heartening to see that occasionally Good Things can still happen

turns out project fear was in fact too optimistic over the long run

🗼Jonathan Golub & @movadek.bsky.social: Informal procedures, institutional change, and EU decision-making: evaluating the effects of the 1974 Paris summit 🔗 www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

A little bit of #ggplot2 and #rayshader for the "dimensions" prompt on day 6 of the #30DayMapChallenge! 🌧️ #RStats #DataViz

wouldn't be surprised if the celebrity traitors finale had lower than expected viewer numbers tonight

this paper is a great contribution to the judicial behaviour literature in a number of ways (and will go straight into my judicial politics course at UCL)

Academics in Assyria in the 7th c BC complain that admin is preventing them from doing research and teaching

only a few days left to submit your paper/panel/abstract to the judicial politics section! don't miss out on the hottest property in next year's conference calendar

Dropping a beta version of this page while everyone is up and processing baseball! This tool lets you search the full text of papers from the American Economic Review, American Economic Journal series, and over 30,000 NBER working papers. paulgp.com/econlit-pipe...

A new postdoc position is now available at the Center for European Studies at Harvard for 2026 2027, The Guido Goldman postdoctoral fellowship, named after our center's founder A great opportunity to work at Harvard for the year. Here is more information: ces.fas.harvard.edu/opportunitie...

It's increasingly obvious that Labour's strategy - call it Starmerism, Blue Labour, whatever - has got it badly wrong. It has alienated the party's core vote while failing to win over those leaning to Reform. There was no shortage of people warning them they were getting it wrong either.

The ideal Chotiner interview subject is an expert who cares deeply about their expertise but feels it isn't understood properly to the general populace and Chotiner acts as an intermediary. The ideal Chotiner victim, coincidentally, believes that this describes them perfectly.

parts of the - anglophone, especially - world currently squeezed in the fastest elevator labelled "NORMS" down

1) judge rules against a government minister 2) the minister complains 3) the justice minister begins a disciplinary proceeding against said judge a tale as old as time in backsliding democracies, presently brought to you by Slovakia dennikn.sk/4912084/susk...

realized earlier how over it is after I absent-mindedly apologized to Claude Code for interrupting its terminal

▶️ Judicial Politics 👉🏽 Section chairs: Michal Ovádek (UCL) & Joan-Josep Vallbé (Barcelona) 📢 Our section welcomes work applying both qualitative and quantitative social science approaches to any aspect of judicial politics, incl. >>> 2/

yet more reason to think it's all downhill from here

still getting used to the weekly updates about how the elites and public feel about my immigration status

The European Union continues to ignore Bulgaria’s slide into autocracy. The crisis has been building for years. Now the state has been completely captured by unscrupulous oligarchic forces. Brussels’ answer is to do nothing. www.politico.eu/article/bulg...

the onslaught of conspiracism, incompetence and shit is such these days that seeing a governmental organisation put out a calm, reasoned statement almost brings tears to my eyes

I'm teaching my judicial politics module at UCL again this term which means that I'm keen on new resources for students. In particular, let me know if you published a dataset on courts/judicial politics/legal mobilization and it is not yet listed here: michalovadek.github.io/judicial-pol...

I wish I had time for a fuller description of how much of a racket the British immigration system is -- I and my employer paid thousands of pounds for the privilege of working and paying taxes here -- but this service option of a Home Office subcontractor will have to do for now

the norms version of "the market takes the stairs up and the elevator down"

don't forget anything in a hotel room has once again proved challenge impossible for me. A new mode of failure is not noticing that the adapter stayed in the wall after I pulled out the charger. Another battle lost but the war between my possessions and hotels is not over yet

📢 EPSS community updates!
 We’re excited to share some milestones and announcements with you 👇 epssnet.org/news/

finally a venue for APSA appropriate to the study of animal attacks on voting behaviour

another term when I will be going "this is a good time to be learning about judicial politics" in class every week

marking some intro to quant submissions and wanted to see what chatgpt has to say on one of the most basic questions. Not one for general AI bashing but did not expect a mistake in the most boilerplate Python code imaginable (the issue is the data is continuous, so the mode doesn't work)

WE ARE HIRING! 2 Lecturers in Quantitative Social Science. Want a friendly interdisciplinary department in one of the world's most vibrant cities? This just might be for you. Apply by: 10 Oct www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/...

If true, this update is astonishing. The Commission climbed down from a planned break up of Google’s ad business to a mere fine, and then dropped even the fine for fear of offending Trump. This is for market violations that have been proven in U.S. court.

The doctrine of unlimited parliamentary sovereignty wasn't designed for an age in which a single party, elected on a minority of the vote, could exert total control over the Commons, wield all the powers of the Royal Prerogative & override the Lords, while legislating at pace on any possible subject

yes, great, now start fighting the many arbitrary and illegal border checks

In econ, caring about causal identification is centrist-neoliberal coded. In poli sci, it's conservative coded. On twitter, it's left coded.

art

The candidate has withdrawn her candidacy. The far-right campaign prevailed with the help of the Christian Democrats. The fallout will be felt not only on the Court, but Germany's political system. We are sliding into the trap of authoritarianism with open eyes, just as many other Western countries.

EPSA have announced that they will hold a conference in July 2026. 😵‍💫 We understand that there might be some confusion about EPSS and EPSA. 👉🏽 So we thought we would clarify some things. A short 🧵

@movadek.bsky.social has a new paper in West European Politics looking at immigration rulings in the UK. It's a short read, but the two main findings are: 1) the success of an immigration appeal depends a lot on who the deciding judge is, and 2) BAME women are strict judges. Read: buff.ly/MH32Bsk

this man absolutely never misses (an opportunity to take an obtusely contrarian position)

You will not want to miss the first EPSS conference. If you have work on courts and adjacent topics in the pipeline, do consider submitting to the dedicated Judicial Politics section

❓Does judicial diversity matter for court rulings? 💡The outcome of immigration appeals in the UK significantly hinges on the identity of the deciding judge. 👉@movadek.bsky.social shows that minority women are stricter on migrants than minority men & white female judges. doi.org/10.1080/0140...

I have a new paper out in @wepsocial.bsky.social looking at immigration rulings in the UK (doi.org/10.1080/0140...). It's a short read, but the two main findings are: 1) the success of an immigration appeal depends a lot on who the deciding judge is 2) BAME women are (surprisingly) strict judges

my favourite correlation-related pitfall is that the rho of two binary variables is surprisingly small when the two classes are very imbalanced (eg it is around .66 when a = {0x9, 1} and b = {0x8, 1, 1}, ie only one value is different!)

There's a realistic chance we get to a position where Wikipedia is blocked while official government accounts are posting on a site that created MechaHitler AI

this government's immigration policy and messaging is just this scene from Arrested Development on repeat

academia, meeting the moment as per usual. From Richard Cockett, "Vienna" Yale UP

Self-inflicted embarrassment for the University of Warwick — first it rebrands hyper-generically, then someone totally unhinged decides the *front page of the uni website* should say ‘Learn more about our Brand’.

incredible reporting, infuriating state of affairs. Includes all the worst of: law enforcement, tourism and billionaires. The kind of story that might turn you into a communist or a libertarian. (and finally pushed me over to subscribing)

I decided to make a long blog post combining general sociological things I am aware of with personal observations of cultural and lifestyle differences between the UK and USA. sootyempiric.blogspot.com/2025/07/comp...

I'm generally skeptical about opinion polls – especially in hybrid regimes – and there's lots of assumptions here (such as a unified opposition or a unified student list) – but to go from non-existent to capture a a plurality (and almost majority) of the electorate is spectacular and demonstrates...