Bio Teaching Publications
My research interests focus on political institutions, in the European Union as well as in a comparative perspective. Much of my work centers on legislative politics, involving questions of decision-making dynamics and mechanisms in the European Parliament and beyond. I am particularly interested in the creation, exchange, and diffusion of policy-relevant information and expertise, both between legislative offices and between policy-makers and stakeholders outside the legislature. Conceptually, my research draws from comparative politics, international relations, and American politics, while my methodological approach involves mixing quantitative and qualitative methods. I have also been increasingly engaged with social network analysis, which allows me to capture the intuitively appealing idea that governance is, by definition, relational.
My ongoing research focuses on the role of foreign language use and multilingualism in European Union politics. The project builds on my previous work on the microfoundations of legislative decision-making, the exchange of policy-relevant information in lawmaking institutions, and the dynamics of bargaining in international institutions, but it also draws on work in other disciplines like (socio-)linguistics, legal studies, and economics. The book I hope to write on the topic will analyze a variety of quantitative data and build on in-depth interviews with more than 90 EU policy-makers, translators, and interpreters. In addition, I am working on a series of articles on legislative decision-making, the career paths of lawmakers, and policy-making networks.