European Citizens' and Parties' Attitudes towards Liberal Democracy
This project is based on my dissertation and studies the extent to which European democratic systems are supported by their citizens and their political parties. The research in this project is based on several surveys and survey experiments as well as quantitative text analysis of election manifestos and open-ended survey responses. It investigates the support for and conceptions of democracy among European citizens and parties. It aims at revealing the reasons for which citizens and parties defend liberal democracy.
Publications
“Communicating democratic subversions to citizens”, together with Theresa Gessler, Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties
“Lip Service to Liberal Democracy in Western Europe?”, forthcoming in the European Political Science Review
“The Democracy I Like?”, together with Theresa Gessler, forthcoming in Government & Opposition
Current working papers
“Party Competition over Democracy. Democracy Per Se and Conceptions of Democracy as Electoral Issues in Germany”, manuscript available on request
“Anti-democratic authoritarians, democratic populists? The support for (liberal) democracy among authoritarian, populist and radical Western Europeans”, manuscript available on request
Democracy, Anger, and Elite Responses (DANGER)
The DANGER project investigates to what extent elite responses to political violence and coalitions between democratic and anti-democratic elites endanger the survival of democracy. We aim at collecting and analysing data from the European interwar period to get a better understanding of the factors that explain the collapse of democracies and to assess the stability of democracies today.
This is an ERC Starting Grant project (PI: Nils-Christian Bormann). Further information can be found here.
Publications
“Introducing the Democratic Electoral Systems data, 1919-1925”, together with Nils-Christian Bormann, forthcoming in the Open Research Europe
Work in progress
title hidden for review, together with Nils-Christian Bormann, currently under review with Comparative Political Studies
“Government Formation in Interwar Europe: New Data and Analysis”, together with Nils-Christian Bormann, presented at APSA in 2022
Rebels in Representative Democracies – finished
Many politicians take actions to separate themselves from their party while entire parties seek to distance themselves from the political system. They do so for political gain, and often at the expense of the party or the system as a whole. But we lack a solid understanding of when and why voters actually like rebels – those politicians willing to attack their party or the political system for personal gain. The project investigates political rebellion using cross-national survey experiments and social media analysis.
This research project has been funded by the Fritz Thyssen foundation (PI: Sven-Oliver Proksch). Further information can be found here.
Publications
“Communicating the Rift. Voter Perceptions of Intra-Party Dissent in Parliament”, together with Dominik Duell, Sven-Oliver Proksch, Jonathan Slapin & Christopher Wratil, Journal of Politics
“The Rhyme and Reason of Rebel Support: Exploring European Voters' Attitudes Towards Dissident MPs”, together with Dominik Duell, Sven-Oliver Proksch, Jonathan Slapin & Christopher Wratil, Political Science Research and Methods
Current working papers
title hidden for review, together with Dominik Duell, Sven-Oliver Proksch, Jonathan Slapin & Christopher Wratil
Decentralization and Electoral Geographies – finished
The first part of this research project analysed the motives of state-wide parties to decentralize political power and the long-term consequences of political decentralization for fragmentation of the party system and intra-party disputes over public resources. The second part of this research project analysed the attention to territorial politics and parties' positions towards issues of territorial politics in newspapers and parliamentary speeches in the 20th and 21st century UK and Spain. For this project, we gathered extensive data sets of regional election results, regional party positions and newspaper articles.
This research project has been funded twice by the German Research Foundation (DFG, PIs: André Kaiser, Leonce Röth). Further information and data can be found here.
Current working papers
title hidden for review, together with Daniel Felipe Saldivia Gonzatti, Leonce Röth and André Kaiser, currently under review with the British Journal of Political Science
“Optimized Dictionaries - A Semi-Automated Workflow of Concept Identification in Text-Data”, together with Daniel Felipe Saldivia Gonzatti & Leonce Röth, working paper published with the SSOAR
Other working in progress
“How Voters Prioritize Identities for Descriptive Representation”, co-authored survey experiment with Chitralekha Basu and Jens Wäckerle, field period under preparation, to be presented at EPSA in July 2024
“Democracy Talk in Parliamentary Speeches”, mixed-methods text analysis together with David Knoll, to be presented at the DVPW in September 2024