About
My research applies insights from cultural sociology to the study of politics, with a focus on radical-right mobilization in the United States and Europe. Specifically, I use observational survey data, survey experiments, and computational text analysis to investigate the attitudinal and discursive dimensions of the three core elements of radical politics: nationalism, populism, and authoritarianism. This work not only helps illuminate the contemporary crisis of democratic institutions but also engages with core sociological concerns: how collective identities are understood and activated, how they shape social exclusion and inter-group conflict, how the resulting cultural cleavages affect political change and relate to political polarization, and how elites mobilize popular support for their political projects. This substantive line of work is complemented by my methodological research on the use of relational survey methods for the measurement of cultural meanings and the application of computational methods to the analysis of political discourse.
Awards
- Louis Guttman Award for Outstanding Article, Israeli Sociological Society, 2023
- Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship (Article or Book Chapter) Award, Political Sociology Section, American Sociological Association, 2022
- Lenore Annenberg and Wallis Annenberg Fellow in Communication, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Science, Stanford University, 2018-19
- Distinguished Research Faculty Associate, Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University, 2013-14
Relevant Publications
- Bonikowski, B., Luo Y., & Stuhler O. (2022). Politics as Usual? Measuring Populism, Nationalism, and Authoritarianism in U.S. Presidential Campaigns (1952-2020) with Neural Language Models. Sociological Methods & Research 51(4), 1721-87.
- Bonikowski, B., Feinstein Y., & Bock S. (2021). The Partisan Sorting of ‘America’: How Nationalist Cleavages Shaped the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election. American Journal of Sociology 127(2), 492-561.
- Bonikowski, B. (2017). Ethno-nationalist Populism and the Mobilization of Collective Resentment. British Journal of Sociology. 68(S1), 181-213.