Research

In a new project starting on October 1, 2009, and conducted jointly with Prof. Daniele Caramani at the University of St. Gallen, we study cleavage structures and citizen-party linkages in Latin America and Europe in comparative perspective. More specifically, the project explores how clientelistic linkages may be displaced by programmatic linkages in new democracies in the absence of the large-scale historical processes that account for party system formation in Western Europe. The project is financed by the Swiss National Science Foundation until 2012.

This book assesses the ideological basis of right-wing populist parties and explains their varying success across countries by focusing on the strength of existing cleavages and partisan alignments, and on the strategies of the established parties with respect to their right-wing populist challengers. Due to be published by Temple University Press in 2010.

From 2002 to 2006 I was a member of the project "National Political Change in Borderless Spaces: A Comparative Assessment of the Impact of Globalization on National Party Systems". The project was financed by the Swiss National Science Foundation and the German Research Community.

In the project „EU enlargement, cultural diversity and national identity”, financed by the European Commission, and part of the "EU-Consent - Wider Europe, Deeper Integration? Constructing Europe" network, I worked on the mobilization of national political parties against European Integration. A volume edited by Hans-Dieter Klingemann and Dieter Fuchs is in preparation. In a similar vein, I study the mobilization of Euroscepticism by different political parties in Scandinavia, Continental Europe, and Southern Europe.