About

Philipp Rehm is a Professor of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University. He holds a Ph.D. from Duke University and has previously been a professor at Ohio State University. He also held the Postdoctoral Prize Research Fellowship at Nuffield College, Oxford University. His research interests are located at the intersection of Political Economy and Political Behavior, focusing on the causes and consequences of income dynamics, such as income loss, income volatility, and risk exposure. At the micro-level, his research explores how income dynamics shape individual preferences for redistribution, social policies, and parties. At the macro-level, he analyzes the impact of labor market and income dynamics on polarization, electoral majorities, and coalitions underpinning social policy in rich democracies. His work contributes to understanding how economic security and income mobility influence political attitudes and party support, especially in the context of advanced democracies. Rehm has authored books and numerous articles on topics including welfare state transformations, risk inequality, and political polarization, making significant contributions to the fields of Political Economy and Political Behavior.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Sociology
• Economics
• Computer Science
• Social Science
• Demographic economics
• Political economy
• Demography
• Public economics
• Economic growth
• Development economics
• Law
• Mathematics
• Econometrics
• Statistics
• Market economy

Selected publications

• Why No Left-Authoritarian Parties?

  Comparative Political Studies · 2026-05-14

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  The puzzle posed by the lack of viable parties in Western democracies in the left-authoritarian quadrant of a two-dimensional space likely has demand- as well as supply-side explanations. This paper focuses on the demand side and argues that left-authoritarian voters are internally divided by the extent to which they combine two distinct non-economic preferences: views on the socio-political order (libertarian vs. authoritarian) and views on immigration (cosmopolitan vs. nativist). Leftwing citizens holding the resulting three preference bundles – left-authoritarian-nativist, left-libertarian-nativist, and left-authoritarian-cosmopolitan – have distinct and predictable partisan leanings. This complicates party entry into the left-authoritarian quadrant. Furthermore, existing parties can try to preempt party entry by appealing to a subset of left-authoritarian citizens. Nevertheless, the lack of left-authoritarian parties is likely a fleeting historical phenomenon.

  PublisherDOI

• Replication Data for: Why no left-authoritarian parties?

  Harvard Dataverse · 2026-03-03

  datasetOpen accessSenior author

  The puzzle posed by the lack of viable parties in Western democracies in the left-authoritarian quadrant of a two-dimensional space likely has demand- as well as supply-side explanations. This paper focuses on the demand side and argues that left-authoritarian voters are internally divided by the extent to which they combine two distinct non-economic preferences: views on the socio-political order (libertarian vs. authoritarian) and views on immigration (cosmopolitan vs. nativist). Left-wing citizens holding the resulting three preference bundles – left-authoritarian-nativist, left-libertarian-nativist, and left-authoritarian-cosmopolitan – have distinct and predictable partisan leanings. This complicates party entry into the left-authoritarian quadrant. Furthermore, existing parties can try to preempt party entry by appealing to a subset of left-authoritarian citizens. Nevertheless, the lack of left-authoritarian parties is likely a fleeting historical phenomenon.

  PublisherDOI

• Die undemokratische Rede von der Volkssouveränität

  2025-03-06

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Der Einwurf, dass eine restriktive Asyl- und Migrationpolitik abwägungsfeste Menschenrechte verletzt, hat seine Anziehungskraft schon länger verloren. Vielmehr wird ihm nationale Souveränität entgegengehalten, um Rechtsbrüche politisch zu rechtfertigen. Hier bedarf es allerdings einer Gesamtschau des Zusammenspiels von rechtlicher, politischer und moralischer Argumentation. Insbesondere soll in diskurstheoretischer Lesart die These verteidigt werden, dass die demokratische Ausübung von Volkssouveränität mit der Achtung der Menschenrechte verbunden ist.

  PublisherDOI

• Social Democracy and Party Competition

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2024-06-27 · 2 citations

  book-chapterOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Class experiences and the long-term evolution of economic values

  Social Forces · 2024-09-24 · 4 citations

  articleSenior author

  Abstract While there is a strong cross-sectional association between social class and political attitudes, recent research—based on longitudinal data—finds that changes in class are, at most, weakly related to changes in such attitudes. One common explanation for this finding is that early life socialization affects both social class and political attitudes and that class has little, if any, direct effect on them. In this manuscript, we explore an alternative explanation that centers on the importance of cumulative class experiences for the long-term evolution of attitudes. To evaluate this perspective, we leverage data from the British Household Panel Survey, which contains measures of economic values that span up to 16 years, as well as complete work-life histories of respondents that allow us to track individual class experiences over people’s life span. Our findings show that cumulative class experiences are strongly associated with the development of economic values.

  PublisherDOI

• Voter Switchers and Social Democracy in Contemporary Knowledge Capitalism

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2024-06-27 · 1 citations

  book-chapterOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Party (system) institutionalization and the institutions of democratic polities

  Edward Elgar Publishing eBooks · 2024-10-15 · 5 citations

  book-chapterSenior author

  The subject of institutions and political parties involves two objects of analysis and their relationship. The first is the institutionalization of parties and party systems themselves and the political performance they deliver in democratic polities. The second is democratic institutions and their relation to political parties and their institutionalization. There is a two-way interaction between party (system) institutionalization (P(S)I) and democratic institutions. On the one hand, democratic institutions affect the institutionalization of parties and party systems. On the other, the institutionalization of parties affects democratic institutions. Consequently, this chapter has three parts: first, the conceptualization of P(S)I and descriptive characterization of its systemic performance in democratic polities; second, the role of democratic institutions in shaping P(S)I; and finally, the impact of P(S)I on the institutions of democracy. The overview concludes with a characterization of these relations by world regions. The chapter assumes conceptual definitions of democratic institutions without discussing them in detail.

  PublisherDOI

• Labor Unionization and Social Democratic Parties

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2024-06-27 · 1 citations

  book-chapterOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• 18. Political participation

  Comparative Politics · 2023-04-27 · 3 citations

  book-chapterSenior author

  This chapter examines four fundamental topics relating to political participation. First, it considers different modes of political participation such as social movements, interest groups, and political parties. Second, it analyses the determinants of political participation, focusing in particular on the paradox of collective action. Third, it explains political participation at the macro level in order to identify which contextual conditions are conducive to participation and the role of economic affluence in political participation. Finally, the chapter discusses political participation at the micro level. It shows that both formal associations and informal social networks, configured around family and friendship ties, supplement individual capacities to engage in political participation or compensate for weak capacities, so as to boost an individual’s probability to become politically active.

  PublisherDOI

• The Data Revolution and the Transformation of Social Protection

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2022-03-14 · 1 citations

  book-chapterSenior author

  A central function of the welfare state is to provide social insurance. Most scholarship assumes that social insurance cannot be provided effectively through the market, mainly due to incomplete and asymmetric information. But, while this assumption may have held in the past, the data revolution is making it untenable today. This chapter asks what happens to the politics of social protection, and to inequality, when information about risks to health, life, employment, credit, and so on, becomes more widely available and shareable. It offers a framework to help us better understand the consequences of big data for social policy and inequality. The information revolution has the potential to undermine majority support for public social policy programs, but due to some countervailing forces, we expect variation across social policy domains.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Jacob S. Hacker

  Yale University

  171 shared

• Torben Iversen

  35 shared

• Thomas R. Cusack

  WZB Berlin Social Science Center

  21 shared

• Herbert Kitschelt

  14 shared

• Mark Schlesinger

  Yale University

  7 shared

• Austin Nichols

  5 shared

• Stuart Craig

  Wisconsin School of Professional Psychology

  3 shared

• Gregory A. Huber

  Yale University

  3 shared