publications
Below you can get access to all my published work.
2025
- JoP
Can Simple Language Affect Voters’ Political Knowledge and Their Beliefs About Politicians?with Roman Senninger,Journal of Politics, 2025How do the tone and style of political messages affect citizens? While research has unpacked which politicians demarcate themselves with their tone and style, we know little about how this resonates with citizens. We theorize that linguistic simplicity, as a communication style, should increase citizens’ political knowledge and affect their beliefs about politicians. Simple language is used as a heuristic signaling that politicians are among the “people” and this might increase politicians’ public support. In pre-registered and large-scale survey experiments conducted in Germany, respondents are shown political statements randomly varying in linguistic simplicity, among other factors. Simplicity increases respondents’ political knowledge and is used by them as a heuristic to fill informational gaps about politicians’ socio-economic backgrounds. In the electoral arena sophistication moderates the effect of politicians’ policy positions. Our findings showcase that linguistic styles can be a major tool for contemporary political campaigns.
2024
- CUP
Lost in Transition – Where Are All the Social Democrats Today?with Thomas Kurer,In: Silja Häusermann and Herbert Kitschelt: Beyond Social Democracy. The Transformation of the Left in Emerging Knowledge Societies. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2024This chapter follows individual voter flows using panel data for Social Democrats in Germany (1984-2018), the United Kingdom (1991-2018) and Switzerland (1999-2018). To our knowledge this chapter, thus, provides the first long running study of individual voting transitions amongst Social Democratic voters, following their transitions for almost 40 years. The key goal of this chapter is to understand where initial voters of the Social Democrats are today and which individual level characteristics correlate with leaving SDs. We find: 1) Social Democrats manage to keep some of their core 2) but a lot of their core gets de-mobilized or moves on to more progressive options (Greens, LibDem, Green Liberal Party). 3) SDs struggle in all countries to attract new voters, less so in Switzerland which we think is at least partly due to the progressive offer provided by the SP. In contrast, the German SPD loses to everyone and gains almost nothing. We also find evidence that SDs die out: the key factor correlated with ‘leaving’ is the generational cohort Social Democrats belong to. In contrast, often theorized and emphasized factors such as occupation, income or unemployment show much smaller correlations with former Social Democrats’ decision to leave the party behind.
- JoP
Out-group Threat and Xenophobic Hate Crimes: Evidence of Local Intergroup Conflict Dynamics between Immigrants and NativesJournal of Politics, 2024This study examines the relationship between crimes attributed to immigrants and hate crimes against refugees at the local level. We argue that localized crime events attributed to immigrants can lead natives to exact retribution against uninvolved out-group members. We investigate such intergroup conflict dynamics between immigrants and natives in Germany, a country that has in recent years experienced a sharp increase in both the foreign-born population and hate crimes. Our empirical analysis leverages fine-grained geo-coded data on more than 9,400 hate crimes and 60,000 immigrant-attributed crime events between 2015 and 2019. Using a regression discontinuity in time design (RDiT), we show that the daily probability of hate crimes doubles in the immediate aftermath of an immigrant crime event in a local community. Additional evidence points to mobilization rather than legitimization as a likely mechanism. Our results speak to growing concerns about xenophobic violence in Western democracies.
2023
- APSR
Wealth of Tongues: Why Peripheral Regions Vote for the Radical Right in GermanyAmerican Political Science Review, 2023Why is support for the radical right higher in some geographic locations than others? This paper argues that what is frequently classified as the “rural” bases of radical right support in previous research is in part the result of something different: communities that were in the historical “periphery” in the center-periphery conflicts of modern nation-state formation. Inspired by a classic state-building literature that emphasizes the prevalence of a “wealth of tongues” (Weber 1976)—or nonstandard linguistic dialects in a region—as a definition of the periphery, we use data from more than 725,000 geo-coded responses in a linguistic survey in Germany to show that voters from historically peripheral geographic communities are more likely to vote for the radical right today.
- WEP
Pieces of the Puzzle: Coalition Formation & Tangential PreferencesWest European Politics, 2023The similarity of parties’ policy preferences has long been considered an important determinant of whether they form a government coalition. That similarity has typically been taken to mean that the parties are in close proximity in some policy space. Policy preferences are, however, only partially described by the parties’ location in the policy space: the degree to which parties care about different issues may also vary. Parties that care about different issues may actually be the most compatible partners, as their tangential preferences would allow them to engage in policy logrolling and enable them to preserve their distinctiveness in the eyes of voters. We test arguments regarding the role of tangentiality and its interaction with policy proximity on the party composition of governments formed in Western Europe from 1945 to 2019. Contrary to our main hypothesis, we find that parties that emphasize the same issues are more natural coalition partners. However, we show that this effect disappears as parties’ ideological differences grow, and that the tangentiality of their preferences would actually help quite distant parties form coalitions together.
- JoP
Place-Based Campaigning: The Political Impact of Real Grassroots Mobilizationwith Thomas Kurer,Journal of Politics, 2023Generations of research have incrementally identified the circumstances under which electoral campaigns matter. Direct, interpersonal contact within local networks is commonly seen as conducive to campaign impact but empirical evidence is scarce due to demanding data requirements. We advance the literature by studying the Movimento Cinque Stelle, an important challenger party in Italy, which followed the unusual practice of coordinating all political activities on a public online platform. We webscraped the entire event history of the Movement’s more than 1,000 local branches with over 200,000 geocoded political activities to study the effect and mechanisms of their campaign against the 2016 constitutional referendum – a watershed moment in Italian politics. Relying on regression, matching, and instrumental variable models, we demonstrate substantial campaign effects. Our results indicate that social networks amplify the effectiveness of a campaign while highlighting both the continued relevance and the particular potency of place-based political mobilization.
- PSRM
Do Voters Want Domestic Politicians to Scrutinize the European Union?with Roman Senninger,Political Science Research & Methods, 2023In light of important political events that go beyond the nation state (e.g., migration, climate change, and the coronavirus pandemic), domestic politicians are increasingly pressured to scrutinize and speak out on European policy-making. This creates a potential trade-off between allocating effort to domestic and supranational affairs, respectively. We examine how citizens perceive legislator involvement in European Union (EU) politics with a pre-registered conjoint experiment in Germany. Our results show that Members of Parliament (MPs) are not disadvantaged when allocating effort to European affairs as compared to local and national affairs. In addition, voters tend to prefer MPs who engage in EU policy reform over those who do not. As demand for legislator involvement in European politics is on the rise, we provide empirical evidence that MPs can fulfill this demand without being disadvantaged by the electorate.
2022
- APSR
Tabloid media campaigns and public opinion: Quasi-experimental evidence on Euroscepticism in Englandwith Florian Foos,American Political Science Review, 2022Whether powerful media outlets have effects on public opinion has been at the heart of theoretical and empirical discussions about the media’s role in political life. Yet, the effects of media campaigns are difficult to study because citizens self-select into media consumption. Using a quasi-experiment—the 30-year boycott of the most important Eurosceptic tabloid newspaper, The Sun, in Merseyside caused by the Hillsborough soccer disaster—we identify the effects of The Sun boycott on attitudes toward leaving the EU. Difference-in-differences designs using public opinion data spanning three decades, supplemented by referendum results, show that the boycott caused EU attitudes to become more positive in treated areas. This effect is driven by cohorts socialized under the boycott and by working-class voters who stopped reading The Sun. Our findings have implications for our understanding of public opinion, media influence, and ways to counter such influence in contemporary democracies.
- PSR
Advantages, Challenges and Limitations of Audit Experiments with Constituentswith Gidon CohenSarah Cohen, and 5 more authorsPolitical Studies Review, 2022Audit experiments examining the responsiveness of public officials have become an increasingly popular tool used by political scientists. While these studies have brought significant insight into how public officials respond to different types of constituents, particularly those from minority and disadvantaged backgrounds, audit studies have also been controversial due to their frequent use of deception. Scholars have justified the use of deception by arguing that the benefits of audit studies ultimately outweigh the costs of deceptive practices. Do all audit experiments require the use of deception? This article reviews audit study designs differing in their amount of deception. It then discusses the organizational and logistical challenges of a UK study design where all letters were solicited from MPs’ actual constituents (so-called confederates) and reflected those constituents’ genuine opinions. We call on researchers to avoid deception, unless necessary, and engage in ethical design innovation of their audit experiments, on ethics review boards to raise the level of justification of needed studies involving fake identities and misrepresentation, and on journal editors and reviewers to require researchers to justify in detail which forms of deception were unavoidable.
- PSRM
How Transnational Party Alliances Influence National Parties’ PoliciesPolitical Science Research & Methods, 2022Previous research reports that parties in established European democracies learn from and emulate the successful election strategies of foreign incumbents, i.e., successful parties are influential abroad. We theorize that—in addition to incumbency (or success)—exchange takes place through transnational party alliances in the European Union. Relying on party manifesto data and spatial econometric analyses, we show that belonging to the same European Parliament (EP) party group enhances learning and emulation processes between national political parties. Estimated short- and long-term effects are approximately two and three times greater when foreign incumbents are in the same EP party group compared to other foreign incumbents. Our results have implications for our understanding of how transnational party groups influence national parties’ policy positions.
2021
- JEPP
The public, the protester, and the bill: do legislative agendas respond to public opinion signals?Journal of European Public Policy, 2021Legislators adapt their policies and agendas to public priorities. Yet research on dynamic representation usually focuses on the influence of public opinion through surveys leaving out other public opinion signals. We incorporate mobilization of the public through protest. Combining insights from social movement studies and political science, we expect protest not to have a direct effect on attention change in legislative agendas. If anything protest should have an amplification effect on public priorities. Using a new and unique data set covering collective action, public opinion and legislative agendas across almost 40 years in four Western democracies, we confirm the effect of public opinion through surveys but find no support for a direct effect of protest. Protest rarely moves legislators: only in very specific issues will protest interact with public priorities and affect attention change in legislative agendas. Our results have important implications for policy representation.
2020
- BJPS
What makes parties adapt to voter preferences? The role of party organization, goals and ideologywith Markus Wagner,British Journal of Political Science, 2020A landmark finding in recent research on party competition is that parties differ in how they react to public opinion shifts. In their influential study, Adams et al. find that niche parties – which they define as communist, green and radical-right parties – fail to track changes in the median voter position, while other (mainstream) parties do respond to such changes. They do not argue that something inherent to these three party families makes them less likely to follow changes in the median voter position. Instead, they suggest that these party families tend to prioritize policy over office and tend to be activist led, which explains why they do not track the median voter. In this research note, we replicate and extend their analysis but replace their simple dichotomy based on party families with the party differences that they argue drive the pattern they find: party goals and party organization. We also add a third aspect of niche parties not alluded to by Adams et al., party ideology, specifically the extent to which parties focus on niche issues. All three of these mechanisms may contribute to the pattern they found. Our analysis examines how these three aspects of parties act as mechanisms connecting median voter change to party policy change and thereby contributes to the ongoing scholarly debate over which party characteristics drive party responsiveness to voters.
- JEPOP
Party policy diffusion in the European multilevel space: what it is, how it works, and why it mattersJournal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties, 2020Almost since the end of World War II, transnational cooperation among political parties has been a common feature of European politics. This paper makes the case for studying transnational partisan cooperation in the European multilevel space, focusing in particular on the phenomenon of “party policy diffusion.” At the heart of the paper is a conceptual discussion of party policy diffusion in the EU. Specifically, we look at the (1) aims that lead parties to learn from or emulate parties in other countries; (2) the mechanisms through which this may work; and (3) the wider implications of this practice both for domestic and European politics. Drawing on this conceptual discussion, the paper then goes on to offer leads as to how the phenomenon of party policy diffusion can be studied in the European multilevel space. To this end, we briefly point to possible ways of testing hypotheses about party policy diffusion using spatially explicit modeling strategies such as spatial regression models and exponential random graph models for transnational party networks.
2019
- AJPS
Do Voters Polarize When Radical Parties Enter Parliament?with Markus Wagner,American Journal of Political Science, 2019Do voters polarize ideologically when radical views gain political legitimacy, or does the rise of radical voices merely reflect societal conflict? We argue that elite polarization as signaled by radical parties’ first entrance into parliament leads to voter divergence. Immediately after the election, legitimization and backlash effects mean that voters on both ideological sides move toward the extremes. In the longer term, this polarization is solidified because of radical parties’ parliamentary presence. A panel study of Dutch voters shows that the 2002 parliamentary entrance of a radical-right party indeed led to immediate ideological polarization across the political spectrum. Estimating time-series cross-sectional models on Eurobarometer data from 17 countries (1973–2016) shows an additional long-term impact of radical-right party entry on polarization. The presence of radical voices on the right has polarizing effects, illustrating how such institutional recognition and legitimization can have a far-reaching impact on society.
- SPSR
The Use and Usefulness of p-Values in Political Science: Introductionwith Mariken van der VeldenSwiss Political Science Review, 2019P-values are the most frequently employed metric to assess the significance of statistical findings in the social sciences. Since the earliest years of their usage the meaning and usefulness of p-values were topics of heated discussion (Berkson 1942; Fisher 1935). Lately the reproduction/replication crisis resuscitated this debate (Benjamin et al. 2018; Gelman 2018; Lakens et al. 2018; McShane et al. 2019; Nuzzo 2014; Trafimow and Marks 2015). Meanwhile, the skepticism has not stopped at the gates of political science. Most prominently the journal “Political Analysis” banned p-values “in regression tables or elsewhere” after the new editor took over the board of editors in 2017 (Gill 2018: 1). Also political scientists contributed to a swelling debate suggesting to lower the threshold for p-values to 0.005 (Benjamin et al. 2018; Esarey 2017).
2018
- EUP
Working in unison: Political parties and policy issue transfer in the multilevel spacewith Roman Senninger,European Union Politics, 2018In this study, we examine whether and how policy issues addressed by political parties travel across the national and European legislative arena. We define ‘party policy issue transfer’ as the articulation of similar issues in the work of political parties at different parliamentary venues in short distance of time and argue that issues particularly transfer within the same party. This is mainly so for three reasons: exchange of information between parties across levels, national parties’ attempts to influence European Union policies, and career incentives of representatives at the supranational level. We test our theoretical framework using unique data on parliamentary questions asked by Danish representatives (the Folketing and the European Parliament, 1999–2009) and a dyadic data structure. Our results show that parties’ policy issues—in particular those over which the European Union holds legislative power—transfer across the national and European levels on a regular basis and that issues are more likely to travel within parties.
- EJPR
Simple politics for the people? Complexity in campaign messages and political knowledgewith Roman Senninger,European Journal of Political Research, 2018Which parties use simple language in their campaign messages, and do simple campaign messages resonate with voters’ information about parties? This study introduces a novel link between the language applied during election campaigns and citizens’ ability to position parties in the ideological space. To this end, how complexity of campaign messages varies across parties as well as how it affects voters’ knowledge about party positions is investigated. Theoretically, it is suggested that populist parties are more likely to simplify their campaign messages to demarcate themselves from mainstream competitors. In turn, voters should perceive and process simpler campaign messages better and, therefore, have more knowledge about the position of parties that communicate simpler campaign messages. The article presents and validates a measure of complexity and uses it to assess the language of manifestos in Austria and Germany in the period 1945–2013. It shows that political parties, in general, use barely comprehensible language to communicate their policy positions. However, differences between parties exist and support is found for the conjecture about populist parties as they employ significantly less complex language in their manifestos. Second, evidence is found that individuals are better able to place parties in the ideological space if parties use less complex campaign messages. The findings lead to greater understanding of mass-elite linkages during election campaigns and have important consequences for the future analysis of manifesto data.
- WEP
Ideological congruence between party rhetoric and policy-makingWest European Politics, 2018Scholars, citizens and journalists alike question whether political parties keep their electoral promises. A growing body of literature provides empirical evidence that parties do indeed keep their electoral pledges. Yet little is known about the congruence between party rhetoric between elections and the policies delivered by them. Given the increasing influence of party rhetoric in the media with respect to voting decisions, it is highly relevant to understand if parties ‘walk like they talk’. The article suggests that due to electoral reasons parties face strong incentives to deliver policy outputs which are congruent to their daily rhetoric. Analysing data on 54 policy outputs on nuclear energy, drafted by 24 parties after the Fukushima accident, the analysis finds overwhelming evidence that parties deliver ideologically congruent policy outputs to their rhetoric (incongruent only in 7.89%). These findings have important implications for our understanding of the linkage between party communication and the masses in modern media democracies.
2017
- PP
Towards a Renewal of the Niche Party Concept: Parties, Market Shares and Condensed OffersParty Politics, 2017Scholars’ attention to the concept of niche parties has greatly increased. While researchers agree that niche parties matter in a variety of ways, the definitions and measurements of such parties are manifold and an accordance remains yet to be found. I argue the given conceptualizations of niche parties (a) suffer from gaps between their measurements and theoretical concepts or (b) conceptual clarity. The theoretical concept I propose understands niche parties as (a) predominantly competing on niche market segments neglected by their competitors and (b) not discussing a broad range of these segments. By measuring exactly these two components in an additive index drawn from the MARPOR data, the validation shows that parties emphasizing niche segments differentiate themselves from their competitors also by using a condensed message on these segments. In particular, this component of party competition, the specialization of party offers, has not been studied in the literature on niche parties and should receive more attention.
- STATA
New graphic schemes for Stata: plotplain and plottigStata Journal, 2017While Stata’s computational capabilities have intensively increased over the last decade, the quality of its default graphic schemes is still a matter of debate among users. Some of the arguments speaking against Stata’s default graphic design are subject to individual taste but others are not, for example, horizontal labeling, unnecessary background tinting, missing gridlines, and oversized markers. In this article, I present two new graphic schemes, plotplain and plottig, that attempt to address these concerns. These schemes provide users a set of 21 colors, of which 7 colors are distinguishable for people suffering from color blindness. I also give an introduction on how users can program their own graphic schemes.
- EP
The Effects of the Fukushima Disaster on Nuclear Energy Debates and Policies: A Two-Steps Comparative ExaminationEnvironmental Politics, 2017 - Software
G538SCHEMES: Stata module to provide graphics schemes for http://fivethirtyeight.comStatistical Software Components, 2017While stata’s computational capabilities have intensively increased over the last decade, the quality of its default figure schemes is still a matter of debate amongst users. Clearly some of the arguments speaking against stata figures are subject to individual taste, but others are not, such as for instance: horizontal labelling, unnecessary background tinting, missing gridlines, oversized markers. The schemes provided here replicate the design of http://fivethirtyeight.com. This package provides users with three graphic schemes: 1) 538 (replicates the figure design by http://fivethirtyeight.com) 2) 538w (replicates the figure design by http://fivethirtyeight.com but with a white background) 3) 538bw (replicates the figure design by http://fivethirtyeight.com but in black and white) Please consult the relevant help files to retrieve more information on the specific schemes.
2016
2015
- SPSR
Repression as a Double-Edged Sword: Resilient Monarchs, Repression and Revolution in the Arab Worldwith Simon Fink,Swiss Political Science Review, 2015The Arab world shows a puzzling variation of political violence. The region’s monarchies often remain quiet, while other autocracies witness major upheaval. Institutional explanations of this variation suggest that monarchical rule solves the ruler’s credible commitment problems and prevents elite splits. This article argues that institutional explanations neglect the role of repression: increasing the scope of repression raises the costs of rebellion and deters rebels. However, the deterrence effect disappears if repression is used indiscriminately. If remaining peaceful offers no benefits, repression creates new rebels instead of deterring them. A time-series- cross-section analysis of repression and political violence in the Middle East and North Africa corroborates our argument and shows the u-curve relation between repression and violence. Once we control for repression, monarchies have no special effect anymore. Thus, our article addresses the discussion about monarchical exceptionalism, and offers an explanation why repression deters as well as incites political violence.
2012
- PAAF
Minority-ethnic MPs and the substantive representation of minority interests in the House of Commons, 2005–2011with Thomas Saalfeld,Parliamentary Affairs, 2012Black, Asian and minority-ethnic (BAME) citizens are under-represented in the House of Commons. Nevertheless, the Chamber’s ethnic composition has become more reflective of the general population as a result of the 2005 and 2010 parliamentary elections. The article seeks to map and explain variations in the extent to which BAME Members of Parliament (MPs) use the Chamber to articulate issues relevant to minority constituents. We compare the content of all parliamentary questions for written answer asked by BAME MPs between May 2005 and December 2011 to the questions asked by a matching sample of non-minority legislators. We find that BAME MPs ask more questions relating to the problems and rights of ethnic minorities in, and immigration to, the UK. However, we also find that all British MPs are responsive to the interests of minority constituents where these are geographically concentrated. Building on theoretical predictions derived from (1) models focusing on MPs’ political socialisation and (2) on the electoral incentives they are facing, we discover that the MPs in our sample respond systematically to electoral incentives, especially in the politically salient area of immigration policy. While these findings are in line with an ‘electoral-incentives model’, a ‘socialisation model’ is better suited to explain the larger number of questions on the interests of ethnic minorities asked by Labour MPs.