I study political parties, social organizations, and group identities in democratic politics. My work explores how divides between groups in society become divides between parties in the electoral arena, and vice versa. I focus on the supply-side of politics and study these topics in macro-historical perspective, with particular attention to meso-level organizational dynamics.
Solidarity Lost: Identity Politics and Party-Building in Western Europe
Challenger parties throughout history have drawn on appeals to group identity to gain electoral footing, yet they have done so in different ways—emphasizing either the need to represent a clear ingroup or to repress a set of outgroups. This book brings these strategies together as contrasting styles of "identity politics" and explores how structural and political conditions create fertile ground for one or the other. Through mixed-methods analysis of socialist, fascist, green, ethno-regionalist, and far right parties in Germany, Britain, and the Netherlands, I examine how identity politics emerges and functions in periods of party system change. Revising for submission in Spring 2026.
The dissertation on which this project is based received Honorable Mention for APSA's Ernst B. Haas Best Dissertation Award for outstanding doctoral work on European Politics.
I have several papers examining the organizational dynamics of the new "educational divide" in Western Europe. The organizational rooting of this divide is much weaker than that which characterized cleavages of the past. My work maps cross-national variation in this organizational embedding and explores its causes and consequences.
"Cleavage Theory Meets Civil Society: A Framework and Research Agenda" (with Endre Borbáth and Swen Hutter). Published in West European Politics.
"Parties of the Lower-Educated? Cleavage Theory and the Far Right." Under review, working paper available upon request.
"Pathways to Party-Building on the Right in Western Europe: A Longue Durée Analysis." Major revisions in progress.
"Can civil society still anchor cleavages? Mapping social closure in associational life" (with Alex Pries and Swen Hutter). Early stage.
I have several projects measuring and explaining parties' uses of group appeals in their speeches and election materials, both historical and contemporary. This work explores how group appeals relate to processes of party organization and party system change.
"A Group by Any Other Name: Conceptualizing and Measuring Group-based Appeals" (with Ronja Sczepanski). Working paper available upon request.
"How Party-Building Shapes Group Appeals: Evidence from the British Labour Party." Revisions in progress.
"Representational Resonance: Tracing the Spread of Group Appeals in British Election Addresses 1892-1931" (with Julia Leschke). Early stage.
In my early graduate studies, I co-authored two articles published in the Canadian Journal of Political Science. The first examines trade-offs of using different survey modes for the Canadian Election Study, while the second measures the effect of local candidates on Canadian voters' choices in federal elections.