Ph.D. Harvard, 2002
Welcome to my home page. I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Rochester.
My research interests include
political parties, party systems, elite and mass political behavior, political
institutions and elections in a comparative perspective. I also am
interested in issues of nationalism, ethnicity and citizenship, especially as
they relate to political organizations and parties. My primary regional specialization is in
I am currently working on
several projects.
Party Competition between Unequals
The first examines how
mainstream political party strategies shape – undermine and bolster
– the electoral success of niche parties and, as a result, their own
electoral fortunes. In this project, I
combine the development of modified spatial models of party interaction and
strategic choice with quantitative and case study analyses. Examination of the effect of mainstream party
strategy on green and radical right party support in Western Europe is
presented in “Competition Between Unequals: The Role of Mainstream Party
Strategy in Niche Party Success,” American
Political Science Review, August 2005.
In Party Competition between Unequals (Cambridge University Press,
2008), I examine the how and the why of mainstream party strategies towards
ethnoterritorial, green and radical right parties. The book also explores the issue-salience-
and issue-ownership-altering mechanisms behind the modified spatial tactics
drawing upon evidence from case studies of party interaction from advanced
industrial democracies. For more
information, see my publications
and working papers page.
Issue Salience, Issue Ownership and Issue-Based Vote
Choice
My second project looks at
the effects of these salience- and ownership-altering party strategies on voter
behavior. In an article co-authored with
Éric Bélanger of
The Causes and Consequences of Institutional Reform
In a third project, I am examining
the origins and effects of various institutional reforms. The first paper explores the origins of
compulsory voting laws; this paper co-authored with Gretchen Helmke proposes
and tests a strategic explanation of c.v. adoption. The second paper focuses on the adoption of
political decentralization and posits and tests a theory of decentralization as
an institutional strategy of appeasement by national political parties. The third paper explores the effect of
political decentralization on voter turnout in elections to the newly empowered
or created subnational governments and turnout to the weakened national
governments and posits that party identification mitigates the influence of
this power transfer on individual decisions to turn out. Subsequent papers will explore the effects of
decentralization on party organization and party fortunes at the sub-national
level. More information about these
specific papers can be found on my publications
and working papers page.
For more information about my work, please contact me at:
Bonnie M. Meguid C.V.