Andreas started his PhD at UCL’s Department of Political Science in 2016, with an expected degree date in 2020.

Location: 101, 31 Tavistock Sq.
Website: Please visit Andreas' personal webpage for more details on his work.
Introduction
Andreas has started his PhD at UCL’s Department of Political Science in 2016, with an expected degree date in 2020. He is interested in questions related to ethnic power-sharing and the role of its underlying mode of group determination. In particular, he looks at differences between power-sharing institutions that explicitly rely on ethnic categories and those that use more flexible, liberal criteria. In his work, he investigates their impact on citizens' social identification, societal stability, and democratization. He has also done separate research on how populist parties influence democratic quality.
Besides his PhD studies at UCL, Andreas also holds a research associate post at University of Zurich (UZH), where he has had the chance to work on several projects related to issues of democratization, most notably related to power-sharing and populist actors. The most recent project at UZH of which he is a part of investigates the causes and effects of power-sharing in authoritarian states ("consociational oligarchies").
Andreas holds a Master of Arts in Comparative and International Studies from ETH Zurich and a Bachelor of Science in Geography from University of Zurich with Chinese as a minor. He has also done several study exchanges with Chinese universities, most recently studying Chinese in Guilin for one semester in 2019. Prior to joining UCL, he worked on several research projects in Zurich, including in Prof. Lars-Erik Cederman’s International Conflict Research group (where he worked on the collection and improvement of data regarding ethnic groups’access to power) and in Prof. Daniel Bochsler’s Democratization and Quality of Democracy group (where he worked on the effects of power-sharing on democracy and collected a large data-set on power-sharing rules and practices).
Research
Andreas’ research focuses on the impact of power-sharing on inter-ethnic relations. In particular, he is interested in how ethnically-based power-sharing institutions affect citizens’ perceptions and attitudes (most notably, the salience of ethnic identifications) as well as how they shape elite incentives (most notably the capabilities of ethnic minority politicians). He also asks whether liberal power-sharing institutions might be an institutional alternative that avoids some of the potential pitfalls of ethnically-based ones (in particular, tendencies of ethnic reification and resources given to ethnic entrepreneurs). In his dissertation project, he seeks to investigate these effects and asks what their ramifications are for conflict risks in divided societies. His supervisors are Prof. Kristin Bakke and Dr. Nils Metternich.
Methodologically, Andreas has a quantitative focus, seeking to estimate models that incorporate both time series and cross-sectional aspects of the problems he seeks to investigate. For this purpose, he is collecting a large dataset on constitutional power-sharing around the world since the second world war. However, he is very open to other methods as well, and is currently thinking about possibilities to further investigate potential issues of causality in a more in-depth qualitative case study as well.
PhD title:
Effectiveness vs. inclusiveness, short- vs. long-term? Testing the merits of corporate and liberal types of power-sharing
Research groups:
Conflict and Change
Publications:
2019, forthcoming
| «Minorities overlooked: Group-based power-sharing and the exclusion-amid-inclusion dilemma» International Political Science Review |
2019 | «Endogenous to conflict? The internal and external determinants of power-sharing» Working paper presented at: ▪ Conflict Research Society's Annual Conference 2019 in Brighton, UK (9.- 10.9.2019) |
2019 | «The impact of institutions on bargaining over ethnic autonomy: evidence from former socialist states» Working paper with Daniel Bochsler presented at: ▪ ECPR General Conference, Wroclaw (4.-7.9.2019) |
2019 | «Power-sharing and the quality of democracy» Working paper with Daniel Bochsler presented at: ▪ IPSA RC14 Conference in Sarajevo, Bosnia (12.-15.6.2019) |
2019 | «Inherently unstable or destabilized by devilish details? A re-examination of the relationship between group autonomy and secessionist conflict» Working paper presented at: ▪ IPSA RC14 Conference in Sarajevo, Bosnia (12.-15.6.2019) |
2019 | «Fresh breeze or hurricane? Disentangling the populist effect on the quality of democracy» Working paper with Daniel Bochsler |
2019 | «The included, the diminished, and the excluded: The uneven effects of ethnic power-sharing on the legitimacy of the political system» Working paper presented at: ▪ ISA Annual Convention in Toronto, Canada (27.3.2019) |
2018 | «Authoritarian footprints in Central and Eastern Europe» With Daniel Bochsler, under review |
2017 - 2018 | «Status Equalization, Reification, or Threat Alleviation: The Effects of Institutionalized Power-Sharing on Ethnic Salience» Working paper presented at: ▪ Jan Tinbergen European Peace Science Conference in The Hague, Netherlands (24.-26.6.2019) ▪ ISA Annual Convention in San Francisco, USA (4.-7.4.2018) ▪ PSA Ethnopolitics Workshop in Belfast, Northern Ireland (9.-10.11.2017) ▪ Conflict Research Society's Annual Conference 2017 in Oxford, UK (18.- 19.9.2017) |
2016 - 2018
| «The Two Faces of Power-Sharing» With Daniel Bochsler, under review; presented at: ▪ IPSA Joint Conference, Democratization and Constitutional Design in Divided Societies in Nicosia, Cyprus (24.-27.6.2017) ▪ Annual Conference of the Swiss Political Science Association in St. Gallen, Switzerland(11.-12.1.2017) |
Teaching Experience
09/2017 - 02/2018
| University College London Teaching Assistant (10%) ▪ introduction seminars on International Relations, Political Economy, Political Science |
02/2013 - 06/2014 | University of Zurich, Department of Geography Teaching Assistant (20%) ▪ undergraduate statistics (labs and homework assignments) ▪ undergraduate economic geography courses (co-teaching seminars) |