Alberto Polimeni has been a PhD candidate at the CEE since September 2025. He has an MSc in Comparative Politics from the London School of Economics and a BA in War Studies and Philosophy from King’s College London. Alberto is also a Research Associate with the Illiberalism Studies Program at George Washington University.

Alberto’s research studies how populist parties influence the policy agendas and vocabularies of mainstream parties. Specifically, it will focus on the rhetoric and discourses mobilized by populists, asking if these crisis narratives exert unique forms of pressure on their opponents. His project will use a mixed-methods approach, combining a quantitative content analysis of party texts with a qualitative study analyzing the decision-making of party elites. This thesis is supervised by Colin Hay.

Beyond vote-seeking: how populist crisis narratives disrupt mainstream party policy agendas.