Research

Research agenda

Whether political parties pay an electoral cost for moderation — and how electoral institutions condition that cost — across ideological (left-right) competition in Europe and ethnic politics in deeply divided societies.

Publications

Mass Attitudes towards Russia’s Aggression against Ukraine: Tentative Support for Top-Down Opinion Formation. European Journal of Political Research (2026, Open Access). With Filip Kostelka, Martín Alberdi, Max Bradley, Toine Fiselier, Alexandra Jabbour, Eleonora Minaeva, Silvia Porciuleanu, and Diana Rafailova. Read the paper

Working papers

1. “Following the Demand: The Electoral Consequences of Party Shifts.” 29 European countries (Manifesto Project, CSES). Finds no general centrifugal advantage: parties, especially on the center-left, gain votes from position shifts that correct earlier moves away from their electorate’s preferred position — regardless of direction.

2. “Where Does Moderation Pay? District Magnitude, Ethnic Composition, and the Vote Shares of Moderate Parties.” Cross-national district-level analysis (CLEA, EPAC) in divided societies, complemented by a sub-national case study of Lebanon’s 2017 electoral reform. Finds that higher district magnitude benefits moderate parties specifically in ethnically mixed districts.

3. “Is More Better? The Effect of Increasing the Number of Votes on Moderate and Cross-Ethnic Voting.” An original individual-level experiment in Bosnia and Herzegovina (designed, funded, and fielded by the author) testing whether increasing the number of votes per voter encourages cross-ethnic and moderate voting. Finds that increasing to three votes per voter raises support for non-ethnic parties, with an added effect on moderate voting.

4. “Affective Polarization: Disentangling Policy and Identity” (with Toine Fiselier and Filip Kostelka) — survey experiment, in preparation for submission.