Research Blog
April 10, 2025
We have excellent news! Sophia and I were granted a SDSC grant to study political advocacy! This is such a wonderful opportunity to continue our long-standing […]
October 20, 2024
We have received an SNF grant to study political performance of Swiss members of the parliament from the SNF! Check out our SNF-project site here: https://data.snf.ch/grants/grant/10003190 […]
June 4, 2024
I’ve taken a position as a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Department of Political Science at the University of Zürich. I’m so excited to move to the […]
February 6, 2023
This week I attended the Swiss Political Science Association Annual Conference at the University of Basel. I love this conference. It's small, friendly and full of engaging people.
This year, I presented a first look at our paper on issue engagement in the Swiss parliament. In this paper we're trying to show which issues the Swiss parliament has dealt with over the past 130 years.
March 14, 2022
Ever wonder how national policies move through parliament?
The Swiss parliament knows several different instruments to enact political change. I generally refer to these instruments as bills (dt. Geschäfte). The term "bill" is not quite correct, other researchers call them legislative drafts, legislative proposals, businesses etc.. I prefer to call them bills because it keeps things simple.
In this blogpost I present 9 types of bills and how they move through the parliament.
February 21, 2022
The link between political systems and the structure of policy networks has received little attention in the policy studies literature.
But the way the political system is set up can have deep impacts on how actors embedded in it engage with each other.
In this article we examine power structures and interaction patterns between policy actors.
May 17, 2021
One of our main sources of parliamentary activities are the Übersicht der Verhandlungen --- the so-called summary documents. These documents were published for every parliamentary session and listed all the bills (all types!) that the parliament was currently dealing with.
April 27, 2021
Our DemocraSci project builds on three data sources:
(1) The Amtliches Bulletin, containing word protocols/proceedings from both chambers.
(2) Summary of Proceedings, containing an overview over all discussed/submitted bills (dt. Geschäfte).
(3) Additional Protocols, containing additional word protocols from sessions recorded between 1921 and 1970.