The ERC have given me 5 years to figure out what Europeans really think about democracy. If you would like to come and join me in the endeavour, then I am currently hiring a postdoc @sotonpolitics.bsky.social. Deadline: 30 April | Details here: jobs.soton.ac.uk/Vacancy.aspx... #polisky

🇹🇷📢 İstanbul today. This is what hope looks like. The current historical conjuncture may have emboldened authoritarian leaders worldwide, but it is also one of massive social mobilizations *for* democracy, in Turkey, Serbia, Georgia, Israel, in US townhalls... The authoritarian wave can be stopped.

..und noch ein Fall, in dem ein rechsextremer Vierfachmord unter dem medialen Radar läuft. Am 25. März 2024 starben die Eltern und ihre beiden drei Jahre und wenige Monate alten Töchter bei einem Brandanschlag. Erinnert an die Toten. Und die Medien an ihre verdammte demokratische Verantwortung.

A 2021 study found that proportionate representation on juries could reduce median sentence terms by 50%. “More perspectives on juries means more understanding,” said Elizabeth Swartz, legal counsel on efforts to diversify New Jersey's juries.boltsmag.org/new-jer...

I kind of choked up.

Trump’s handling of the economy is at -11 in this new Emerson poll, down from prior surveys. Not a good trend emersoncollegepolling.com/national-pol...

After the Bundestag election, many noted the different voting behaviour of different age groups and of women and men. In a new article in @wepsocial.bsky.social, @nilssteiner.bsky.social and I look at the interplay of cohort, gender, and education to explain GALTAN vote choice in Europe. 🧵1/5

Kleiner Funfact: Weil die CDU in ihrer kleinen Anfrage auch @gabrielakeller.bsky.social und meine Recherche zu den "Rechtstreibern in der CDU" erwähnte, hat sich das Publikum für diesen Artikel noch mal vergrößert. Prognose: Wir überschreiten bald die 500 000 Zugriffe correctiv.org/aktuelles/pa...

#Germany's federal criminal police office, not exactly known for over-counting such things, reports that at least 41,000 crimes with a right-wing extremist motive were committed in 2024, a 1/3 increase compared to 2023. 2023, with a 23% increase on 2022, had already marked an all-time high #farright

Basically right, except Die Linke are no-longer “populist left. More like “radical left” or even “progressive left”, like the Scandi equivalents. BSW have done Die Linke a huge favour, by detoxifying them.

Der Aufstieg der Linken fasziniert mich. Ich hatte da so eine Vermutung und tatsächlich ist es so: Die Linke gewinnt dort wo die Grünen verlieren. Der Zusammenhang ist bemerkenswert, der Zusammenhang zu Gewinnen/Verlusten der SPD andersrum und zu denen der CDU nicht vorhanden.

Ihr sorgt euch um Demokratie und Rechtsstaat in Deutschland? Die CDU/CSU-Fraktion hat eine Liste mit exzellenten Organisationen, die eure Spende verdient haben, veröffentlicht. U.a. @correctiv.org, @omasgegenrechts.bsky.social, @campact.bsky.social. dserver.bundestag.de/btd/20/150/2...

Our article 'A Crisis of Political Trust?' led by @viktorv.bsky.social is now out in @bjpols.bsky.social! We use >3,000 surveys in 143 countries between 1958 and 2019, finding that trust in representative institutions has generally been declining in recent decades. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

The 'feeling' that X under Musk is a different place than before is quantified in this new study titled 'Substantial Hate' 1️⃣ hate speech up to 50% higher; 2️⃣ hate speech increase persistent; 3️⃣ no reduction in inauthentic accounts #commsky @polcomm.bsky.social journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...

Vote choice by birth cohort and gender in the 2024 European election in Germany: - Increased gender gaps among young voters for several parties. - AfD share more than twice as high among young men (21% vs. 10%). - 49% of young men voted for the right-leaning parties, but only 32% of young women.

How #Twitter/#X amplifies the #farright in #Germany during the #btw25 campaign 👇 👉The blue segment in the first image shows the share of tweets by #AfD-affiliated accounts ~ 1/5 👉Their share of the views is > 1/4 👉They get almost 1/2 of the likes for all party-affiliated tweets

🔥 This. “Labour cannot simply manage the status quo. To defeat Mr Farage’s sham politics, it must offer more than technocratic governance. Without a compelling vision, including one for Britain’s place in Europe, it risks being outflanked” Perfectly put in @theguardian.com

49% of Britons support introducing proportional representation, with just 26% backing first past the post PR: 49% FPTP: 26% By party voted for in 2024 Green: 72% PR vs 15% FPTP Reform UK: 67% vs 20% Lib Dem: 61% vs 20% Labour: 53% vs 27% Conservative: 39% vs 42% yougov.co.uk/politics/art...

Polisky Dictatorsky New Publication alert! 📢 @fabioangiolillo.bsky.social, @felixwiebrecht.bsky.social (@vdeminstitute.bsky.social) and co-authors have recently published: “When autocratization is reversed: episodes of U-Turns since 1900.” Read it here: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Eine Zäsur in der deutschen Nachkriegsgeschichte. Hundertausende auf den Straßen. Unzählige die daran arbeiten, dass wir es besser verstehen. Und bei Miosga diskutieren eine Rechtsextreme, Springer Presse und Industrieverband. Ist euch eure Verantwortung für die Demokratie einfach scheißegal?

Reminder that these protests work: - Evidence from Greece: www.cambridge.org/core/journal... - Evidence from Italy: academic.oup.com/poq/article-... - Evidence from France: academic.oup.com/ej/advance-a...

Spot-on by @jonhenley.bsky.social (with great comments by @tabouchadi.bsky.social and @sldelange.bsky.social) - and an interesting question is *why* centre-right politicians refuse to acknowledge this and act on it. Just how long will they go on doing two plus two and making five?

Unsere Demokratie wird nicht nur von Rechtsaußen bedroht. Es gibt auch eine soziale Krise des Parteiensystems: Vor allem Menschen ohne akademische Ausbildung erleben, dass ihre Interessen oft nicht berücksichtigt werden. Mit Michael Kram, Teilnehmer des #BürgerratErnährung. #bürgerrat

🔥 This is an absolutely devastating set of figures on the UK public's view of Brexit. Absolutely damning. Look at each category one by one - particularly the economic ones. YouGov article on these data here. 👉 yougov.co.uk/politics/art...

Is the "firewall" breaking in Germany? Maybe. One thing is certain: if it is, its NOT because it "already broke" long ago at the local level. In our working paper, we show between 2019 & 2024, in 79% of cases all other parties still refused to work w /the Afd bibliothek.wzb.eu/pdf/2025/v24...

only one in five LEAVE voters think that Brexit has been more of a success than a failure, that is nuts

In #Germany, a watershed moment: Just hours after commemorating the Holocaust, the centre-right has accepted the support of the #farright #AfD to pass a (largely symbolic) motion against immigration, tearing a massive hole into the so-called 'firewall', Germany's variety of the cordon sanitaire.

Did anyone call the VVD in the Netherlands to check what happened when they legitimized Wilders in the last election? Leading the VVD party to loose to Wilders and become a smaller coalition partner in a far right government.

Meiner Meinung nach gibt es in nationaler/internationaler Forschung 2 Lehren mit Blick auf Parteien wie die CDU/CSU: a) Es braucht starke konservative Parteien, die konservativ-demokratische Auffassungen vertreten & b) sie zerstören sich selbst, wenn die klare Kante zu radikalen Rechten fällt.

Conservatives share more false claims in polarized settings www.psypost.org/conservative... @psypost.bsky.social “Conservatives are more likely to share misinformation when they feel their group is under threat..." From study: "...polarized situations exaggerate conservative motives & behaviors."

Introducing the Centre for Democratic Resilience - world-leading research and educational programmes to understand and promote the resilience of liberal democracy: ow.ly/1sKl50UL7Wn

At @politicsoxford.bsky.social we are launching the Centre for Democratic Resilience. Building on our expertise, we do not only want to produce cutting-edge research but we also want to connect research to important stakeholders. Democracy is under threat. We want to work together to protect it.

Over the 2020 US and NZ elections, antidemocratic attitudes preceded conspiracy beliefs, rather than conspiracy beliefs fostering antidemocratic attitudes by @lindaskitka.bsky.social & many others in @ispp-pops.bsky.social #socpsych #polisky #polpsych onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

How did the EU's electricity mix change in the last year? ☀️ Big growth in solar ☢️ 🌊 Rebound in nuclear & hydro 💨 Not so much growth in wind 🏭 Large drop in fossil fuels (both coal and gas) 🔌 Demand up From @ember-energy.org's new European Electricity Review: ember-energy.org/latest-insig...

"we find that non-participation of the US would eliminate more than a third of the world emissions reduction"

Distrust unconditionally pushes people away from the status quo, but does not unconditionally pull people towards any alternative model. Rather than technocracy and authoritarianism, political distrust particularly stimulates support for direct democracy link.springer.com/article/10.1...

People don't really think any of this! Overestimates of small proportions are a quirk of general innumeracy, not genuine misperceptions. See research by @brianguay.bsky.social et al: —PNAS forthcoming: www.brianguay.com/files/guay_2... —Psychonomic Bulletin 2017: link.springer.com/article/10.3...

Misinformation isn't random - it's strategic. 🧵 In the first cross-national comparative study, we examine 32M tweets from politicians. We find that misinformation is not a general condition: it is driven by populist radical right parties. with @julianachueri.bsky.social doi.org/10.1177/1940...

My paper (w/ @turnbulldugarte.com) is now out on: ❓How do people derive social class of representatives and the public? The headline is that working-class parliamentarians are less likely to be perceived as such (compared to otherwise identical lay public) www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Encouraging politicians to act on climate: A field experiment with local officials in six countries. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Workers were never well-represented among cabinet ministers globally, but things have deteriorated over time. From our Paths to Power project where we have collected biographical data on almost 45,000 ministers from 137 countries in the period 1966-2021.

What happened to national news could happen to local news - as we've seen again and again, elite attacks are the most important factor undermining media trust www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Happy to see this piece out in ZfVP🥳 Democratic resilience is a widely discussed topic, but the concept still shows some shortcomings. @lionmert.bsky.social, @matthiasrosenthal.bsky.social, Jana Niedringhaus, Johannes Helgest, and I address these systematically. A🧵: doi.org/10.1007/s122...

Deviations of economic reporting from actual economy correlate with election outcomes, though not as much as presumed. about 30% of effect of economic growth is mediated through news sentiment; unemployment effect is direct. Across 15 countries. www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

Analysis of the rising gender gap in radical right voting based on @eesresearch.bsky.social EES 2024 data 📊 in the FT 👇

Warum lernen wir im Umgang mit der radikalen Rechten nicht dazu? Gerade wieder bei Musk. Es gibt so viele gute Studien zur Normalisierung der radikalen Rechten. Warum gibt es keine Norm im Journalismus, dass zumindest basale Kenntnisse dieser dazugehören sollten, wenn man darüber schreibt? #Thread

New Gender Update out in @ejpgjournal.bsky.social. With data from the new wave of the EES, I show a strong increase in support for the far right among young voters. Especially the share of young men who consider voting for the far right has exploded. bristoluniversitypressdigital.com/view/journal...

What happens when radical right-wing populist parties are in government? In our op-ed, we summarize some key polisky findings: normalization, curtailed civil liberties, weaker economic performance, greater inequality, and an overall threat to democracy itself www.derbund.ch/adrian-vatte...