Pola Lehmann

Pola Lehmann is a Research Fellow at the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung (WZB), affiliated with the Center for Civil Society Research. She co-leads the Manifesto Project, a cross-national initiative analyzing election manifestos in over 60 countries to study party preferences and political representation. Her work bridges political science, public administration, and computational text analysis, focusing on democratic accountability and electoral dynamics.

Education:

• Studied Public Administration at the University of Potsdam and the University of Copenhagen
• Ph.D. from Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (2021 Leibniz Dissertation Prize recipient)

Research Themes: Lehmann’s research integrates automated text analysis with empirical studies on political representation, party systems, and electoral behavior. She examines discrepancies between electoral promises and parliamentary actions, particularly in the German Bundestag, and explores how populist parties like the AfD frame their agendas during crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

Projects: Key initiatives include the Manifesto Project (tracking party positions globally), Observatory of Political Texts in European Democracies (OPTED), and The Best of Both Worlds (combining human and machine coding for precision). Her work also addresses the legitimacy of direct democracy and class-based inequalities in representation.

Scientific Awards:

• Leibniz Dissertation Prize (2021)

Collaborations: Lehmann frequently collaborates with researchers like Theres Matthieß, Sven Regel, and Henrike Schultze, contributing to interdisciplinary studies in political science. Her publications highlight methodological innovations in manifesto analysis and empirical evaluations of party-citizen congruence.