Biography

Broadly speaking, my research interests lie in the fields of public opinion, political participation, party politics and international organizations. I defended my dissertation in March 2013 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
In my dissertation, I study the causes and consequences of political trust and satisfaction with democracy in European states. Three major questions about how citizens evaluate the performance of democracy and democratic institutions have shaped my research: (1) the causes of political trust and satisfaction with democracy; (2) the role of media in influencing evaluations of the performance of democracy; and (3) its effects on voting. Thus, I investigate the main factors that explain satisfaction with democracy and its main institutions, and then explore the consequences of such evaluations for voting behaviour.
My recent work has also focused on the effects of the economic crisis that began in 2008 on diffuse support for the European Union and the idea of European integration. Over the last four years, I have been involved in a co-authored book project called International Government that seeks to measure and analyse the authority of international organizations. Specifically, this book, which is currently under contract with Oxford University Press, seeks to explain the authority and change of 72 international organizations from 1950, or the time of their establishment, to 2012.
My work is forthcoming in Comparative Political Studies and European Union Politics.