made fast with Claude, but seem reasonable to me.

Reminder that the deadline for nominations for the EPSS Best Book award 2026 is March 31, 2026! The EPSS Best Book Award recognizes an outstanding scholarly contribution to the field of political science. 1/2

Lars Løkke Rasmussen, you’re no Birgitte Nyborg! #Borgen

Red and Blue blocs neck and neck after the Danish election, with the centrist “Moderates” the kingmakers. Life mimics art! #Borgen.

50% votes counted 🇩🇰🗳️ Close race between left and right blocks. Former PM Lars Løkke Rasmussen kingmaker in the middle 👑 But: only halfway there 🍿 #fv26 #dkpol

Another huge victory for the McSweeney strategy which appears to have reverse-infected the Danish Social Democrats. Big win for the left and the liberal parties though. Terrible for DPP. Assuming exit poll is right.

Labour lost white working-class voters to Greens in Gorton and Denton, party analysis finds www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

From our FirstView article: Storm from the Steppes: Warfare and Succession Institutions in Pre-Modern Eurasia, 1000–1799 CE by DANIEL STEVEN SMITH. doi.org/10.1017/S000...

👏 giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/... EU and Australia clinch trade and security pacts

Spain Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez: "Trump is someone who will set the world on fire and then blame smoke caused by that. He has been wrong for 18 days of war. I urge everyone to call him out"

"the decline in [academic freedom in] the United States has been more rapid and pronounced, particularly in the last year. It has deteriorated by 50% from 2015 to 2025 and is now evaluated as moderate autonomy by country experts" academic-freedom-index.net/research/Aca...

Another amazing piece of data analytics by @laurenleek.eu, this time on the geographic divisions in London and what caused them: open.substack.com/pub/laurenle...

Entirely predictable and avoidable outcome. A government with 400 seats but which still cannot figure out what its MPs won’t accept and therefore what it cannot get through the Commons is not imho long for this world. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

But, but, but, we need “objective measures” of democratic backsliding ….

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...

‪Europeans when asked to unblock the Strait of Hormuz 😎

😥 Huge loss for the social sciences

There will now be only 3 parties in the Baden-Wutemberg Landtag: Greens, CDU, and AfD. With Greens and CDU likely to continue in government, AfD will become the only opposition. That could have dramatic implications for future elections in the state.

Bravo Azzurri! Well deserved. Instead of "England in crisis", the emphasis should be on how Italian rugby has crossed a major threshold. And the contrast with the poor state of Italian football is also culturally fascinating. www.theguardian.com/sport/2026/m...

Gorton and Denton: the bloc vote sums • Green + Lab + LD 2024 → 2026 • Cons + Brexit/Reform 2019 → 2026 make one wonder if there's less than what meets the debate's eye on the finer points of party ideology or candidate quality. Different elections, turnover in the active electorate, and yet.

This will be the 3rd edition. If you study pol. behaviour and work on #CEE, this is the right place to present your research. Dates: June 25-26. Discussants include @simonhix.bsky.social & @eliasdinas.bsky.social. Highlight: roundtable on dem. erosion with H. Kriesi, M. Svolik & N. Wunsch.

Americans: we live in a fallen state—embroiled by sin, cheating, lying, and evil. You cannot trust anyone, not even those who claim to know you best Canadians: I love my neighbors and my friends!

Sanchez 💪

“And you, sir, are certainly no FDR” … although Starmer is too weak to say anything like that www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

That "Danish Model" he went for is paying off in Denmark too, latest polls: SD : 22.1% (-5.4) SF : 13.2% (+4.9) Exactly three weeks from an election

Our latest voting intention (1-2 March 2026) has the Greens on their highest figure ever recorded by YouGov, significantly ahead of Labour, who are on their lowest figure to date Reform UK: 23% (-1 from 22-23 Feb) Greens: 21% (+4) Conservatives: 16% (-2) Labour: 16% (-2) Lib Dems: 14% (=)

Still controlling for gender without thinking about why? You can cite me💚👩‍🔬💚 I show that the gender gap in progressive climate and environmental views is a persistent empirical regularity that cannot be explained by differences in socioeconomic background, political ideology, or risk aversion.

How’s that move rightwards on immigration working out for you Sir Keir?

For now this is just one poll. But if this trend continues the current FPTP voting system makes no sense anymore. If you add the SNP and Plaid Cymru to the mix we might end up with a completely random result at the next elections. Which will undermine trust in the U.K. democracy even further.

#ResistanceRoots #WomensHistoryMonth Today in history, 1907: Congress passes the Expatriation Act, which stripped American-born women of their citizenship if they married a non-citizen. A woman had to adopt her husband’s nationality, effectively making her a stateless alien in her own country. /1

This is also supported by individual level data, which shows Labour losing more voters to the Greens than to Reform. The rise of Reform in traditional Labour areas does not mean that Labour voters in those places are all shifting to Reform. That’s an ecological fallacy (cf. @tabouchadi.bsky.social)

Well, no, they’re not just as wrong. The bigger error is not seeing that “trying to win over voters from a party on the opposite end of the spectrum, whose values your core voters oppose” is not same as “chasing voters from party on same side ideologically whose values your core voters like.”

Also Starmer (and Badenoch, but no surprise there) adopting Goodwin's "sectarianism" framing.. ugly stuff.

This is from Keir Starmer’s letter to Labour MPs today. This sort of stuff is shockingly partisan and nasty. It will only backfire with voters who switched to Green or are thinking of switching.

Looks like us ‘bloc politics’ people were on to something after all ;) benansell.substack.com/p/british-po...

📢 Registration Reminder for EPSS Belfast 2026 If you haven't registered already, please note that the registration deadline for the EPSS Belfast Conference is Friday, 13 March 👇🏼 Register here: app.oxfordabstracts.com/register/eve...

🚨🚨Biggest #EU news of today: #Iceland looks to fast-track vote on joining EU as referendum on EU accession could come as early as August, departing from original plan for 2027 ref. 🧵 www.politico.eu/article/icel...

Fascinating response to @jburnmurdoch.ft.com’s piece on whether a university education is worth it, by my EUI colleague @hermwerf.bsky.social open.substack.com/pub/hermwerf...

🤣. OMG! This is so bang on.

The rumour that they are building a scaffold at the Tower of London is false.....

Signs that your country needs an electoral threshold

The last time a senior member of the British royal family was arrested was 1647 ... and we know what happened to him! #JustSaying

UK: Prince Andrew arrested. South Korea: Former President Yoon sentenced for life. Brazil: Former President Bolsonaro serving a 27-year sentence. USA: President Trump demands $10 billion payout from taxpayers.

oh no the Dutch have found this. This is their version of minor criticisms of the NHS for Brits.

Time to reassess. At the time of the Brexit vote, I thought that (at the aggregate level) the UK would be a little poorer but a little more sovereign. It’s now clear that the UK is quite a lot poorer, and only marginally more sovereign … The impact at the individual level is much worse, too

New data shows #Brexit has lowered UK GDP by 6-8% over the past decade. Investment down 12-18%, employment down 3-4%. It's even worse than economists had predicted pre-referendum, because they thought there would be a bounce-back long term. "Economists were roughly right on the

Just re-upping this, as if you haven’t read it, you really should! It’s a fascinating commentary on “late capitalism”, and the tensions between global capital and local communities

New publication in @politicsgenderj.bsky.social! Who perceives feminism as a threat, and why do a lot of women perceive feminism as threatening? With @evaanduiza.bsky.social, we explore these questions in the context of Spain. We find: ⬇️ doi.org/10.1017/S174...

Great piece from @dsquareddigest.bsky.social, which touches on one of the big theories for why English-speaking countries do especially badly at housebuilding: Adversarial and litigious common law systems (Anglo) vs judge-led civil law systems elsewhere. samf.substack.com/p/build-the-...

With the launch of Restore Britain to the right of Reform UK, and with Your Party to the left of the Greens, it’s almost like party elites think we have the Dutch electoral system in the UK …. they will learn pretty quickly the brutality of the FPTP “effective threshold”.