Research

My research interests mainly lie in the field of political theory, though my work is sometimes either applied to or informed by other fields such as political science, public administration, behavioural economics, European affairs, or – more recently – political history. I am primarily interested in the following topics:

Democratic Theory

My most recent and on-going work primarily concerns the topics of digital democracy and democratic resilience. I am interested in a variety of questions regarding both, but primarily those related to conceptualization and institutional design. In regard to the former, and particularly in the context of the PERYCLES project, I address the idea of liquid democracy, also drawing on mainstream political science and computational social sciences, while in regard to democratic resilience, my work is partly informed by political history.

Voting and Electoral Policies

I am interested in studying a wide range of electoral institutions and have mainly worked on compulsory voting, voting rights, the democratic boundary problem, moral duties in voting, convenience voting (i.e. postal voting and e-voting), principles of electoral design, and voting markets.

Justice

My most recent work on justice explores various aspects of the recent theory of justice articulated by Ingrid Robeyns under the label of limitarianism. In the past I published papers on egalitarianism, prioritarianism, sufficientarianism, and Rawlsian contractualism, some of which were written as part of my doctoral thesis (which focused on rationality assumptions in theories of distributive justice). I’m still interested in new developments within these areas, but also in more applied areas, particularly concerning justice in public policies. I’ve also done some work in analysing values such as justice or fairness in applied contexts, e.g. to brain drain, the new public management approach or behavioural economics.

The Methodology of Political Theory

My main methodological interest is in the ideal/non-ideal theory debate. Partly in connection to this topic, however, I’m also interested in the question of feasibility, the structure of normative theories and inquiries, the role of conceptual analysis in normative theorizing, and other salient issues.