Research

My primary research interests lie at the nexus of legislative studies, public policy and electoral studies. My current research revolves around the transformations of liberal democracies and their effect on the behavior of political actors and decision-making. I am currently working on two main research projects:

The Effect of the Personalization of Politics on MPs' Behavior

This agenda of research tackles the question of decentralized personalization and individualization of legislative behavior. More precisely, I am researching the effects of the openness of electoral systems on MPs' behavior and how voters react to it. Drawing on data from Finland and France, I am looking at how the individual and collective (partisan) aspects of an MP behavior interact and how the party influence the extent of personal-vote seeking activities. Various "activities" have been studied and, among others, issue attentions, parliamentary questions, speeches, and private motions. More recently, I have started to work on the effectiveness of personal vote-seeking activities and their paradoxical connection with party votes.

This research has been partially funded by a grant from the Finnish Cultural Foundation (Central Fund).

The Impact of Populist Parties on Policy-Making

This project focuses on another significant change in European liberal democracies, the breakthrough of populist parties. A growing literature focuses on the conditions of their emergence, their electoral performance, and their core voters. However, only a little is known about the actual consequences for the work of representative democracy and, more precisely, on the law-making process. The goal of the project is a comparative investigation of the policy-making in the age of new populist movements and parties. This question is at the core of a growing literature, but most current studies are country-specific and focus on particular policy domains. The project adopts a broad and dynamic definition of policy-making aiming to explore the ability of these parties to set the agenda and the strategies they implement to reach their goals.

This research has been funded by the Academy of Finland (postdoctoral fellowship) and the Finnish Cultural Foundation (Pirkanmaa Regional Fund).