I am a  political scientist. I study the international and comparative politics of advanced industrialized countries, especially Europe. My intellectual agenda is driven by the puzzle of policy variance: Why and when do societies respond differently to the same basic challenge and what can we learn from such variance? Under what circumstances do communities and governments learn from one another? How do rules travel across geographic boundaries? In what ways do societies adapt rules to their own needs--and how in turn, do rules transform  societies? Who are the main agents of rule transfer: governments or societal actors? As an expert in European integration, I am equally curious about the forces that guide supranational policy convergence and innovation as I am about persistent divergence of policies and institutions at the local and national level. I am the author of Building States without Society: European Union Enlargement and Social Policy Transfer to Poland and Hungary (Lexington, 2007).

Work in progress:

• Politics of Childbirth

In this book-length project, I examine policy divergence in maternal health in OECD countries. I analyze contestation over knowledge and authority by focusing on something as allegedly settled as the matter of birthing babies.As a political scientist, I situate cultural differences and medical discourse construction within the context of state structures, historical contingency, and political agency. I highlight political and economic incentives and constraints resulting from health care financing, medical malpractice law, and professional accreditation of obstetricians and midwives. Likewise, I look at the interactions between professional lobbies and grassroots coalitions in the contestation over where women give birth and whose knowledge will guide them.

• Weak States, Weak Societies:

I explore the persistent link between institutional performance and organized civil society in EU member states and the former Soviet Union. Far from constituting a zero-sum game between society and the state, civil society and institutions tend to be positively correlated. Countries that have strong government institutions also benefit from an active and engaged citizenry, whereas countries with weak administrative capacity tend to lack societal structures that could perform important government functions.

•  Transnational Politics: 

  I am interested in empirically investigating claims about transnational activism.  I use social network analysis to better understand Europe's policy networks as spaces of rule transfer and contestation. Two questions about transnational networks interest me in particular: first, whether states continue to act as gatekeepers between organizations, and second, whether territorial boundaries divide network interactions. I further investigate how the tactics of nonstate actors shift depending on their targets, ranging from direct confrontation to mainstream lobbying.