Teaching

Why citizens of Eastern Germany are more likely to vote for the radical right? Why do people turn out to vote even if their likelihood of influencing the election outcome is minimal? How is it possible that support for LGBTQi+ policies increases simultaneously with support for conservative parties? Traditional political science accounts focusing on voters' rationality and institutions fall short of explanatory power to answer these and related questions. Instead, cultural explanations are gaining prominence, and the increasing availability of digitalized historical and text data has provided the ground to test them systematically. Following this trend, this course introduces students to the developing field of Political Culture, with a particular focus on applications in political behavior topics. The course combines a well-curated reading list with introductory lectures and seminar discussions to foster critical thinking about the role of culture in politics. Students who take this course will acquire the skills to analyze political behavior from a cultural perspective, developing original research ideas and designs.This course is a block seminar course for undergraduate and graduate students taught at the University of Lucerne in the Spring term of 2024.

This course is a weekly seminar course for graduate students taught at the University of Lucerne in the Spring term of 2023. The course explores the main theories of political behavior and party competition by focusing on party system change. It reviews the different 'transformation waves' that have shaped Western European party systems from the 1960s until now and provides an overview of the main demand and supply-side explanations. The goal is to provide students with the conceptual and empirical tools to analyse patterns of political behavior and party competition, with a focus on the factors that may lead to electoral change.

This course is a intensive two-weeks seminar for graduate and advanced undergraduate students taught at the University of Lucerne in the Spring term of 2022. The course reviews the different 'transformation waves' that have shaped Western European party systems from the 1960s until now. It provides an overview of the main demand and supply-side factors discussed in the literature to explain these changes. The goal is to provide students with the conceptual and empirical tools to analyse the evolution of Western European party systems from a historical and comparative perspective.