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I direct the Research area Political Sociology at the Institute for Political Science at the University of Zurich. In 2018/2019 I was an Alexander von Humboldt Alumni Fellow at the Democracy and Democratization unit at the Berlin Social Science Research Center (WZB). 

My research and teaching focuses on comparative political sociology. I have worked on the transformation of cleavages and party systems in Western Europe and on the rise of right-wing populist parties. Currently, much of my research focuses on party system formation in Latin America, both in historical perspective, as well as with a focus on the competitive strategies of contemporary political parties. 

News

New article on the social identity bases of contemporary cleavages. How “Us” and ”Them” Relates to Voting Behavior – Social Structure, Social Identities, and Electoral Choice
 

Measuring Party System Responsiveness in Challenging Contexts. Measuring party system responsiveness in contexts where voters have weakly structured belief systems is a challenge. Here is the result of some thought I have put into this over the past years, included in a symposium in European Political Science
 

Bringing together research on populism and party systems. Populist Success in Latin America and Western Europe: Ideational and Party-System-Centered Explanations. In K. A. Hawkins, R. E. Carlin, L. Littvay, & C. Rovira Kaltwasser (Eds.), The Ideational Approach to Populism. Concept, Theory, and Analysis (pp. 202–237). Routledge.
 

Now in print! Historical Polarization and Representation in South American Party Systems, British Journal of Political Science, Vol. 49, no. 1, pp. 153-179.
 

The causes and consequences of left-wing populism in Latin America. Interview on POP – Political Observer on Populism
 

Book reviewed. Read Russell Dalton's review of Cleavage Politics and the Populist Right
 

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