Across Western Europe and North America, immigration is a high-profile issue at the center of election campaigns. Yet, we do not know whether people are committed to their immigration preferences, and how that varies across people who support or oppose immigration. We address these questions with four original surveys from Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States. One key finding is that people with pro-immigration preferences are more civically engaged to support immigration.

This is coauthored work with Ryan Jablonski (London School of Economics) and Brigitte Seim (University of Minnesota).

What happens when an institution with a liberal reputation adopts more illiberal policies? Even though the European Union is known for promoting liberal values, it has increasingly adopted restrictive asylum policies. In this paper, we examine the effects of what we call "liberal value clash'' - institutions with a liberal reputation adopting policies that run counter to their values. Using a pre-registered video experiment, we show that factual information is only a small part to make voters aware of liberal value clash.

(co-authored with Mats Ahrenshop, Anthony Calacino and Hayley Pring)

Deliberative mini-publics are currently being employed throughout the world, and it has been well documented that women are less likely to exercise their voice in deliberation. Yet the advent of digital platforms that host discussions online could mitigate this gendergap, and make it easier to test theories about the design of deliberative institutions.

People are often willing to embrace rights-restricting policies if they are seen to provide security or restrain out-groups. Such policies are typically framed as security benefits. What happens when the public is prompted to consider the costs of limiting human rights? Research in this field has rarely tested public responsiveness to an explicit defense of human rights. To shed new light on this, we address two related questions: What arguments can strengthen support for human rights of others?

Bob Seely MBE is a Conservative Party politician who served as the MP for the Isle of Wight from 2017 until 2024. He is a former journalist and soldier. From 1990 to 1995, he worked as a foreign correspondent in the USSR and in post-Soviet states. From 2008 to 2017, he served in the British Armed Forces on the Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and ISIS campaigns.