📣 New paper out in BJPolS 📣

New paper in Nature. The more a government controls its domestic media, the more it dominates AI training data, the more pro-regime outputs we get from AI. By scraping the open web, LLMs are unwittingly laundering state-coordinated narratives into seemingly objective answers.

Exactly this. The best time for radical institutional reform was yesterday. The second best time is now. There might not be a third for a long time.

Can attitudes change our identities? 🪪 Group-based anti‑immigration appeals nudged participants to newly claim “working‑class” or “Christian” even without strong objective ties or changes to policy views - showing instrumental belief justification. #Identity #Immigration Read the study recap:

Right, I just think anyone going 'Farage is too extreme to win a majority' or indeed 'the Greens are too extreme to become the leader of the left bloc' does need to wake up and notice how bad things could get soon.

🇵🇱⚖️Polish rule of law crisis latest - out of the complete blue, ECtHR issues an interim measure in the case of four Constitutional Tribunal limbo-judges against Poland, ordering the Polish authorities to make sure these people can sit on the Tribunal. I wasn't ready for this one, honest. 1/

1/ NEW: Russian forces in April 2026 suffered a net loss of territory controlled in the Ukrainian theater for the first time since Ukraine’s August 2024 incursion into Kursk Oblast. Read more: isw.pub/UkrWar050226

📢 We're hiring for my project RESPOL on residential mobility & electoral realignment 📍 University of Hamburg 📅 4y, 75% FTE 🔍 pol behavior, comp politics, regional inequalities 📊 quant, administrative & survey data Please share with talented MA students! 🔗 www.uni-hamburg.de/en/stellenan...

#OpenAccess from @ejprjournal.bsky.social - Tying the hands of coalition partners in international negotiations: Public dissent and constraining powers - https://cup.org/4mLBmlK - @pitrieger.bsky.social#OpenAccess #FirstView

New paper with Martha Johnson in APSR (@apsrjournal.bsky.social)😀 — Open Access 🎉📄 lnkd.in/eEPUxdi8 1) Terrorism ≠ rally effects. 2) Do women leaders face unique crisis penalties? No evidence. 3) Event-during-survey → trends matter ⚠️

For years, but especially in the last few months, I have been trying hard to imagine what it will feel like seeing Orban decisively defeated. I just couldn't. And yet here we are: it is truly and well over. I have more reservations about Peter Magyar than I could say in 300 characters or a thread...

This 💯 👇

Now Tisza projected at 138 seats against 54 of Orban’s Fidesz. If these numbers are confirmed, this is a larger victory than Orbàn’s 2010 landslide, which allowed him to change the 🇭🇺Constitution and start backsliding towards an illiberal democracy. A historic day.

This is most certainly true. Orban had paralyzed (European) Council politics wherever unanimity ruled — and tried to exert influence beyond by threatening vetos on key unanimity issues (eg Ukraine). This will change. It will not be dramatic, but significant.

Orbán declared defeat

HUGE: TISZA/democratic opposition headed for a historic win against autocratic Fidesz/Orban, despite electoral tampering/gov't controlled media. THIS, not Brexit, is a real "liberation day!" BUT: we've learned from Poland that restoring democracy takes more than election. More on that this week...

‼️ ‼️ Orban has congratulated Magyar! bsky.app/profile/gabr...

Supermajority? 🙃

Tisza now at 132 seats, one seat away from supermajority.

An Wiener Universitäten gibt es jede Menge Wissenschaftler:innen, die wegen Orban Ungarn verlassen mussten. ES GIBT SOGAR EINE GANZE UNIVERSITÄT, DIE WEGEN ORBAN UNGARN VERLASSEN HAT. Warum lädt man da niemand ein? False balancing par excellence.

It's the magic 39% (or sometimes 38%) for Trump again. He cannot go below it - no matter what he does. And, this should be very concerning for everyone.

🇭🇺‼️ What seems clear - Tisza has delivered a strong parliamentary majority Less clear - whether they can get to a 2/3 supermajority

This is a great sign. Looks like the Orban regime is finally going down today. He has tilted the playing field heavily in his own favor and will try vote buying schemes, but a big enough wave of support for the opposition can overcome all that…

The second sentence is just unbelievable 🥺.

Expert_innen schlagen Alarm: Mit der neuen Bundesstaatsanwaltschaft könnten Parteien mehr Einfluss auf die Justiz gewinnen. Klar ist: Die Justiz muss unabhängig ermitteln können. Unterzeichne die @aufstehn.at -Petition für eine unabhängige Bundesstaatsanwaltschaft: aktion.aufstehn.at/s/fwnisdGM

Anymore views on this? Thanks to everyone engaging 🙏

🤓 @chriswratil.bsky.social and I just discussed survey experiment design. Which option is better? A: treatment -> mechanism -> DV B: treatment -> DV -> mechanism I.e. measure mechanisms before or after the DV? We recently heard conflicting takes... What do you think is better? And why? thanks!

Do apply to this six-year research and teaching position! Apart from teaching two classes a term, you should have ample time to focus on your research goals as part of an international department in a great (and affordable) city.

🚨 Job Alert 🚨 We have an opening for a 𝗣𝗼𝘀𝘁𝗱𝗼𝗰 𝗣𝗼𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 @stawi-univie.bsky.social starting Aug/Sep 2026! Focus: political representation, party competition, political institutions, political economy, political behavior, or related fields 📅Apply by 29 April 2026 jobs.univie.ac.at/job/Universi...

Befristete Beschäftigungsverhältnisse beim Uni-Personal: Uni-Bericht 2023: 37.672 (79,7 %) Uni-Bericht 2020: 34.611 (78,6 %) +3.061 befristete Beschäftigungsverhältnisse +1,1 Prozentpunkte Wachstum weiterhin vor allem im (prekären) Projektbereich, der Flaschenhals wird weiter enger. #IchBinHanna

Finally accurate self-analysis from the U.S. admin of where they are taking their country

Of course, you are going to „bring them back to the Stone Age, where they belong“, you will „hit them very hard“, and then peace will emerge — within 2-3 weeks. This is how this „war“ thingy works, obviously. 🙄

FOUR GRAPHS ABOUT 🇩🇰'S GENERAL ELECTION My read of the election in four graphs. First: big urban-rural divide. The two big mainstream parties, Social Democrats and Liberals, are now mainly rural/suburban, with niche parties dominating in cities. (1/4) #polisky

Also finding it hard to keep up with new research? I built something to fix this. SciLove — swipe through recent papers in your field. The feed learns from your saves. Also matches you with researchers saving your work back (opt-out if you prefer). www.scilove.app 3,000+ journals, updated daily

Are you a policymaker, teacher, practitioner, academic in political science, psychology, education or related field? We’re inviting experts to complete a short survey on youth political participation: tinyurl.com/ywnseae3 For every completion, we’ll donate €1.20 to UNICEF. Please share!

Some good background on the upcoming Hungarinan elections. "For the first time, the regime is asking voters to tolerate autocracy and rampant corruption without delivering rising living standards in return."

Trump's latest outrageous threat? To "obliterate" power plants in Iran. Anyone who actually orders this, and anyone who carried out those orders, would be guilty of war crimes under the Geneva Convention. Power plants are civilian and not military targets. thehill.com/homenews/adm...

Trump is turning a war against the Iranian regime into a war on the Iranian people. However, the regime doesn't give a damn about its own people. This would be a terrible war crime and achieve nothing.

Increasingly hard to believe that it is not Putin who advises Trump

Wenn Du Deinen vermeintlichen Endgegner (🇨🇳) um Hilfe bei der Öffnung der Strasse von Hormuz bittest, dem Gegner (🇷🇺) seine von Dir selbst sanktionierten Ölexporte erleichtern musst und das Öl des Kriegsgegners (🇮🇷), das bereits auf Schiffen unterwegs ist, auf den Markt lässt, wie nennt man das?

The range isn't what surprises me (it's in line with what we know about the longest range Iranian missiles) but I am surprised that Iran still (1) owns some of them after 21 days of bombing and (2) that the launch sites haven't been destroyed

From our FirstView article: Hidden Majoritarianism and Women’s Career Progression in Proportional Representation Systems DANIEL M. SMITH, @AliCirone.bsky.social, @teele.bsky.social, GARY W. COX and JON H. FIVA. doi.org/10.1017/S000...

Markets have turned. S&P down 5.4% YTD — all of that loss in the last two weeks. War premium showing up fast. Watch this space.

We are toast.

Do conjoint/factorial/vignette experiments reflect choices in the real world? Are hypothetical scenarios in the artificial survey context externally valid? Do hypothetical bias, intention-behavior gap and social desirability biases undermine validity? Two cautionary studies on this question:

Timothy Snyder's Rule number 1 in "20 Rules on Tyranny" is "Do not obey in advance". I'd take his advice over the vacuous hand-wringing of HE admins.

Just out: the new @vdeminstitute.bsky.social is clear: "The speed with which American democracy is currently dismantled is unprecedented in modern history" V-dem uses a global dataset on democracy with over 32 million data points for 202 countries, from 1789 to 2025. www.v-dem.net/documents/75...

Incredible scenes from today's pro-Magyar, anti-Orban rally in Budapest. Only 4 weeks left until the most consequential election in the EU this year 🇪🇺🇭🇺

Well, then. This is even more shameful & inexcusable.

41 years old, evacuated here legally, asylum case pending, kidnapped while driving his six children (one a US citizen) to school. Dead within 24 hours. Betrayed and murdered by the United States government. 42nd confirmed and reported death in ICE custody under Trump.