Melis Laebens received her PhD in Political Science from Yale University in 2020. Before that, she obtained BA degrees in Economics and in Political Science and International Relations from Bogaziçi University in Istanbul, Turkey. She was a Postdoctoral Prize Fellow in Politics at Nuffield College (University of Oxford) between 2020-2023. Since 2023, Melis is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the Central European University in Vienna (full time) and has a part-time position as Assistant Professor in IFiS PAN.
Her research centers on democratic backsliding, political parties and electoral behavior, and spans several regions. Much of her research focuses on the role of ruling parties in enabling or hampering executive aggrandizement, particularly in Turkey, Poland and Ecuador. She is also leading an NCN SONATA project – entitled “Electoral Dynamics During Democratic Backsliding: Parties, Voters and Changing Lines of Conflict” – which investigates how parties’ policy positions and voters’ preferences on salient issues are transformed over the course of regime contestation in Poland and Turkey. In addition, she has several ongoing projects investigating political attitudes and voting behavior in Turkey.
Research interests: Comparative politics, political parties, democratic backsliding
Contact: [email protected]
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2023-9177
ResearchGate/Academia/Linkedin: https://ceu.academia.edu/MelisLaebens
Selected publications:
Laebens, M. G., & Öztürk, A. (2022). The Erdogan government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic: Performance and actuality in an authoritarian context. Government and Opposition. DOI: 10.1017/gov.2022.16
Laebens, M. G., & Lührmann A. (2021). What halts democratic erosion? The changing role of accountability. Democratization 28(5): 908-928. DOI: 10.1080/13510347.2021.1897109.
Laebens, M. G., & Öztürk, A. (2021). Partisanship and autocratization: Polarization, power asymmetry, and partisan social identities in Turkey. Comparative Political Studies 54(2): 245-279. DOI: 10.1177/0010414020926199.