I am an associate professor (UD1) of Comparative Political Behaviour at the Department of Political Science of the University of Amsterdam since 2023.

I completed my PhD at Leiden University (Netherlands, 2016), where I studied the perceived legitimacy of political authorities across democratic and non-democratic political systems. Broadly speaking, I am interested in explaining under what conditions citizens accept or contest different political entities: leaders, institutions, organizations, and decisions. I am an interdisciplinary scholar and I use (survey) experiments as my primary research tool.  

I hold an MA degree in International Relations (Eastern/Russian Studies) from Adam Mickiewicz University of Poznań (Poland, 2009), an MSc degree in Social Science Research Methods (Politics) from the University of Bristol (UK, 2011). I was a visiting scholar at the Department of Political Science of Aarhus University (Denmark, 2016). At Leiden University, I taught research methods (statistics, experimental designs, and interview methods), courses in comparative politics, crisis management, European integration, and international relations.

Main research objects and project:

Attitudes towards institutions of liberal democracy and transgressions of democratic rules: My main research agenda is to understand the role of citizens in democratic erosion and democratization. I tested if our attitudes towards liberal democracy change depending on who governs (they do). Currently I focus on the trade-offs between democratic values, partisanship, and policy preferences and their consequences for the stability of democratic and authoritarian regimes. I have conducted survey experiments in Poland, the Netherlands, and the USA.

Attitudes towards leaders: I am interested in how environmental conditions (e.g., stability vs. war, diversity vs. homogeneity, scarcity vs. abundance) affect our attitudes towards leaders. I use digitalized anthropological records to identify the pre-modern checks and balances on power: when and how small-scale societies controlled their leaders. In another project, using a survey experiment of Ukrainian citizens, we showed that war affects citizens’ preferences for leaders.

Perceived legitimacy of governments: In my PhD project I tested the effects of procedural fairness, distributive fairness, dependence, and personal gains on the level of legitimacy granted to governments by citizens in Russia, Ukraine, Netherlands, Poland, and France. Distributive fairness had the largest effect on legitimacy across countries.

Attitudes towards the EU and Russia: As a post-doctoral researcher in a large international team of the Horizon 2020 project EU-STRAT, I studied the attitudes of citizens of Ukraine, Moldova, and Belarus towards the EU and Russia. We also showed that conflict perceptions (beyond identity) affect the belief in and spread of misinformation about the adversary.

Attitudes towards armed humanitarian interventions: With collaborators, we researched what factors increase citizens’ support for interventions to save lives of people abroad. We showed that both legal approval by the UN Security Council and the probability of success impact citizens’ support.

Attitudes towards knowledge authorities and expert agencies: In a cross-country survey experiment, we researched different drivers of acceptance of advice issued by authorities (argument strength, issue seriousness, and populist attitudes). This study was conducted within the international project REACTOR based at Aarhus University. I also contributed to research investigating how reputation, expertise, and contestation of authority affect the legitimacy of the expert agencies of the European Commission (EMA and EFSA).

Funding:

My research was supported by grants from Leiden University Fund, Independent Research Fund Denmark, Dutch Science Foundation Open Competition XS grant, Global Transformations and Global Challenges Programme at Leiden University, and Challenges to Democratic Representation Research Group at the University of Amsterdam.

Inquiries:

If you would like to know more about my research and publications, feel free to contact me.

3230257LY: Political Psychology and Democracy: An Experimental Approach (Bachelor Research Project)

73220030LY: Core Module - Comparative Politics (BA Political Science)

75250034FY: Research Proposal Workshop (MRes Social Science)

7323A075LY: Politics and Human Nature (BA Political Science, elective)