Research

Research Agenda

My research explores how national history and other narratives about one's ingroup relate to modern political attitudes and behavior.  How do individuals think about the past, and when does this affect voting behavior or other political attitudes? 

Relatedly, some of these histories have led to stigmatized ideologies and parties. In another strand of research, I explore changing stigma around the radical right and some of its consequences. 

I explore these questions in democratic settings, with projects in Europe (mainly Spain and Portugal), the United States, and Israel. 

My dissertation connects these two phenomena, exploring how attitudes towards authoritarian history are connected to the success of "anti-reformer" parties that continue to be ideologically and symbolically linked to the past regime. It explores the challenge that these parties face in the aftermath of democratic transition and how various opportunities allow them  to gain a foothold. It then tests how authoritarian nostalgia: a perception that things were better under the former regime than under the modern democratic system, is connected to support and the success of these parties. It outlines how both nostalgia and the success of the parties can create a "vicious cycle" that can feed into one another. Drawing on survey experiments in Spain and Portugal and cross-national analysis, the project improves our understandings of nostalgia, party politics, and changing social norms.

In Progress:

Forthcoming 

• Re-stigmatizing the radical right: A one way street? [JEPS] (with Laia Balcells, Sergi Martínez, and Vicente Valentim)

Working papers/under review/R&R

• Authoritarian nostalgia amid radical right platforming and normalization

• Collective victimhood and conflict attitudes: A meta-analysis (with Nadav Shelef and Marko Kljajić)

• Transitional justice and linked party sympathies (with Laia Balcells)

• National identity, past in-group perpetratorhood, and out-group attitudes (with Laia Balcells and Elias Dinas)

•  Uncovering Hidden History: How Past Anti-LGBTQ+ Repression Shapes Modern Attitudes in Spain (with Laia Balcells and Alberto López Ortega)

Published Projects:

Discounting extreme positions: party normalization and support for the far right (With Laia Balcells and Sergi Martínez, PSRM - https://doi.org/10.1017/psrm.2025.29)

When are far right parties punished for their extreme positions? We argue that the punishments of deviant position-taking are conditional on the degree to which a far right party is normalized or stigmatized in the party system. When the far right is treated as normal, the costs suffered from these parties’ extreme positions decrease, as moderate voters discount the authenticity of their commitment to such positions. We use a survey experiment to test this argument in Spain, finding evidence for discounting on the far right’s extreme anti-LGBTQ+ statements, but not on its embrace of authoritarian history. This study thus shows that normalization and stigmatization of the far right can change how its extreme positions are interpreted by voters.

Re-evaluating the impact of collective victimhood on conflict attitudes: Results from a natural experiment, a survey experiment, and panel study using Israel’s Holocaust Memorial Day (With Nadav G. Shelef, AJPS - http://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12906)

A significant observational literature identifies a link between collective victimhood and conflict-enhancing attitudes, though results from experimental work increasing victimhood's salience vary. This article thus revisits this question in two studies in a context in which increased salience is especially likely to shift attitudes. Study 1 exploits the happenstance fielding of 12 surveys over Israel's Holocaust Memorial Day between 1979 and 2021. Using all 192 available estimates assessing hawkishness, preferences for out-group exclusion, and in-group solidarity, it fails to detect statistically significant effects of a state-led effort to increase the salience of Israel's collective victimhood narrative in a natural setting 90% of the time. Study 2 replicates the null findings across multiple comparisons and outcomes in a companion harmonized panel and survey experiment. Substantively, the findings suggest that it may be harder to use short-term manipulations of collective victimhood to shift attitudes than often assumed.

Populism and the Pandemic: France and the Rassemblement National (with Marta Lorimer)

In a book chapter on populist reactions to the pandemic and cross-national report on social media communication, both co-authored with Marta Lorimer (LSE), we explore the rhetoric and actions Marine Le Pen and her Rassemblement National (RN) party throughout the COVID-19 Pandemic. In both pieces, we argue that Le Pen and the RN engaged in a careful strategy of balancing respectability and radicalization. The strategy fits well with the party's attempt to 'de-demonize' itself, a choice driven largely by incentives present in the French electoral system.