Research

Current projects

Institutional Change in European Parliamentary Democracies

  • Partisan Disturbances and Procedural Reforms. How and why do legislative rules change? In this project, I study the effect of various types of disturbances in the partisan environment on the likelihood of changes to procedural rules. My recent article from this project, co-authored with Niels Goet and Tom Fleming, has been published in Legislative Studies Quarterly and can be read here. 
  • Evolution of Committee Strength and Floor Agenda Power. Drawing on original and unique data from 17 western and east-central European democracies (1945-2011), I study the conditions under which parties change the powers of committees and floor agenda rules. My recent articles from this project have been published in West European Politics (here) and European Journal of Political Research (here).

Measuring the Significance of Policy Outputs

  • Measurement and Machine Learning. In this project, I apply advances in computational semi-supervised learning to develop a novel approach to the classification of policy and institutional outputs. An initial article from this project, co-authored with Abhishek Dasgupta and David Doyle, has been published in American Political Science Review (here). 

Earlier projects

  • Parliamentary Government and Legislative Pledges. Many parliamentary governments announce regular legislative agendas identifying bills they plan to introduce to parliament in the months ahead. But even though they commit to such agendas, governments often fail to present proposals or do so with a long delay. Why? In a few articles published in Party Politics, Heike Klüver and myself have examined how majority and minority governments fulfil such legislative pledges in Denmark and Sweden (here) and in Poland (here). 
  • Europeanization and EU Compliance. Member states of the European Union are required to transpose and implement numerous EU laws. What determines how national governments comply with such implementation tasks? And how does exposure to EU implementation tasks affect national institutions at cabinet and ministerial levels? The key publications from this project have been published in my Palgrave Macmillan monograph and in Public Administration (here and here) and West European Politics (here).