Mirko Wegemann

I am a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Political Science, situated at the University of Muenster in Germany. Previously, I was a PhD Researcher at the Department of Social and Political Sciences at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. I did a research stay at the DYNAMICS Research Training Group in Berlin, and a teaching assignment at the Department of Government at the University of Vienna.

My main research interests lie in the field of comparative politics. Much of my work revolves around party competition in Western Europe, with a specific focus on challenger parties and their programmatic diversification. More recently, I have worked on other aspects of political behaviour such as gender and politics and citizens' perceptions of policy justifications. Methodologically, my empirical work is based on quantitative methods, computational text analysis and experimental research.

In my dissertation project, which is titled "Roads to the Establishment? How Challengers Become Mainstream." and supervised by Prof. Ellen M. Immergut, I analysed how challenger parties like the Greens and Radical Right evolve. More specifically, I investigated under which conditions they diversify their programmatic portfolio, when they approach new constituencies and how broadening their appeal may affect their electoral success.