Research

My work spans five interconnected areas -from comparative constitutional design and direct democracy to deliberative democracy, political behaviour, and digital politics. Across all areas, I draw on a range of methods including large-scale comparative surveys, computational text analysis, supervised machine learning, and survey experiments. For a comprehensive list of publications, see the Publications page.

Comparative Politics & Constitutional Design

Cross-national comparative study of direct democracy, constitutional design, and federal systems. A major strand of this work focuses on referendums and citizens’ initiatives across European states, combining legal-institutional analysis with large-N comparative data. Earlier work includes comparative federalism. Ongoing work includes a co-edited volume examining the agenda initiative — one of the least well-studied instruments of direct democracy — from a comparative constitutional perspective.

NoteWork in progress

Between Representative and Direct Democracy: The Agenda Initiative from Comparative Constitutional Perspective — co-edited volume with Mario Mendez and Daniel Moeckli (in preparation).

Selected publications

  • Moeckli, D., Mendez, F., Labud, M., & Reimann, N. (2025). Mapping the European landscape of citizens’ initiatives. Political Studies.

  • Mendez, F., & Mendez, M. (2022). Agenda initiatives in comparative context. In Qvortrup, M. & Vancic, D. (eds), Complementary Democracy: The Art of Deliberative Listening. De Gruyter. [link]

  • Mendez, F., & Mendez, M. (2022). Referendums and European integration. In Garben, S. & Gormley, L. (eds), Oxford Encyclopedia of EU Law.

  • Mendez, F., & Mendez, M. (2021). EU accession referendums. In Smith, J. (ed), The Palgrave Handbook of European Referendums. Palgrave Macmillan. [link]

  • Mendez, F., & Mendez, M. (2020). The law and politics of direct democracy in the EU. In Cardwell, P.J. & Granger, M-P. (eds), Research Handbook on the Politics of EU Law. Edward Elgar. [link]

  • Mendez, F. (2020). A paradigm shift in national referendums on Europe. In Rose, R. (ed), How Referendums Challenge European Democracy. Palgrave.

  • Mendez, F., & Germann, M. (2018). Contested sovereignty: Mapping referendums on sovereignty over time and space. British Journal of Political Science.

  • Mendez, F., & Mendez, M. (2018). Referendums on European integration: Crisis solving or crisis inducing? In Morel, L. & Qvortrup, M. (eds), Routledge Compendium on Direct Democracy.

  • Mendez, F., Zwicky, R., & Kübler, D. (2018) Taking stock of the European Citizens’ Initiative: Democratic potential and possible institutional trajectories. In Levi-Faur, D., & van Waarden, F. (eds) Democratic empowerment in the European Union.

  • Mendez, F., & Mendez, M. (2017). Referendums on EU matters. Study commissioned by the European Parliament.

  • Mendez, F., & Mendez, M. (2017). The promise and perils of direct democracy for the European Union. Cambridge Yearbook of European Legal Studies.

  • Mendez, F., & Mendez, M. (2016). The European Union and direct democracy: An overview. In Ruth, S., Welp, Y. & Whitehead, L. (eds), Let the People Rule? Direct Democracy in the Twenty-First Century. ECPR Press.

  • Mendez, F., Mendez, M., & Triga, V. (2014). Referendums and the European Union: A comparative inquiry. Cambridge University Press.

  • Mendez, F. (2014). Dilemmas of European integration: Beyond the Lisbon constitutional settlement. In Kübler, D. & Stojanović, N. (eds), Democracy in the European Union. Schulthess.

  • Wheatley, J., & Mendez, F. (2013). [Patterns of Constitutional Design: The Role of Citizens and Elites in Constitution-Making] (1st ed.). Routledge. (https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315599762)

  • Mendez, F. (2013). To hold or not to hold a referendum? Auerian insights on popular sovereignty. In Good, A. & Platipodis, B. (eds), Direkte Demokratie. Stämpfli.

  • Mendez, F., & Mendez, M. (2011). Referendums and European integration: Beyond the Lisbon vote. Public Law, 2, 223–229.

  • Mendez, F., Mendez, M., & Triga, V. (2010). Charting the rise (and fall?) of Direct Democracy in the European Union: How comparative federalism can help us understand the interplay of direct democracy and European integration. Revista de Ciencia Política, 29(1), 57-83.

  • Mendez, F., & Triga, V. (2009). Constitution-making, constitutional convention and conflict resolution: Lessons drawing for Cyprus. Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans, 11(4), 363–380.

Political Behaviour & Attitudes

Voting behaviour, party competition, and political attitude formation. Much of this research draws on data generated by voting advice applications and large-scale comparative surveys to study how citizens locate themselves and parties in ideological space, and how external events and contextual factors shape political attitudes.

NoteWork in Progress
  • Manuscript in preparation investigating the determinants of climate change attitudes

Selected publications

Political Communication

Voting advice applications (design, effects, and applied development), election campaign communication, and computational text analysis of political and policy content. VAA-related work spans the applied side -building and deploying tools across European elections- and the analytical side, studying their effects on political attitudes and party preferences. Text analysis work includes topic modelling and sentiment analysis of news coverage and EU policy communication.

NoteCurrent work

Active development of new voting advice applications with collaborators across Europe.

Selected publications

Digital Politics & Emerging Technologies

E-participation, internet voting, and digital governance. Earlier work examined the evolution of internet voting in Switzerland, combining public voter registry data with survey analysis to study uptake and fidelity. Current work focuses on blockchain technology and decentralised autonomous organisations (DAOs) as novel governance structures, exploring what their decision-making mechanisms can offer for digital democracy.

NoteCurrent work

SNSF-funded project: Decentralised Decision-Making in DAOs: Learning for Digital Democracy — with the UZH Blockchain Center, ZHAW, and the UZH Centre for Democracy Studies Aarau (ZDA).

Selected publications

  • Mendez, F., & Serdült, U. (2017). What drives fidelity to internet voting? Evidence from the roll-out of internet voting in Switzerland. Government and Information Quarterly.

  • Djouvas, C., Mendez, F., & Tsapatsoulis, N. (2016). Mining online political opinion surveys for suspect entries: An interdisciplinary comparison. Journal of Innovation in Digital Ecosystems.

  • Serdult, U., Germann, M., Mendez, F., Portenier, A., & Wellig, C. (2015). Fifteen years of internet voting in Switzerland. In eDemocracy & eGovernment (ICEDEG). IEEE Xplore, 126–132.

  • Serdult, U., Germann, M., Harris, M., Mendez, F., & Portenier, A. (2015). Who are the internet voters? In Tambouris, E. et al. (eds), Electronic Government and Electronic Participation. IOS Press.

  • Mendez, F., & Serdült, U. (2014). From initial idea to piecemeal implementation: Switzerland’s first decade of internet voting reviewed. In Zissis, D. & Lekkas, D. (eds), Design, Development, and Use of Secure Electronic Voting Systems. IGI Global.

  • Mendez, F. (2014). What’s behind a matching algorithm: A critical assessment of how VAAs produce voting recommendations. In Garzia, D. & Marschall, S. (eds), Matching Voters with Parties and Candidates. ECPR Press.

  • Mendez, F. (2013). EU-Democracy & E-Democracy: Can the two be reconciled? In Demetriou, K. (ed), Democracy in Transition. Springer.

  • Garcia, D., Mendez, F., Serdült, U., & Schweitzer, F. (2012). Political polarization and popularity in online participatory media. Proceedings of the 21st ACM International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management (CIKM), 3–10.

  • Mendez, F., & Mendez, M. (2010). Comparing privacy regimes: Federal theory and the politics of privacy regulation in the European Union and the United States. Publius: Journal of Federalism.

  • Mendez, F. (2010). Elections and the internet: On the difficulties of ‘upgrading’ elections in the digital era. Representation, 46(4), 459–469.

  • Mendez, F. (2009). Democracy and new technologies: Democratic innovation or illusion? In Dilemmas in Globalization. Global Progressive Forum.

  • Mendez, F., & Trechsel, A. (2005). The European Union and E-Voting. Routledge.

  • Mendez, F. (2005). The European Union and cybercrime: Insights from comparative federalism. Journal of European Public Policy, 12(3), 509–527.

  • Kies, R., Mendez, F., Schmitter, P., & Trechsel, A. (2004). Evaluation of the use of new technologies in order to facilitate democracy in Europe. Study for the European Parliament (STOA).

  • Trechsel, A., Mendez, F., & Kies, R. (2002). Remote voting via the Internet? The Canton of Geneva Pilot Project. In Gritzalis, D. (ed), Secure Electronic Voting. Kluwer.

Deliberative Democracy & Civic Participation

A new area of work examining citizen deliberative forums, participatory budgeting, and civic engagement in policy processes. This research combines conjoint survey experiments with large-scale comparative surveys to study how citizens evaluate deliberative processes, and how socio-economic context and political trust shape attitudes towards climate and sustainability policy.

NoteWork in Progress
  • Manuscript in preparation investigating Deliberative forums as complements to representative democracy

Selected publications