I am Professor of German Politics and the leader of this working group. My background is in comparative politics and my main research areas are party politics, nationalism and integration and citizenship policy. My current research investigates nationalist and ethnic mobilization in contemporary and historical European democracies and the local implementation of German citizenship policy. In a more theoretical project, I explore ways to integrate insights about the relevance of social identities for political behavior into standard models of party competition.
My recent book contributes a novel theory of ideational policy stabilization to the debate about the causal power of ideas in comparative public policy (spoiler alert: I argue that ideas do make a difference). In the empirics, I trace how historical experiences with internal migration during industrialization continue to impact the contemporary politics of migration in Catalonia and South Tyrol thanks to ideational stability, and despite radical changes in the underlying incentive structure. In a recent blog post I apply the book’s argument to migration policy in Germany.
I studied Political Science, Slavic Languages and Philosophy at the University of Cologne, where I also received my doctorate. Before joining the University of Konstanz, I was a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Bremen and at Pompeu Fabra University, and lectured at the Universities of Zurich and Lucerne. During the academic year 2024/25, I am a Jean Monnet Fellow at the European University Institute in Florenz.