Austrian Political Science in the 21st Century

Given the fact that political science remains a rather small discipline within the Austrian higher education system, its pre-institutional history, initial inception, as well as its role in the Austrian university landscape have been pretty thoroughly investigated in the meantime. Based on this extensive literature (mostly in German), the following text attempts to provide a complete picture of the current status quo of the discipline in Austria and to discuss some of the more recent developments. The article starts with a brief summary of the historical development of the discipline and its current structural set-up. The main part will then be dedicated to analyse how the discipline developed during the past two decades in Austria, based on descriptive statistical data. In section 3, the text focuses on assessing developments in the political science teaching, before analysing the research-side in chapter 4. A short summary and outlook concludes this chapter.