It was a great keynote indeed in an amazing venue last week at #sisp in bella Napoli.

We already had a fifth freedom, the Freedom of Movement of Non Personal Data. What, you hadn’t heard?

As if the whole academic publishing business wasn't squeezing authors (and taxpayers) enough.

This has important implications: 1) Creating a common front (or, "firewall" / "cordon sanitaire") against a radical right challenger requires a mainstream-party consensus. Once one party leaves this broad coalition, the effects of elite messaging weaken significantly.

Interesting speech by European Council president Costa at the Bled Forum today Confirms security / Ukraine aspect of EU US deal that VDL pushed back strongly against. Clear break here

"The Brussels effect began to sputter. Now, the world that it was crafted for is to all intents and purposes dead." @abenewman.bsky.social

Thrilled to share this 16-country conjoint experiment with @catherinedevries.bsky.social & @simonhix.bsky.social. We find strong support for majoritarian reforms and tougher legal enforcement, even when paired with policies people dislike. Policy-inelastic institutional preferences exist! A 🧵...

www.bostonreview.net/articles/hen... "Yet the door to Joe’s apartment—which argues with him and refuses to open because he has not paid it the obligatory tip—sounds ominously plausible. Someone, somewhere, is pitching this as a viable business plan to Y Combinator"

The 2024 CHES included for the first time questions to measure positions on executive constraints & judicial independence, key features of horizontal accountability. Here, the rad right party family stands out as much less likely to support constraints on executives & judicial independence 4/

I detect confusion between a Trumpian trade “deal” and a real trade agreement. A Trumpian deal is based on the assumption that governments can simply tell companies what transactions they will do, whether in trade or investment. Most governments cannot do that. 1/

Important takeaway for the next round of this: by itself, COM isn’t equipped to manage the domestic politics of this, it needs stronger backing from capitals. Convenient for member states to hide behind it and then blame it for the outcome (sometimes more than they blame the US I feel).

Even in his last days Joe Nye worked to make the world a safer place. Powerful podcast w/Bob Keohane on their work, friendship and the risks of the Trump presidency for US national interest. www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/jos...

🚨 New piece for @ecpr.bsky.social's @ecprtheloop.bsky.social — @maxheermann.bsky.social & I map trips of world leaders using @josefkorbelschool.bsky.social's COLT of over 78K+ foreign trips by heads of state and gov from 1990-2023. Reference: bsky.app/profile/jose...

Despite being a self-declared purist, at #IPSA2025 I learned to appreciate iced coffee more than ever. If you're summer is also too hot (to immerse yourself in academic papers), I'm happy to offer two new short pieces perfectly timed for consuming with a cool coffee variant of your choice.

🌐 World leaders' first foreign trips reveal more than diplomatic protocol - they are carefully crafted political stories. ✈️ @meraymaddah.bsky.social and @maxheermann.bsky.social analyse inaugural diplomatic journeys to uncover stability and change in global networks 👇 bit.ly/4lY2FHQ

This sounds promising (👋🇪🇺...) www.swissinfo.ch/eng/swiss-ai...

A new paper in The Lancet, one of the world’s foremost peer reviewed medical journals, estimates that USAID prevented 91 million deaths across 133 countries over 20 years. The paper estimates that Elon Musk’s DOGE funding cuts to USAID will lead to 14 million deaths by 2030 (4.5 million children).

Introducing #EPSS - the European Political Science Society and non-Profit alternative to #EPSA!

Out now🎉 - Evidence (from distribution analyses and machine learning models on EES 2014-2024 data) of strong similarities and growing convergence in EU public opinion, particularly on economic issues. Common right-ward shifts on immigration, yes - but underlying drivers still vary. shorturl.at/KCx0S

Another case of gradual integration of Ukraine into the EU sphere - and quite an interesting framing by the EU Commission here, using the language of "EU citizenship" being granted to Ukrainian telco signals:

Trawling is currently prohibited within EU offshore wind farms. Result? They may become a refugium for marine life. A win-win.

📄New paper in @jcms-eu.bsky.social! I’m excited to share my latest publication: "Democracy versus Diplomacy? The involvement of external actors in trilogue negotiations." onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

📄 Whose expert knowledge informs policymaking around the world? @rsenninger.bsky.social and I analyze data from 1.2 million government policy documents from 185 countries—and find a prominent pattern: 🌍 Policy evidence is overwhelmingly sourced from the Global North. Preprint: osf.io/w8q3y 🧪🧵👇

"Solange die Brandmauer kein intellektuelles, in Ideen gegründetes Fundament hat, besteht die Gefahr, dass die rechte Propaganda sie als bloßes Disziplinierungsinstrument denunzieren und sich so noch zunutze machen kann."

this is a really fun conversation!

🚨 WP w/ @acalacino.bsky.social & @hayleypring.bsky.social It’s been a turbulent decade of globalization backlash. Populist projects wanna take back control everywhere. Focusing on the case of oil and Brexit, we offer a story of the danger of this narrative and concrete merits of multilateralism: 🧵

Great to see our study picked by @euractiv.com & mentioned along the great @onethuthree.bsky.social https://www.euractiv.com/section/economy-jobs/news/europes-citizens-wont-accept-democratic-backsliding-says-news-study/ Polish election reminds us that democracies remains under pressure.

Nature ran a piece finding that 25 million people could die as a result of ending USAID. This puts Trump and Musk in the category of the most brutal leaders of the 20th century in terms of unnecessary lives lost. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

A majority of people follow "costly" rules, even in settings in which they are anonymous, alone, and violations are harmless because of respect for rules and social expectations, even though rule violation is moderately contagious, finds Gächter et al., www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🚨You should read this official State Dept post bc it foreshadows a major fight: Zuckerberg & Musk want 🇪🇺 regulators off their backs. Trump & Vance want to help AfD, Le Pen, and the global populist right. So they are reframing tech regulation as tyranny & censorship. open.substack.com/pub/statedep...

Pressure on Hungary is increasing amidst increasing domestic repression and continued foreign policy blockages. The EU can count on robust public support for stringent norm enforcement, as we show in our new @jeppjournal.bsky.social article. https://doi.org/10.1080/13501763.2025.2503973

Emphasizing that democracy itself is at risk is quite ineffective in reducing support for undemocratic behavior - experimental evidence from 10 countries now open access in @polbehavior.bsky.social AND this adds a satisfying *The End* to my dissertation. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Deutsche Abundance Agenda wann? Die absurde Bürokratie an der Hermann-Hesse-Bahn https://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/inland/fledermaus-statt-bahnstrecke-absurde-buerokratie-im-schwarzwald-110459408.html?GEPC=s9&premium=0x53da282162406c9954a65e9c589218d3182dc76d7730eb70f4e7054c0cd23b3e

📣 The rush to add AI into everything is a big threat to privacy, as we've been saying. MS Recall's screenshotting everything is a (not) great example of exactly why. So, Signal took steps to protect everyone using Signal on Windows 11 from Recall's privacy invasion.👇 signal.org/blog/signal-...

It’s done: EU countries have reached a deal on SAFE, the new programme to raise up to €150 billion for rearmament. The money will be distributed as low-interest loans to those member states that request them. SAFE only requires approval by the Council, which is expected next week.

📣 Happy to announce the publication of our article (w @sharonbaute.bsky.social & @leuffen.bsky.social) on democratic backsliding and public opinion @jeppjournal.bsky.social! 📌https://doi.org/10.1080/13501763.2025.2503973 Study funded by @excinequality.bsky.social

What if democracy erodes and threatens the EU's foundation? A new #UniKonstanz @excinequality.bsky.social @leuffen.bsky.social study finds most EU citizens support sanctions to defend it. Published in the Journal of European Public Policy (doi.org/10.1080/1350...). Details: t1p.de/hrkey

📣 Happy to announce the publication of our article (w @sharonbaute.bsky.social & @leuffen.bsky.social) on democratic backsliding and public opinion @jeppjournal.bsky.social! 📌https://doi.org/10.1080/13501763.2025.2503973 Study funded by @excinequality.bsky.social

📣 Happy to announce the publication of our article (w @sharonbaute.bsky.social & @leuffen.bsky.social) on democratic backsliding and public opinion @jeppjournal.bsky.social! 📌https://doi.org/10.1080/13501763.2025.2503973 Study funded by @excinequality.bsky.social.

Sad news: Joe Nye has passed away. www.belfercenter.org/collection/r...

🚨 New book alert! Policy Preparation Inside the European Commission is out with OUP @oxfordacademic.bsky.social It’s about the behind-the-scenes stage of EU policymaking that shapes everything—yet rarely gets the spotlight: how the Commission prepares its proposals. Link: doi.org/10.1093/9780...

Interested in where German reunification and EU enlargement meet? @alexanderklein.bsky.social has you covered!

People often overestimate how many others share their views—a phenomenon known as the false consensus effect. In a new article in @ispp-pops.bsky.social, @clandwehr.bsky.social, Philipp Harms and I show that this tendency is associated with stronger populist attitudes: doi.org/10.1111/pops....

"Mark Rutte, famously said: “If you want vision, go to the eye doctor. I'm solving problems”. But politics is largely about defining problems, not just solving them." @casmudde.bsky.social

If you are looking for an up-to-date review of what we know about the effects of lobbying, look no further! Thrilled to see this out in ARPS! Hope it reaches a broad set of audiences to share the strides this subfield has made in the past 15 years… ⬇️⬇️⬇️

Health Policy Watch on the pandemic agreement. healthpolicy-watch.news/pandemic-agr...

WHO Pandemic agreement text as of Saturday, 12 April 2025 at 09:05 www.keionline.org/40710

Teaching the political economy of the green transition this term, I used, and learned from, some amazing 𝐜𝐥𝐢𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐩𝐨𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐲 𝐭𝐨𝐨𝐥𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐤𝐞𝐫𝐬. A 🧵 on some of the best. Further suggestions are very welcome, I'll add them below.

Does Mainstream Populism Work❓ I answer this question in a new paper officially out at @psrm.bsky.social❗ Check out the paper here: doi.org/10.1017/psrm... Key take-aways in the thread below 🧵⬇️:

After SURE and SAFE, what do we think the Commission will call the next EU loan-based instrument? My vote would be for SOFT. It would have a nice ring to it: sure, safe and soft ✨