Mr Fico's junior gov't partner SNS proposes to regulate political polling and assign the supervisory authority to the state-controlled Statistical Office of The Slovak Republic. Bolivia comes to mind. All of Slovakia's established pollsters estimate SNS < the 5% entry threshold since late 2024.

'Hey, look at #Denmark! Social Democrats can stay relevant and marginalise the #farright by becoming - get this! - a bit like the far right!' Parrotted by every medium, contemplated by every SD party, ridiculed by every political scientist.

For those who don't read (and let's be honest, who does anymore).... here is the recent REDACT project final report in the form of a video! Featuring @cb-hq.bsky.social @beetroot.bsky.social @mlmadisson.bsky.social and Michael Butter, Elżbieta Drążkiewicz & Nebojša Blanuša youtu.be/U5QPNDHa0JE?...

weird how every time a "moderate liberal" party cites "electoral realities" for embracing fascist policies they get shit canned 🙃

This article by Joep van Lit and Carolien van Ham is very useful for those interested in empirically studying democratic erosion in all its complexities.

The problem with training AI models on existing human-made data is that there might not be enough smart content. The 80:20 rule and all that; what you will end up with, at best, is a general artificial mediocrity.

"NATO has never been as strong as it is today"

Academics vying for a spot in Epstein‘s world. There are so many. I feel the need to make a thread, so I don’t keep confusing them. 1/

Organizujeme konferenciu, kde nám budú prednášať napr. @tomaskoblizek.bsky.social aj @pavolhardos.bsky.social, tak šup šup... Call je stále otvorený! www.juls.savba.sk/dezinfo.html

New article alert! 🚨 "Fractured Pluralism: The Prospects of Political Liberalism in the Age of Vibes" is out now in Etica & Politica. Co-authored with Matej Cíbik, we argue that contemporary #politicaltheory might need an update to its understanding of social disagreement. 🧵

Who is really “running” the European Parliament right now? On the margins of the geopolitical changes, the shifts in the EU are also accelerating. In my newest EU-Analytics, I dug into all final votes from December 2025 – and the shift of power to the centre-right & far right is accelerating:

Most discussions about “misinformation” treat the problem as if people simply don’t have good enough critical-thinking skills. It sounds intuitive, but it’s not entirely accurate. The problem isn’t just individual ignorance, it’s the structure of the information environment people are placed into.

On the other hand, it is a win for white nationalists when @nytimes.com cravenly launders white nationalist tropes and injects them into the broader discourse in easily digestible form

The fascist right will never drop its anti-Ukraine stance, because they want to see Russian aggression succeed. But can the smaller yet quite vocal anti-anti-Russia left—Chomsky, Quincy Institute, Lula, etc—finally admit that blaming the war on the US and “they won’t even negotiate” were misguided?

The “canceled people” database listing victims of cancel culture, which includes oft-repeated cases such as Bret Weinstein (Evergreen State College) and James Damore (Google), has a little over 200 entries across 18 years. canceledpeople.org

Pravda a láska musí zvíťaziť nad lžou a nenávisťou. Týmto vítame portál Marker na našom zozname nedôveryhodných webov. #konspiratorisk #markersk #marker #protipropagande

Buying used books can be an adventure. You get a book, sure, but sometimes you can also glimpse the personality of the previous owner. For example, I just got a book, where based on the underlining and marginalia, I concluded that the previous owner was an idiot.

🗳 J͢e͢d͢n͢o͢u͢ ͢f͢r͢a͢š͢k͢a͢,͢ ͢p͢o͢d͢r͢u͢h͢é͢ ͢t͢r͢a͢g͢é͢d͢i͢e͢ kapital-noviny.sk/jednou-frask... @apolenarychlikova.bsky.social píše pár dní pred voľbami v Česku o tom, že kampaň je pokojnejšia než pred rokmi, no spoločnosť sa triešti. Polarizácia podľa nej siaha tak hlboko, že ani jasný výsledok volieb nemusí priniesť pokoj.

Odteraz ma oslovujte len "slowakische Politologe"! Môj minulotýždňový text pre Kapitál o zmene ústavy teraz vyšiel v nemeckom preklade na JÁDU magazíne. www.goethe.de/prj/jad/de/g...

For their first project, my Kids and Society students have to create an infographic clarifying a common misconception about "kids these days." I'd prefer that they not use AI to create their projects, so I made my own infographic explaining why : )

SÍRENEN NEWS: DOSKÚŠALI SME Drahé poslucháčstvo, Sirény od septembra končia. Nerozhodli sme sa tak my, ale nové vedenie. Prečo? Netušíme, dôvod sme sa nedozvedeli. Ako sme sa dopočuli, nie sme jediní, o ktorých nové vedenie rozhodlo, že končia. 1/7

Som si ešte znovu zhrnul uhorkovú kauzu open.substack.com/pub/pavolhar...

A very powerful essay by Holocaust scholar Omer Bartov, arguing that: a) Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, and b) denying this threatens to "undermine everything that Holocaust scholarship and commemoration have stood for." Do read the whole thing www.nytimes.com/2025/07/15/o...

I couldn’t help myself, had to do the meme; Arrested Development was timeless… #arrestedforeignpolicy

Anti-trans policy means surveilling cis women in a culture of gender suspicion. Closed borders means surveilling natives in a culture of "Papers please" suspicion. Segregation means surveilling whites to prevent race-mixing and race treason. Fascism erodes the freedoms even of those not targeted.

If complementing someone for a paper you haven't read is wrong, I don't want to be right.

*reading a student thesis - huh, i guess asking the AI model - which clearly wrote much of this tripe - to order your references alphabetically would have been a prompt too far, wouldnt it...

The US government says reading Toni Morrison or Maya Angelou is political. In my terrorism class, I explain how “Great Replacement” is a false conspiracy theory that’s motivated multiple terrorist attacks. Now that America’s leaders push the theory too, teaching that is political. Should I stop?

putting a delicious Canadian twist on the old "go woke, go broke" mantra www.nytimes.com/2025/04/28/w...

Herbert P. Kitschelt is the winner of the 2025 Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science. 🏆 He is awarded the prize for " having increased knowledge of the functioning of democratic party systems with exquisite theoretical acuity and impressive empirical breadth and depth."

tariff plan is going well I see

AI (like crypto) needs to be properly taxed to reflect the environmental and technological costs.

This is 💯% correct (and reading/sharing it on social media is a bit... ironic?)

No political science in post-communist Europe, except for Czechia and Russia? 🤔❓ Also, they painted Crimea blue. doi.org/10.1017/S104... The caption—"“yes” when one or more political science departments are located in a country"—does not quite correspond to the selection criteria.

‘DST—Democracy Saving Time?’ the article practically writes itself. Wouldn't pass peer review in political science journals, but hey, there's other journals, and with higher impact factors to boot. A reboot of an old joke with @pavolhardos.bsky.social and Miro Oroš.

You might say “But I was only into the Harry Potter lady’s crank bathroom jihad, I didn’t want the Nazi stuff” and that is just too bad, this was not in fact about what *you* wanted. You have been taken for a ride by calculating psychos.

Literally straight out of the book. We've gone way past "it could happen here" and are straight into "it is happening."

Dobrá správa na dnes: žaloba denníka Štandard na náš projekt Konspiratori*sk bola zamietnutá.

The only western democracy hell-bent on protecting itself is... Romania?

Gutting the VA and Medicaid to spend those tax dollars on chasing down debunked conspiracy theories. 👍👍

I know this is absurd, but the propaganda works in because of the absurdity rather than in spite of it. While this quote is about antisemitism, it readily applies to most forms of bigotry.

🧭 🇪🇺 Quadrant size by the combined vote share of all parties in the quadrant as per CHES @chesdata.bsky.social 2024 estimates. Political compass mobiles, with apologies to Alexander Calder.

Prečo sa vláda chce zastavovať pri poznatkoch zo ZŠ len pri biológii? Do ústavy poprosím aj, že skupenstvá poznáme len 3 a že nemožno robiť odmocniny zo záporných čísel… #ústavaprenezmaturovaných #dvepohlavia

Very happy that our paper (w/ @dziblatt.bsky.social & E Dinas) has been accepted @bjpols.bsky.social . We've seen the center right increasingly adopt far-right rhetoric. Our experiment in 🇩🇪 finds that this erodes anti-prejudice norms *more* than when the far-right employs similar rhetoric. 1/3

In retrospect, the most unrealistic thing about the movie Idiocracy is that all the morons in power were basically nice.

Very interesting to look at the age distribution in the exit poll. The SPD which already did very poorly with young voters last time continues to loose further there - a party of pensioners. Interestingly, also huge losses for the Greens among young voters and massive gains for the Linke.