Research in progress

Most recent update: 10/07/2026

TAN parties and Europe: Does government participation moderate?

(with Spencer Corp, Gary Marks, and Sayman Rohleder-Stribl, R&R)

This paper asks whether participation in government moderates TAN parties on Europe. To answer this, we develop new measures of Euroscepticism and the content of EU legislation. We find that participation in government moderates both rhetoric and behavior. TAN rhetoric is assessed in national and European Parliament election manifestos from 2010-2025; TAN voting is examined in the European Parliament
between 2014 and 2024. Yet moderation has clear limits. The effect of government participation disappears when legislation advances liberal norms, transfers authority to the EU, or strengthens European over national community.

Two Stages of Democratic Accountability: Revealed Commitment and the Partisan Cost of Acting on It.

(with Gary Marks and Julia Schulte-Cloos, under review)

Do voters fail to punish democratic violations because they attach little weight to democratic norms, or because acting on those norms becomes costly? We distinguish these two points of failure in democratic accountability, and we use a two-stage conjoint design fielded in two surveys of American partisans (Spring 2024, Winter 2025). An intraparty choice between two in-party candidates, one undemocratic, assesses revealed democratic commitment with partisan costs minimized; an interparty choice that pits an undemocratic in-party candidate against a democratic out-party candidate evaluates whether voters act on that commitment. We find that democratic commitment is weaker among expressive partisans, while in interparty contests perceived out-party threat reduces punishment of undemocratic copartisans. We also show that crossing the party lines to penalize an undemocratic in-party candidate is a high hurdle: voters unhappy with their own in-party candidate are much more likely to abstain than cross the party lines. Democratic accountability, then, has two failure points: weak commitment, and commitment too costly to act on.

Why men and women vote differently on the transnational divide.

(with Jonne Kamphorst, Gary Marks, Ye Wang. Under review)

This paper conceives the contemporary gender gap in voting as a life-course outcome of gendered sorting in education and work. Drawing on social role theory, we argue that the gender gap is linked to the division of labor in which women and men disproportionately enter different fields of study and occupational environments. We test the effect of socialization in education and work using cross-national surveys and longitudinal panels. Decomposition and mediation analysis show that differences in educational and occupational field account for a substantial share of the gender gap in GAL/TAN voting. Within-person panel estimates indicate that entering higher education, especially into fields with high cultural-communicative content, is followed by shifts toward GAL/Green support. Gendered pathways through education and employment translate structural change in durable political cleavages.