Daniel Saldivia Gonzatti

Political scientist, WZB Berlin Social Science Center & FU Berlin

I am a political scientist with a focus on comparative politics and political sociology, and specialize in quantitative social science. I work as a post-doctoral Research Fellow at the Center for Civil Society Research, a joint initiative of the WZB Berlin Social Science Center and the Institute of Sociology at the Freie Universität Berlin.

Previous to joining the WZB, I was a member of the Cologne Center for Comparative Politics at the University of Cologne (2017-2021), where I obtained my PhD in Political Science in 2022. I was a Visiting Scholar at PERIL at American University (2023) in Washington, DC and a Research Student Resident at Universidad Nacional de San Martín (2016) in Buenos Aires.

My research has been published in the British Journal of Political Science, Political Communication, Journal of European Public Policy, and Public Administration Review. I regularly communicate with civil society actors, politicians and policy-makers about my research. I have contributed with expert inputs to various media outlets, such as The New York Times, WIRED, ZDF heute journal, ZEIT Online, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, taz, and O Globo.

📄 Check my CV here.

Research & Teaching

My research agenda centres on comparative political institutions focusing on parliamentary, territorial and party politics and on political sociology, more specifically contentious politics.

My comparative politics agenda focuses on political causes of decentralisation, multi-level party politics and territorial politics, which were part of my doctoral thesis. I have further engaged in large data infrastructure on multi-level systems and cross-level data (http://multi-level-cross-level-politics.eu/), forthcoming in the British Journal of Political Science. I am also interested in parliamentary dynamics in presidentialism. Together with Jan Schwalbach (GESIS), I am working on a project on comparative parliamentary speeches from seven Latin American democracies.

My second research strand relates to contentious politics from a politico-sociological perspective. I was a post-doctoral researcher at the WZB ProtestMonitoring project (2021-2024) studying protest dynamics and effects in Germany and specialised on anti-containment, far-right and environmental mobilisation. Within the project, I investigated far-right discourses and agenda-setting in German public debates; this work has been published in Political Communication.

Publications

Peer-Reviewed Publications

[5] Saldivia Gonzatti & Völker. 2025. Far-Right Agenda Setting: How the Far Right influences the Political Mainstream; European Journal of Political Research, forthcoming.
Replication

[4] Röth, Saldivia Gonzatti, Kaftan & Kaiser. 2025. Studying Multi-Level Systems with Cross-Level Data. Introducing Three Integrated Data Sets; British Journal of Political Science, 55:e19.
DOI | Replication | Data | Data Portal: http://multi-level-cross-level-politics.eu/ | Github Collaboration

[3] Grande & Saldivia Gonzatti. 2025. A Revolt of the Distrustful? Political Trust, Political Protest and the Democratic Deficit; Journal of European Public Policy, online first.
DOI | Replication
Coverage in the FAZ and the SZ

[2] Völker & Saldivia Gonzatti. 2024. Discourse Networks of the Far Right: How Far-Right Actors Become Mainstream in Public Debates; Political Communication, 41(3), 353–372.
DOI | Replication
Coverage in the KATAPULT print magazin

[1] Varela Castro, Bustos & Saldivia Gonzatti. 2023. Reputation Management during a Public Health Crisis: Overcompensating When All Else Fails; Public Administration Review 83(5), 1234–1245.
DOI | Replication | ResearchGate

Data

[1] WZB ProtestMonitoring 1950-2023; WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
Cite as: Hutter, Hunger, Saldivia Gonzatti & Schürmann. Forthcoming. WZB.

[2] Regionally Disaggregated Country Elections dataset (RD|CED)
[3] Regional Elections dataset (RED)
[4] Regional Party-System dataset (RPSD)
Cite as: Röth, Saldivia Gonzatti, Kaftan & Kaiser. 2025. BJPols, 55:e19.
Data | Data Portal: http://multi-level-cross-level-politics.eu/ | Github Collaboration

Working Papers

<Title hidden for review> - Resubmitted to the Journal of European Public Policy
<Title hidden for review> - R&R at Journal of Peace Research; with Hunger, Hutter, Kanol
<Title hidden for review> - Under Review at the European Journal of Political Research ; with Schürmann, Hunger, Hutter

Other Publications - Selection

Saldivia Gonzatti & Hutter. 2024. Do climate protests matter? The political potentials of climate mobilisation for a progressive agenda; Research Brief Series 2: The Political Viability of Climate Policies, Progressive Politics Research Network (PPRNet), Nuffield College, Oxford.
Röth, Kaftan & Saldivia Gonzatti. 2024. Optimized Dictionaries: A Semi-Automated Workflow of Concept Identification in Text-Data; Social Science Open Access Repository.
Grande & Saldivia Gonzatti. 2024. Die Vertrauenslücke. Wachsendes Misstrauen als Gefahr für die Demokratie; WZB-Mitteilungen 183, 10-14.
Saldivia Gonzatti, Hunger & Hutter. 2023. Environmental Protest Effects on Public Opinion: Experimental Evidence from Germany (Analysebericht); Open Science Foundation (pre-print).
Prominent coverage in ZEIT Online and NZZ
Siebler, Schmidt, Schürmann & Saldivia Gonzatti. 2023. Five Years of 'Fridays for Future': But What Future is There Now for the Movement; The Loop. A Political Science Blog from ECPR.
Hunger, Völker & Saldivia Gonzatti. 2021. Der Verlust der Vielfalt. Die Corona-Proteste in Deutschland werden durch eine radikale Minderheit geprägt; WZB-Mitteilungen 172, 30-32.

Contact

@Center for Civil Society Research, WZB Berlin Social Science Center

@Political Sociology Group, Freie Universiät Berlin