1. Political Experience, Political Performance, and Post-Executive Careers of European Prime Ministers (with Ferdinand Müller-Rommel, Leuphana University Lüneburg, and Fortunato Musella, University of Naples Federico II) This project aims to find how prime ministerial career background affects post-executive career paths of prime ministers in Europe. Particular attention is paid to prime ministerial policy performance in office as both dependent and independent variable, linking pre- and post-executive careers. The investigation is based on a large cross-sectional and longitudinal dataset as well as on qualitative case studies.
2. Varieties of Partisanship among Chief Executives (with Marcelo Camerlo, ICS-University of Lisbon) This project develops a new classification of chief executives in liberal democracies from a global perspective. The classification is based on the type - resulting from different dimensions - of partisanship and provides a fine-grained picture of varieties of chief executives-parties relantionship, so far absent in the specialized literature. The explanatory part looks at the causes of the observed variation and the impact of the type of partisanship on the performance of chief executives in office.
3. The Gendered Facet of the Italian Executive in Comparative Perspective (with Pamela Pansardi, University of Pavia) This project puts the first woman-led cabinet in Italy in context, comparing it with other cabinets led by women in Europe over time. It looks at the internal organization of the cabinet and explains cross-national similarities and divergences from a gendered perspective, focusing on the interaction between gender and ideology in different countries.