational parties emphasize regional topics less if regional e…
Topic Coverage of Coalition Agreements in Multi-Level Settings: The Case of Germany
Scholars mostly concentrate on those agreements that are written at the national level when analysing coalition agreements. However, there are also a considerable amount of coalition agreements that are written at sub-national levels. This paper analyses the commonalities and differences in coalition agreements in the German multi-level system at the national, regional and local level. From a legal jurisdiction perspective, one would expect that …
How women in the executive influence government stability
Does the gender of prime ministers and cabinet ministers influence cabinet duration? We argue that the risk for early termination of cabinets decreases with women's presence in the executive. As scholars of social psychology indicate, women apply more consensual and compromise-oriented conflict resolution strategies. Disputes between or within governing parties, which ultimately lead to early termination, should therefore be less likely to emerge…
Complements or Substitutes? The Interdependence between Coalition Agreements and Parliamentary Questions as Monitoring Mechanisms in Coalition Governments
Since coalition governments are formed of at least two different parties with diverging preferences, there is major potential for shirking. Coalition parties can use various institutional mechanisms to keep tabs on their partners and detect ministerial drifts. In this article, we focus on potential interdependencies between monitoring mechanisms and analyse whether the existence of a coalition agreement affects the number of parliamentary questio…
Extra-coalitional policy bargaining: Investigating the Power of Committee Chairs
Previous research found that coalition partners do not only control each other within the government, but also use instruments of the legislative arena. While the literature has mainly concentrated on parliamentary scrutiny, much less is known about the power of committee chairs in the policy-making process. Therefore, thispaper examines if parties use committee chairs to control their coalition partner. Wehypothesize that cross-partisan committe…
Cabinet Formation and Coalition Governance: The Effect of Portfolio Allocation on Coalition Agreements
While coalition agreements are significant in structuring government behaviour, their comprehensiveness varies considerably across cabinets. We argue that the average correspondence between parties' priorities and portfolio allocation is important in explaining the comprehensiveness of coalition agreements because coalition parties that have obtained their preferred portfolios have less incentive to negotiate a detailed coalition agreement. We te…
The formalisation of minority governments
The vast majority of elections in parliamentary systems result in minority situations. During cabinet formation, parties have three options: building a winning coalition, a genuine substantive minority cabinet without support, or a formal minority with institutionalised long-term support partnerships. Even though the use of permanent support partners has increased substantially, there is still comparatively little knowledge about the circumstance…
Regional coalition heuristics: Government Participation and Party Perceptions in Multi-Level Systems
When parties cooperate, they are perceived as closer together in an ideological space than when they compete. This mechanism has only been tested at the national level and researchers have disregarded the complex interaction between parties competing and cooperating at various levels of a polity. This article argues that complex multi-level systems have an influence on the voters’ perceptions, especially for coalition parties. More specifically, …
In for a Penny, in for a Pound?” Evidence That Government Support Parties Cannot Dissociate Themselves from the Prime Minister’s Party
Whose bread I eat, their song I sing? How the gender of MPs influences the use of oversight mechanisms in government and opposition
This article is the first to show that gender shapes the degree to which legislators use formal mechanisms to oversee government activities. Extensive scholarly work has analysed the use of oversight instruments, especially regarding who monitors whom. Whether, how, and why the conformity of men and women with institutional roles differs, has not yet received scholarly attention. We hypothesise that women become more active than men in overseeing…
Issue ownership and government participation: Explaining parties’ issue attention at the subnational level
The level of attention parties devote to specific issues is one of the key factors in parties’ electoral campaign strategies. Research so far only scarcely focused on parties’ attention towards specific issues at the subnational level—even though some issues are primarily dealt with at this level. Building on a novel data set covering 679 regional election manifestos in Austria and Germany between 1990 and 2019, we assess the influence of party-s…
Duration of coalition formation in the German states: Inertia and familiarity in a multilevel setting
Only gradually, scholars began to show interest in party competition at the sub-national level. Yet, we still know very little about how long it takes until a regional government gets into office. To narrow this research gap, we examine the effect of previous government experience between parties at the regional and national levels. Government formation processes are expected to be faster if parties currently govern together—i.e. have inertia—or …
Perceptual Consequences of Portfolios: How Allocation Affects Left–Right Placement
Recent research suggests that party leaders can strategically impact the perceived left–right position of their parties by changing their selective emphasis on certain issues. We suggest that a party's ideological image can also be altered by the portfolio allocation of the coalition government in which the party participates. By controlling a portfolio, the party will have a more direct influence on the related issue and will frequently communic…
The closer, the better – How perceived ideological proximity between parties affects the emergence of coalition preferences
While coalition governments have been studied extensively, there remains a lack of understanding of how coalition preferences emerge and what factors are the most influential. Utilising coalition formation theories, this study posits that voters tend to prefer coalitions with a narrower range of ideological differences between 1.) the parties involved and 2.) between the voter and the party perceived to have the greatest ideological distance from…
Take the Streets or Take the Parliament? Political Participation Choices of Radical Left Individuals
Voters across Europe have become increasingly polarised on both ends of the political spectrum in the last decade. While radical right parties were able to mobilise voters on their salient topics, radical left parties were only sporadically successful. In this article, we analyse why radical left parties fail to benefit from increasing polarisation by examining their potential voter base. Radical left individuals should have a lower incentive to …
Stability through control? The influence of coalition agreements on the stability of coalition cabinets
Why do some coalition cabinets terminate early and others run until the end of the legislative term? This article analyses whether coalition agreements lower the risk of early government termination. The main argument is that coalition agreements can increase the stability of coalition cabinets as they lower the probability of intra-cabinet conflict. The theoretical expectations are empirically evaluated on the basis of a newly compiled comprehen…
Topic Coverage of Coalition Agreements in Multi-Level Settings: The Case of Germany
Scholars mostly concentrate on those agreements that are written at the national level when analysing coalition agreements. However, there are also a considerable amount of coalition agreements that are written at sub-national levels. This paper analyses the commonalities and differences in coalition agreements in the German multi-level system at the national, regional and local level. From a legal jurisdiction perspective, one would expect that …
Extra-coalitional policy bargaining: Investigating the Power of Committee Chairs
Previous research found that coalition partners do not only control each other within the government, but also use instruments of the legislative arena. While the literature has mainly concentrated on parliamentary scrutiny, much less is known about the power of committee chairs in the policy-making process. Therefore, thispaper examines if parties use committee chairs to control their coalition partner. Wehypothesize that cross-partisan committe…
How women in the executive influence government stability
Does the gender of prime ministers and cabinet ministers influence cabinet duration? We argue that the risk for early termination of cabinets decreases with women's presence in the executive. As scholars of social psychology indicate, women apply more consensual and compromise-oriented conflict resolution strategies. Disputes between or within governing parties, which ultimately lead to early termination, should therefore be less likely to emerge…
Electoral strategies in multilevel systems: The effect of national politics on regional elections
Elections are at the heart of representative democracies. Whereas the study of national elections is a prominent field in comparative politics, we still know little about subnational political actors’ behaviour. We seek to close this gap by applying a dictionary coding approach to analyse parties’ issue-based content of 743 subnational manifestos in Austria and Germany. We show that subnational parties emphasize regional topics less if regional e…
Stability of minority governments and the role of support agreements
How does the minority status of a government influence cabinet duration? This article analyzes the influence of minority status on cabinet duration by differentiating between different types of minority governments. Minority governments are not in general less stable than majority ones but different types of minority governments have different effects on cabinet duration. The main theoretical argument is that substantive minority governments with…
Complements or Substitutes? The Interdependence between Coalition Agreements and Parliamentary Questions as Monitoring Mechanisms in Coalition Governments
Since coalition governments are formed of at least two different parties with diverging preferences, there is major potential for shirking. Coalition parties can use various institutional mechanisms to keep tabs on their partners and detect ministerial drifts. In this article, we focus on potential interdependencies between monitoring mechanisms and analyse whether the existence of a coalition agreement affects the number of parliamentary questio…
Cabinet Formation and Coalition Governance: The Effect of Portfolio Allocation on Coalition Agreements
While coalition agreements are significant in structuring government behaviour, their comprehensiveness varies considerably across cabinets. We argue that the average correspondence between parties' priorities and portfolio allocation is important in explaining the comprehensiveness of coalition agreements because coalition parties that have obtained their preferred portfolios have less incentive to negotiate a detailed coalition agreement. We te…
Whose bread I eat, their song I sing? How the gender of MPs influences the use of oversight mechanisms in government and opposition
This article is the first to show that gender shapes the degree to which legislators use formal mechanisms to oversee government activities. Extensive scholarly work has analysed the use of oversight instruments, especially regarding who monitors whom. Whether, how, and why the conformity of men and women with institutional roles differs, has not yet received scholarly attention. We hypothesise that women become more active than men in overseeing…
The closer, the better – How perceived ideological proximity between parties affects the emergence of coalition preferences
While coalition governments have been studied extensively, there remains a lack of understanding of how coalition preferences emerge and what factors are the most influential. Utilising coalition formation theories, this study posits that voters tend to prefer coalitions with a narrower range of ideological differences between 1.) the parties involved and 2.) between the voter and the party perceived to have the greatest ideological distance from…
The formalisation of minority governments
The vast majority of elections in parliamentary systems result in minority situations. During cabinet formation, parties have three options: building a winning coalition, a genuine substantive minority cabinet without support, or a formal minority with institutionalised long-term support partnerships. Even though the use of permanent support partners has increased substantially, there is still comparatively little knowledge about the circumstance…
Take the Streets or Take the Parliament? Political Participation Choices of Radical Left Individuals
Voters across Europe have become increasingly polarised on both ends of the political spectrum in the last decade. While radical right parties were able to mobilise voters on their salient topics, radical left parties were only sporadically successful. In this article, we analyse why radical left parties fail to benefit from increasing polarisation by examining their potential voter base. Radical left individuals should have a lower incentive to …
Perceptual Consequences of Portfolios: How Allocation Affects Left–Right Placement
Recent research suggests that party leaders can strategically impact the perceived left–right position of their parties by changing their selective emphasis on certain issues. We suggest that a party's ideological image can also be altered by the portfolio allocation of the coalition government in which the party participates. By controlling a portfolio, the party will have a more direct influence on the related issue and will frequently communic…
Regional coalition heuristics: Government Participation and Party Perceptions in Multi-Level Systems
When parties cooperate, they are perceived as closer together in an ideological space than when they compete. This mechanism has only been tested at the national level and researchers have disregarded the complex interaction between parties competing and cooperating at various levels of a polity. This article argues that complex multi-level systems have an influence on the voters’ perceptions, especially for coalition parties. More specifically, …
In for a Penny, in for a Pound?” Evidence That Government Support Parties Cannot Dissociate Themselves from the Prime Minister’s Party
The Persistence of Memory: Evidence that Perceptions of Support Parties Update Gradually
Previous research has demonstrated that citizens use heuristics in their ideological perceptions of the placement of governing partners. Yet what about the perceptions after the government termination from non-government support parties? To what extent is updating evident and is there heterogeneity in the response? We examine these questions using a Spanish Survey Panel over 6 months in 2018–2019 after the termination of the Rajoy II government. …
Issue ownership and government participation: Explaining parties’ issue attention at the subnational level
The level of attention parties devote to specific issues is one of the key factors in parties’ electoral campaign strategies. Research so far only scarcely focused on parties’ attention towards specific issues at the subnational level—even though some issues are primarily dealt with at this level. Building on a novel data set covering 679 regional election manifestos in Austria and Germany between 1990 and 2019, we assess the influence of party-s…
Duration of coalition formation in the German states: Inertia and familiarity in a multilevel setting
Only gradually, scholars began to show interest in party competition at the sub-national level. Yet, we still know very little about how long it takes until a regional government gets into office. To narrow this research gap, we examine the effect of previous government experience between parties at the regional and national levels. Government formation processes are expected to be faster if parties currently govern together—i.e. have inertia—or …
Asset or Liability? The Effect of National Approval Ratings on Regional Election Results
An attentive audience? If and how voters evaluate coalition formation
Coalition governments have traditionally been criticized for creating low clarity of responsibility and thus impairing voters’ ability to hold representatives accountable. Recent scholarship has suggested that voters are actually evaluating the coalition behavior of individual parties—not only at the end of the government period but also at the government formation stage. The answers to an open-ended question included in the Austrian National Ele…
Electoral Systems and Political Participation (18 works) · Political science (18 works) · Law (14 works) · Politics (14 works) · Law (13 works) · Political Influence and Corporate Strategies (13 works) · Government (linguistics (12 works) · Political economy (12 works) · Economics (11 works) · Public Administration (10 works)