Research

My current and past lines of research are as follows:

• Trade policy:

  • • what explains power in international trade negotiations? I got funding for this project, entitled TRADEPOWER, from the European Research Council.

• • what explains the scope and design of regional trade agreements (with Manfred Elsig and Leonardo Baccini)? We coded more than 600 preferential trade agreements along a coding scheme encompassing 10 broad sectors. For an overview of this project, see here and here. See some maps here that rely on our data.

  • what explains the recent spread of regional trade agreements known as the "new regionalism" (with Leonardo Baccini)? See the paper in the British Journal of Political Science (2012).

  • what are the determinants of EU trade policy-making?

  • why have we seen trade liberalization in the transatlantic area? See my book with Cornell University Press (2010).

• Shaping public opinion

  • • can interest groups change public attitudes on specific issues?

• • how can we explain public opinion on trade (with Bernd Schlipphak)?

  • do international institutions have an impact on public opinion? If yes, which and under which circumstances?

• Interest groups:

• • how influential are interest groups in the EU (with Patrick Bernhagen and David Marshall)? This project started in fall 2011 and is part of INTEREURO. The project description can be found here. And here is a video giving some insights to the overall INTEREURO projec.

  • what explains the strategies that interest groups use in pursuing their aims? Which (national-level) interest groups lobby on EU legislation (with Gemma Mateo)? We carried out surveys among associations in Austria, Germany, Ireland, Latvia, and Spain. Find more information on this project here. We also looked at the campaigns regarding ACTA, the post-Kyoto negotiations and the fiscal compact. The main results of this research are included in our book with Oxford University Press (2016).

• International negotiations:

• • why do some political parties support referendums on international treaties while others oppose them (with Gemma Mateo and Nikitas Konstantinidis)?

    • A paper on this was published in Comparative Political Studies (March 2011) and a second paper in Political Science Research & Methods (2013)

    • what explains the efficiency of international negotiations?

    • what are the determinants of negotiation strategies? See the articles in the Journal of Common Market Studies (2010) and the Journal of European Public Policy (2010).