معرفی
Inga Saikkonen is a Senior University Lecturer in the Faculty of Social Sciences, Business and Law at Åbo Akademi University, specializing in Social Sciences. Her research focuses on democratic resilience, political behavior, and non-programmatic electoral strategies such as clientelism and machine politics.
Her primary research interests include:
- Democracy and democratic norms
- Clientelism and partisanship
- Populism and voter behavior
- Authoritarian regimes and electoral manipulation
- Experimental political science methods
Recent publications highlight a strong trend in using conjoint experiments to study elite transgressions, youth political attitudes, and the interplay between supply-side and demand-side factors in populism. Her work frequently appears in top political science journals such as Political Research Quarterly, Political Studies, and Representation.
She has been involved in significant research projects funded by the Academy of Finland and the Research Council of Finland, including as Principal Investigator for the project Coordinating Machine Politics and Clientelism and Co-PI for Who will defend democracy?. She served as Editor-in-Chief of the journal Politics from 2023 to 2024 and has organized academic events like the WG: Experimental Political Science at the FPSA Annual Conference.
Her research contributes to the UN Sustainable Development Goals related to peace, justice, and strong institutions. She promotes open science by sharing replication data through Harvard Dataverse.
