Welcome!

I am Professor of Political Science at Goethe University Frankfurt and Co-Director of the Institute for Empirical-Analytical Research (InFER).

I am a comparativist. My research lies at the intersection of comparative political economy, welfare state research, public policy, and political sociology. I am fascinated by the interplay of education, welfare states, and politics as we witness the large-scale transformation towards the post-industrial knowledge economy. Most of my work has focused on understanding the politics of the knowledge economy.

Currently, I lead four research projects:

1) I study Ministries of Finance — their preferences, power, and policy impact — in a project funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). I aim to shed light on how MoFs as the "grey eminence" of politics shape social policy and political dynamics.

2) With a larger team I explore the Politics of the Latent Educational Cleavage (POLEDUC) - supported by an ERC Consolidator Grant (2 mio Euros). While much of my previous work has analyzed how politics shapes education (policy and education systems), I want to understand better in POLEDUC how and why education structures politics and society.

3) In a third project, as part of the DFG-funded research group Reconfiguration and Internalization of Social Structure (RISS), I study the "low-educated" to better understand their preferences, identities, and behavior — and the large (but overlooked) heterogeneity within this group.

4) Also as part of the RISS unit, Alexander Schmidt-Catran and I lead a project on migration and the welfare state, aiming to shed new theoretical and empirical light on this complex but extremely salient relationship. We study how objective facts and political discourses jointly shape perceptions, identities, and attitudes.

Bio (overview)

I hold a PhD from the University of Konstanz. Before joining Frankfurt, I was Senior Researcher at the University of Zurich, Visiting Scholar at Harvard University, Duke University, and at Rutgers, as well as a Max Weber Fellow at the EUI, Florence. While I was trained with a focus on the rich, established democracies, my research covers countries around the globe.

Publications (overview)

I have published five books & dozens of papers. My books are:

My dissertation on the Political Economy of Higher Education Finance (Palgrave) studies the politics of tuition fees and financial student aid in all rich democracies since 1945. It was the recipient of the German Political Science Association's (DVPW's) Best Dissertation Prize, the ESPAnet/JESP's Doctoral Researcher Prize, and shortlisted for the Deutscher Studienpreis.
In my second book, A Loud But Noisy Signal (Cambridge University Press), Marius Busemeyer, Erik Neimanns, and I study what citizens want when it comes to education policy -- and under what conditions public opinion matters for policy-making. The book was awarded the American Political Science Association's (APSA) Education Politics and Policy secions's best book award and shortlisted for the Stein Rokkan Prize.
In two new volumes with Oxford University Press, Silja Häusermann, Bruno Palier, and I explore the politics of welfare states in the knowledge economy - with a large team of more than 50 experts -, studying social investment reforms around the globe. (Link to WOPSI Volume I & WOPSI Volume II). Open Access version of Vol I here and Vol II here.
My most recent book, Kapitalismus: Zur Einführung, is a German-language introduction to comparative capitalism research. It takes a global perspective and offers insights into the different types of capitalism we find around the globe, their political causes, and socio-economic consequences.

Articles have appeared in Acta Sociologica, Comparative Political Studies (CPS), the European Journal of Political Research (EJPR), in the European Sociological Review (ESR), the Journal of European Social Policy (JESP), Governance, the Journal of European Public Policy (JEPP), the Journal of Legislative Studies (JLS), the Journal of Social Policy (JSP), Political Science Quarterly (PSQ), Political Science Research & Methods (PSRM), PS: Political Science and Politics (PS), Social Policy & Administration (SPA), and in West European Politics (WEP).

A paper on the Power of Oppositions was awarded the Swiss Political Science Association's (SVPW-ASSP) Best Paper Prize.

Service to the profession (overview)

I co-chair the CES' Political Economy and Welfare Research Network and the Politics of Education Network (PEN) and am a Board Member of RC19, the Research Committee on Poverty, Social Welfare, and Social Policy. Moreover, I am Co-Director (with Daniela Grunow) of InFER, the Institute for Empirical-Analytical Research, a leading social science institute based at Goethe University Frankfurt. I'm also the Academic Director of the Master program in Comparative Democracy.

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