Marc S. Jacob

Biography

Marc Jacob is an assistant professor of democracy and global affairs in the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame, with a concurrent appointment in the Department of Political Science. He is a core-affiliate faculty member of the Kellogg Institute for International Studies and a faculty fellow of the Nanovic Institute for European Studies and the Lucy Family Institute for Data and Society.

Before arriving at Notre Dame, Jacob was a postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Political Science and with the Polarization Research Lab at Stanford University, and a visiting assistant in research at Yale University. Jacob holds a Ph.D. in political science from ETH Zurich, Switzerland, and completed undergraduate and graduate degrees at Leipzig University, Germany, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany, and the University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom.

Jacob's research focuses on the intersection of political behavior, public opinion, and institutional change. He examines how ordinary citizens perceive and respond to transforming institutional environments, including processes of democratization and democratic backsliding. While Jacob mainly focuses on European democracies, his research projects also cover the United States, Turkey, and Brazil.

His current book project, Democratic Pivots: How Voters Incidentally Save (and Lose) Democracy, asks when voters defend democratic competition at the ballot box.

Recent Work

* "Systemic Electioneering from the Evangelical Pulpit: Evidence from a Computational Analysis" (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) - https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2603911123

* "From Gridlock to Polarization?" (The Economic Journal) - https://academic.oup.com/ej/advance-article/doi/10.1093/ej/ueag045/8586509

* "Entrepreneurs of conflict: A descriptive analysis of when and how political elites use divisive rhetoric" (PNAS Nexus) - https://doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgag038

* "Office Levels and Voter Accountability for Democratic Norm Violations" (Public Opinion Quarterly) - https://academic.oup.com/poq/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/poq/nfag004/8524079

* "Citizens as a democratic safeguard? The sequence of sanctioning elite attacks on democracy" (American Journal of Political Science) - https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ajps.12847

* "The Demand Side of Democratic Backsliding: How Divergent Understandings of Democracy Shape Political Choice" (British Journal of Political Science) - https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/british-journal-of-political-science/article/demand-side-of-democratic-backsliding-how-divergent-understandings-of-democracy-shape-political-choice/3DEB0DC344DF35BF4334366F07411116

* "Living in Different Worlds: Electoral Authoritarianism and Partisan Gaps in Perceptions of Electoral Integrity" (British Journal of Political Science) - https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/british-journal-of-political-science/article/living-in-different-worlds-electoral-authoritarianism-and-partisan-gaps-in-perceptions-of-electoral-integrity/8476951E50087FE25F6BD7CC73666248

* "Undermining Liberal International Organizations from Within: Evidence from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe" (The Review of International Organizations) - https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11558-024-09559-y

Courses

* Political Campaigning (master of global affairs)

* Citizens and Democracy (undergraduate)

* Research Design for Global Affairs (undergraduate)

* Crafting Research in Europe (elective for minor in European studies)

News & Media

* "America's sermons are becoming op-eds" (The Economist) - https://www.economist.com/united-states/2026/05/21/americas-sermons-are-becoming-op-eds

* "Is Gridlock Causing Polarization?" (University of Chicago Center for Effective Government podcast) - https://effectivegov.uchicago.edu/podcast/is-gridlock-causing-polarization

* "Incivility as Strategy: The Conflict Entrepreneurs of Congress" (The Northwest Politicast, begins at 5:40) - https://www.nwnewsradio.com/episode/incivility-as-strategy-the-conflict-entrepreneurs-of-congress/

* "Do political insults pay off? New research shows what politicians actually gain from combative rhetoric" (Keough School) - https://keough.nd.edu/news-and-events/news/do-political-insults-pay-off-new-research-shows-what-politicians-actually-gain-from-divisive-political-rhetoric/

* "Diverging views of democracy fuel support for authoritarian politicians, Notre Dame study shows" (Keough School) - https://keough.nd.edu/news-and-events/news/diverging-views-of-democracy-fuel-support-for-authoritarian-politicians-notre-dame-study-shows/