The project investigates the determinants and consequences of political actors' appeals to social groups and how they shape democratic politics. It seeks to understand why, when, and how political parties and individual politicians invoke social groups in their rhetoric, both during election campaigns and in parliamentary debates, as well as what effects group appeals have on voters and democratic representation. The research objectives of this project are to (1) conceptualize the types and dimensions of group appeals and explain their prevalence and functions for party competition in the electoral and parliamentary context, (2) investigate individual-level determinants of group-based rhetoric used by members of parliament in their legislative speeches, and (3) examine the effects of group appeals on voters.
Building on insights from party competition, political communication, political psychology, and representation scholarship, the project aims to understand how political actors strategically employ group appeals not only to build short-term electoral coalitions but also to shape longer-term narratives about identity, belonging, and representation. Leveraging advanced computational text analysis over a large, multilingual corpus of party manifestos (1970–2025) and parliamentary speeches (1990–2023), the project links supply-side strategies to demand-side reactions measured through observational data and survey experiments. The ultimate goal is to improve scholarly understanding of the strategic use of group appeals, their variation across contexts, and their consequences for political representation and voter behaviour. The expected contribution is a comparative, longitudinal dataset and a set of theoretical and empirical insights that clarify how group rhetoric shapes voter coalitions, policy debate, and societal (de-)alignment. This focus is highly relevant in light of current developments in many democratic societies, including shifts in party systems, growing political polarization, and the increasing prominence of far right and populist actors.
The project is a collaboration with Hauke Licht from the University of Innsbruck as part of the WEAVE lead agency process. It has been approved for funding by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) in May 2025 for a duration of three years. The project start is envisaged for February 2026.
