Luigi Marini

Stipendiary Lecturer in Politics

Teaching

I teach comparative politics, focusing on causal theories and empirical evidence in the study of political structures and institutions, attitudes and behaviours. Specifically, at Univ, I teach the first-year course Introduction to the Practice of Politics and the second-year core courses in Comparative Government and Political Sociology, as well as further options on Politics in Europe, to undergraduate students doing Philosophy, Politics and Economics and History and Politics degrees. I have also previously taught the politics of the European Union and quantitative methods in politics and sociology.

Research

My research focuses on political representation and party competition, particularly in spatial terms, and on the role of social divisions and structure in politics. I have been studying changes in the policy platforms and ideological programs of political parties, social cleavages, and partisan alignments of political parties and voters. I am also interested more broadly in questions on electoral politics and voting behaviour, electoral systems and electoral reform, democracy and state formation. My work focuses on advanced industrial democracies, in both their contemporary and historical developments, with particular attention to Western Europe, and I primarily use quantitative methods.