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In a main strand of research, I analyze how citizens‘ experiences of the socio-economy inform their political outlooks and behaviors. More concretely, this entails two substantive lines of research. Firstly, I look at how experiences at the workplace inform political orientations. Most of us spend most of their time at work: and yet we know little about how this shapes visions of society and politics beyond the global variables of occupational class and labor market status. Secondly, I analyze political feedback effects of welfare state reforms. Notably, I am interested in how citizens‘ personal experiences with policies and public institutions (re-)shape their normative outlooks on society and politics.
In pursuing these research questions, my focus is on the identification of mechanisms by innovatively combining qualitative with quantitative and (quasi-) experimental methods.
In my PhD dissertation, I have addressed a long-standing controversy about whether economic worries motivate the political behavior of so-called „losers of modernization“. To inductively explore this question, I have conducted 150 biographical interviews with Austrian and German citizens about employment trajectories, experiences of the labor market and of the welfare state, documenting how lived experiences of the socio-economy inform political preference formation.
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Research Presentations
2023/09 ESPAnet Conference, Warsaw
2023/09 ECSR Annual Conference, Prague
2023/09 Dreiländertagung | D-A-CH Congress (Austrian, German, Swiss Political Science Associations Conference), Linz
2023/09 ECPR General Conference, Prague
2023/07 Austrian Sociological Association (ÖGS) Conference, Vienna
2023/ 05 Annual CIVICA Political Behavior and Institutions (“PoBI”) Conference, Hertie School, Berlin
2023/04 ECPR Joint Sessions, Toulouse, Workshop on Moral Politics
2023/04 CEU Institute of Advanced Study & Democracy Institute, Budapest, Workshop on Historical Far-Right Revisionism & on Labor and the Far-Right
2023/03 Sciences Po Paris Centre for European Studies, Workshop on Deservingness Perceptions. Organized by Paulus Wagner, Selma Sarenkapa, Isabelle Guinaudeau
2023/03 European Graduate Network Conference at CEU Vienna
2022/10 UC Berkeley Center for Right-Wing Studies Virtual Working Group
2022/06 Sciences Po Paris Centre for European Studies, Workshop on Policy Feedback.
2022/04 European Graduate Network Conference at EUI, Florence
2021/11 Austrian Political Science Association (AuPSA) Conference, Salzburg
2021/10 Momentum Kongress, Hallstatt/ Austria
2021/10 Foundation of the German Economy (Stiftung der Deutschen Wirtschaft)
2020/12 Centre d’étude des mouvements sociaux, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (CEMS-EHESS), Seminar series “Empirical approaches in phenomenological sociology”. Co-organiser.
2019/09 American Political Science Association (APSA) Conference, Washington DC, Panel Populism and Privilege in German Politics
2019/04 Norwegian University Centre, Paris (at FSMH Paris) & Center for Research on Extremism (C-REX), University of Oslo, PhD workshop on qualitative methods in the study of the radical right
2019/04 Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Seminar Politiques publiques, développement et mondialisation dans les pays du Sud
2019/04 European Graduate Network Conference at London School of Economics
2019/04 Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Seminar Le développement et ses approches
2019/02 Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Séminaire doctoral « L’idée d’inégalité au croisement de la philosophie et des sciences sociales »
2018/11
Colloquium « Figures de la dé-démocratisation. Autoritarisme et populisme des nouveaux démagogues », Sciences Po Centre for International Studies (CERI). Assistant of conference organization
2018/06 ECPR Standing Group on Extremism & Democracy Summer School on “Concepts and Methods for Research on Far-Right Politics”, Scuola Normale Superiore
Paulus Wagner 