General orientation
My research interests lie at the intersection of intra-party politics, political communication, and political psychology with a focus on post-industrial democracies. Generally speaking, I seek to understand a) why political parties appeal to voters in the way that they do, b) the internal rationales, processes, and rifts involved in doing so, and c) voters’ conscious and subconscious reactions to parties’ communications. Methodologically, I approach these questions using both quantitative and qualitative methods.
In my current research, I seek to uncover why, how, and to what effect political parties appeal to the emotions of citizens in their election campaigns. The project brings together (1) a reconstruction of campaign strategies based on in-depth interviews with those centrally involved in campaign design, (2) an analysis of the appeals made in campaign communications (manifestos, Facebook posts, press releases, posters, speeches, ads), and (3) experiments employing both cognitive and physiological measurements to gauge how citizens emotionally and affectively process appeals.
Previous articles have examined in particular the contestation between political parties and their subnational units to gain analytical leverage on the question as to how intra-party politics relates to the alignments between parties and voters.
Peer-reviewed publications
Klingelhöfer, Tristan, Simon Richter, and Nicole Loew. 2024. “Changing Affective Alignments between Parties and Voters.” West European Politics Latest: 1–28. https://doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2023.2295735.
Klingelhöfer, Tristan, and Jochen Müller. 2024. “When Do Voters Perceive Intra-Party Conflict? A Democratic Life Cycle Perspective.” European Political Science Review 16 (2): 207–24. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1755773923000243.
Baumann, Markus, Marc Debus, and Tristan Klingelhöfer. 2017. “Keeping One’s Seat: The Competitiveness of MP Renomination in Mixed-Member Electoral Systems.” The Journal of Politics 79 (3): 979–94. https://doi.org/10.1086/690945.
Klingelhöfer, Tristan. 2016. “Ensuring Consistency across Levels? The Delegation Model of Multi-Level Party Politics and Spanish Framework Manifestos.” Party Politics 22 (4): 452–64. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354068814550431.
Klingelhöfer, Tristan, and Jochen Müller. 2015. “Consociational and Rational Coalitions: Norm-Based Government Formation and the Case of the Dutch Provinces.” Acta Politica 50 (1): 101–24. http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/ap.2013.36.
Invited publications
Faas, Thorsten, and Tristan Klingelhöfer. 2022. “German Politics at the Traffic Light: New Beginnings in the Election of 2021.” West European Politics 45 (7): 1506–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2022.2045783.
Faas, Thorsten, and Tristan Klingelhöfer. 2019. “The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same? The German Federal Election of 2017 and Its Consequences.” West European Politics 42 (4): 914–26. https://doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2018.1561079.
Klingelhöfer, Tristan. 2019. “Book Review: Parteienstaat – Parteiendemokratie [Party State – Party Democracy].“ German Politics 28 (1): 145–6. https://doi.org/10.1080/09644008.2018.1541623.
Klingelhöfer, Tristan. 2017. “Politische Rollenbilder [Political Role Orientations].” In Politische Orientierungen von Kommunalpolitikern im Vergleich [Political Orientations of Local Politicians in Comparison], edited by Markus Tausendpfund and Angelika Vetter, 255–95, Wiesbaden, Germany: Springer VS. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-658-16398-3_8.