I study what citizens want from the European Union — and what happens to politics when those wants collide. Five keywords cover most of it: European integration, free movement, solidarity, climate change, and public opinion. I work with comparative survey data, survey experiments, and quantitative text analysis.
European solidarity
Who is willing to share risks with citizens of other member states, and under what conditions? I have worked on both halves of that question: what drives support for supranational solidarity, and what that support does to political competition once it enters the electoral arena.
The short answer to the second half is that it matters more than we assumed. Preferences over European solidarity do not simply map onto the old left-right axis — they structure a dimension of their own, and they move votes. In the 2019 European Parliament elections, positions on solidarity predicted vote choice independently of the standard cleavages (European Union Politics), and after the polycrisis this dimension has become a stable feature of EU political competition (Journal of Common Market Studies).
I have also looked at what citizens actually know about Europe’s redistributive machinery: awareness of Cohesion Funds turns out to be unevenly distributed in ways that track individual power resources, with consequences for EU support (Journal of European Social Policy).
Free movement and its two faces
Free movement is usually studied from the receiving end. I have worked on both ends, because they generate different politics.
Entering. Transnational experience — having lived, worked, studied, or built ties across borders — changes people. It raises engagement with European politics (Electoral Studies) and shifts voting behaviour (Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties). But the effect on solidarity is not the uncomplicated cosmopolitan story one might expect (Journal of European Public Policy).
Leaving. The countries people leave have a politics of their own, and it is badly understudied. I have examined how concern about emigration relates to demand for national and European social investment (International Migration Review), how it interacts with political trust, and how it translates into vote choice once parties decide to politicise it (Government & Opposition).
Climate politics
My current work asks how climate change becomes a partisan issue and what citizens are prepared to give up for the transition.
The trade-offs are the interesting part. Support for the green transition is not a single preference: growth, ecological sustainability, and equity pull in different directions, and citizens resolve the tension in patterned ways (European Journal of Political Research). The Russian invasion of Ukraine offered a natural test of how quickly energy and compensation preferences reorganise under pressure (Journal of European Public Policy).
On the Italian case, I co-edited a special issue on the politicisation of climate change (Italian Political Science), and I am currently working on a cross-national survey — which I helped design — measuring support for eco-social policies through a survey experiment.
Earlier work: representation and agendas
Before turning to the EU, I worked on the domestic side of the same question: whether the priorities of the public reach the legislative agenda. That research looked at policy priorities in the Italian parliament (Italian Political Science Review) and at government agenda-setting in coalition governments (Rivista Italiana di Politiche Pubbliche).
A full list is on the publications page, or on Google Scholar.