People
Co-Founders
Peter Mair † was Professor of Comparative Politics at the European University Institute, and was Head of the Department of Political and Social Sciences from 2007 to 2010. He previously held the Chair of Comparative Politics at Leiden University in the Netherlands, where he was later Honourary Professor. Since 2001 until 2011 he was co-editor of West European Politics. He published extensively in the field of comparative European politics.
Luciano Bardi is Full Professor of Political Science at the University of Pisa, where he teaches courses in Comparative Politics, European Union Politics, and International Relations. He is also Chair of the Executive Committee of the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR). He has published extensively in the field of Comparative European Politics and on EU Parties and Party System.
Advisory Committee
The OPPR Observatory has an Advisory Committee, its members are all international experts on European party politics: Ingrid van Biezen (Leiden University), Zsolt Enyedi (Central European University), David Farrell (University College Dublin), Simon Hix (London School of Economics), Laura Morales (University of Manchester), Thomas Poguntke (University of Düsseldorf), Tapio Raunio (Tampere University), and Aleks Szczerbiak (University of Sussex).
Coordination
Enrico Calossi obtained his PhD in Political Systems and Institutional Change at IMT-Lucca in 2009. He worked as an external collaborator for the project on "Developing a trans-national party system in Europe". Its main research interests are Italian political system, Europarties, and political corruption. He is al post-doc Research Fellow at Pisa University. Contact: enrico.calossi@eui.eu
Researchers
Edoardo Bressanelli is doctoral researcher at the EUI, where he is writing a thesis on the impact of enlargement on the institutionalization of the Euro-parties. He authored, among other publications, one chapter of the OPPR Report on the development of a trans-national party system. Contact: edoardo.bressanelli@eui.eu
Wojciech Gagatek defended his PhD at the EUI in 2008. His thesis was on the organization of political parties at EU level. He is currently based in the Centre for Europe at the University of Warsaw, but continues to be extensively involved with OPPR activities. He has edited an e-book on the 2009 European Parliament elections in all 27 member states, and was Team Leader for Poland in the EU profiler project. He has been developing an extensive network of contacts between OPPR and Europarty organisations, with a view to future opportunities for joint collaboration. Contact: wojciech.gagatek@eui.eu
Eugenio Pizzimenti is researcher at the University of Pisa and visiting fellow at the RSCAS. He was involved in data collection for the project on "Developing a transnational party system in Europe", funded by the EU Parliament. His research interests focus on European political parties. Contact: eugenio.pizzimenti@sp.unipi.it .
Other Fellows and Doctoral Researchers
OPPR also promotes doctoral training in political science, with several EUI researchers and alumni actively involved in its research and organisational activities (details below).
Fernand Braudel Senior Fellows 2010-2011
Fernand Braudel Fellows are mid-career and senior academics visiting the EUI for a period of several months.
They have no formal teaching responsibilities but may participate in seminars and can give occasional advice to doctoral researchers in their specialised fields.
Amie KREPPEL (University of Florida)
Period of stay: Jan-Jun 2011
Research theme: Legislatures and Political Institutions, Political Systems
Tel.[+39] 055 4685 409, Int. 2409
Office: Badia Fiesolana, BF195
Amie Kreppel is a Jean Monnet Chair (ad personam) and serves as Director of the University of Florida's Title VI funded Center for European Studies (CES) and the European Union funded Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence. She is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science. Dr. Kreppel has written extensively on the political institutions of Europe in general and the European Union more specifically. Her publications include a book on the Development of the European Parliament and Supranational Party System, published by Cambridge UP (2002) as well as articles in a wide variety of journals including Comparative Political Studies, the British Journal of Political Research, European Union Politics, the European Journal of Political Research, Political Research Quarterly, the Journal of European Public Policy and the Journal of Common Market Studies. Dr. Kreppel is a founding member of the transatlantic European Parliament Research Group (EPRG) and was a Public Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington DC. In addition, she has served as international visiting faculty at the Université Louis Pasteur (ULP), Strasbourg, France, the Institute für Höhere Studien (Institute for Advanced Studies), Vienna, Austria, and the Institut d'Etudes Européennes, Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Brussels, Belgium. She currently sits on the Executive Committee of the Conference Group on Italian Politics, the European Politics and Society section of the American Political Science Association and the European Union Studies Association. She has received numerous grants to pursue research and program development related to Europe and the European Union including a MacArthur Fellowship, a grant from the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, two internal research grants form the University of Florida and Title Vla (UISFLP) and Title VI grants form the US Department of Education, as well as several grants from the European Union.
Max Weber Fellows
The Max Weber Fellows are part of a programme financed by the European Commission. They are post-doctoral researchers spending one or two years at the Institute, a number of whom are affiliated with the Department of Political and Social Sciences.
Kyriaki NANOU's Research themes: comparative politics, inluding elections and parties within Europe; The governance of the European Union; Europeanisation and democratic deficit; Quantitative and qualitative research methods; Rational choice theory and political economy.
Galina ZAPRYANOVA's Research themes: political behaviour and party; determinants of attitudes towards the European Union in the new Member States, esp. the interplay between domestic and EU-level factors.
Ongoing PhD Researchers
Baiba Baltvilka 's project is "National Political Parties and Europeanization: A New Threat for the Former?". Contact: baiba.baltvilka@eui.eu
Edoardo Bressanelli is an EUI doctoral researcher whose thesis looks at the impact of the most recent wave of European enlargement on the functioning of the European Parliament. Edoardo is also interested in the prospects for a transnational party system, and the development of party organisations at EU level. He was Team Leader for Italy in the EU Profiler project. Contact: edoardo.bressanelli@eui.eu
Angelos Chryssogelos 's project is "'Party Systems and Foreign Policy Change: A Comparative Analysis of Cases of Party-Based Contestation of Foreign Policy". Contact: Angelos-Stylianos.Chryssogelos@eui.eu
Jorge Fernandes is a doctoral researcher at the EUI, currently working on a dissertation whose aim is to analyse the impact of the nature of government, especially coalitions, in the organization of the legislative branch. His main research interests are parliaments, executive-legislative relations and political parties. Contact: jorge.fernandes@eui.eu
Caterina Froio 's project is a comparative study on the influence of partisan preferences on governmental activity in 9 countries for the period 1980-2008. Instead of exploring the “Do parties matter?” question by focusing on the link between partisan preferences and policies implemented, this thesis focuses on the influence of partisan preferences on governmental activity. The main question that this dissertation would address is the following: To what extend partisan preferences influence governmental activity? In other words, to what extend partisan preferences are accommodated into the governmental agenda?
Caterina’s research interest includes political parties, party systems, far-right parties, public policy and democratic theory. She is working as research assistant in the Comparative Agendas Project. Contact: caterina.froio@eui.eu
Josef Hien is a doctoral researcher whose thesis explores how different societal groups reacted and adapted to the advent of industrialized capitalism and its recurrent crisis. This is investigated through an ideational study of the evolution of Catholic Social teaching and the role it played in the formation of the Continental-Conservative welfare regimes in Europe. By doing so the thesis will also shed light on the socio-economic foundations of Christian Democracy, one of the most influential political movements in Continental Europe throughout the past seventy years. Hien has a special interest in the fields of Comparative Political Economy, Party Politics, Welfare State, Collective Action and Institutional Theory. Contact: josef.hien@eui.eu
Conor Little's PhD project at the EUI is a comparative study of Green parties in government coalitions. It measures the policy, office and electoral outcomes of these parties, and seeks to specify the role of party attributes and party strategies in causing these outcomes. With colleagues at the EUI and the Univeristy of Bremen, he is working on a collaborative project on ministerial careers. He was the team leader for Ireland during the EU Profiler project. Contact: conor.little@eui.eu
Mathieu Petithomme 's project is "The Europeanization of National Party Politics". Contact: mathieu.petithomme@eui.eu
David Willumsen is a doctoral researcher at the EUI. His thesis explores the attitudes of parliamentarians towards legislative voting unity. This is investigated through the analysis of both cross-country and across-time parliamentary surveys, as well as through case-studies of individual countries. This research will allow us to understand why parliamentarians accept 'toeing the party line' most of the time, as well as the conditions under which they refuse to do so, despite the consequences. Contact: david.willumsen@eui.eu
Nearly Completed PhDs
Theresa Kuhn will defend her PhD thesis on 8 July 2011 and will take up a Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship at the University of Oxfordin September 2011. Her dissertation addresses the impact of individual transnational networks and interactions on political support for European integration using multilevel analysis of survey data. Theresa's broader research interests revolve around political sociology, cleavages, social identity formation, cosmopolitanism and globalisation. Theresa served as the Austrian team leader for the EU profiler project. Contact: Theresa.Kuhn@eui.eu
Completed PhDs
Fernando Casal Bertoa defended his dissertation "A Tale of Four Systems. Party Institutionalization and its Sources: the Development of a Concept and its Empirical Application to East Central European Democracies". He also studied Law at the University of Pamplona (Spain) and Political Science at the University of Salamanca (Spain). He specialized in Eastern and Central European Studies at the Jagiellonian University (Poland). His research interests are party system formation and development, democratic consolidation and the functioning of democracy in new democracies, especially in post-communist Eastern Europe. Contact: f.casal.bertoa@fsw.leidenuniv.nl
Evelyne Hübscher’s research interests are in comparative politics, party politics, social policy and labor market reforms. Her Ph.D. thesis theoretically establishes and empirically examines how party governments position themselves in a two-dimensional policy space when facing economic and budgetary pressure to reform social policies. Her current research focuses on the party preferences and voting behavior of different groups in the labor market on the one hand, and impact of political and institutional constraints on welfare state reforms and their consequences for labor market inequalities on the other hand. Evelyne Hübscher is an assistant professor at the Central European University in Budapest. Contact: HuebscherE@ceu.hu
Nikoleta Yordanova 's research covers the study of European legislative politics, political parties (especially in Central and Eastern Europe), political economy of reforms, and regulation. Also, her PhD thesis recently won the European Union Studies Association (EUSA) Prize for Best Dissertation for the period 2009 - 2011 and the François Mény Prize in recognition of the best comparative thesis on Political Institutions defended at the EUI between 1 May and 31 December 2010. Her thesis has also been short-listed for the Jean Blondel PhD Prize for best thesis in politics defended in 2010 (winner expected to be announced in late July, 2011). Contact: nikoleta.yordanova@eui.eu