Welcome! I am a visiting assistant professor at Oberlin College. My work centers on the intersection between political behavior and party politics with a special focus on the role of social movements in shaping political parties. I will receive my Ph.D. from the Department of Government at Cornell University in August 2017.
In my dissertation I explore why contemporary European parties with movement roots have neither followed the lead of older movement parties like the Social Democrats by adopting an electoral-professional party model, nor retained their organizational connections to movement organizations. I show that the saturated party systems in Europe empower social movement organizations vis-à-vis the parties they spawned, allowing movements to hold parties programmatically to account. Thus these movements and parties counterbalance the trend towards catch-all and cartel parties and thereby (re-)integrate disaffected citizens into the democratic process. This equilibrium only breaks down when mainstream parties weaken and thus allow movement parties a path to major party status, as illustrated by recent developments in Southern Europe.
I have conducted extensive fieldwork in Sweden and Germany, supported by a Luigi Einaudi Fellowship. I hold a M.A. and B.A. in Political Science from the University of Bremen in Germany and studied at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands.
In my dissertation I explore why contemporary European parties with movement roots have neither followed the lead of older movement parties like the Social Democrats by adopting an electoral-professional party model, nor retained their organizational connections to movement organizations. I show that the saturated party systems in Europe empower social movement organizations vis-à-vis the parties they spawned, allowing movements to hold parties programmatically to account. Thus these movements and parties counterbalance the trend towards catch-all and cartel parties and thereby (re-)integrate disaffected citizens into the democratic process. This equilibrium only breaks down when mainstream parties weaken and thus allow movement parties a path to major party status, as illustrated by recent developments in Southern Europe.
I have conducted extensive fieldwork in Sweden and Germany, supported by a Luigi Einaudi Fellowship. I hold a M.A. and B.A. in Political Science from the University of Bremen in Germany and studied at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands.
