I’m Lennart, a comparative political scientist studying the relationship between citizens — their attitudes, voting, and protest behaviour — and political elites — their communication and actions in parliament and on social media. My research is located at the intersection of political behavior and political representation. I study how citizens can shape politics and how political elites respond. A particular focus of my work is street mobilization as a tool for citizens to influence political decision-making beyond elections.

In my current project, “Empowering Voices Beyond Ballots? Representative Claims by Non-Elected Actors”, I investigate how activists and movements claim to to represent others (e.g., future generations, “the true people”, or even nature), how these claims are perceived by citizens, and what this means for democratic institutions. To that end, I combine large-scale video/text analysis, survey experiments and computational methods.

I am currently a Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute and a PRIME Fellow at the Freie Universität Berlin/WZB Berlin Social Science Center. Previously, I was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies at Harvard University and at WZB’s Center for Civil Society Research. I hold a PhD in Political Science from the University of Cologne, where I wrote a dissertation on Political Representation and Protest Politics in European Democracies. During my doctoral studies, I was also a visiting researcher at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, and the University of Amsterdam.

My work appeared in the British Journal of Political Science, European Journal of Political Research, Electoral Studies, Legislative Studies Quarterly, Social Movement Studies and the Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties among others. I regularly contribute to public debates on the political effects of protests and have provided expert commentary for media outlets including Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Tagesschau (ARD), taz-die tageszeitung, and Frankfurter Rundschau.

I am broadly interested in how citizens and elites negotiate democratic representation in times of social and political transformation.

Research & Teaching Interests

Topics: Political Behavior · Party Politics · Electoral Systems · Representative Democracy · European Politics

Methods: Computational Social Sciences · Quantitative Methods · Causal Inference · Research Design

Check my CV here.