Friedrich Merz has proposed to grant "associate EU membership" to Ukraine. It would include: - Participation in EU institutions without voting rights - Step-by-step access to EU-funded programmes - Mutual assistance under Article 42.7 - Snap-back mechanism in case of backsliding Full story.

Which border matters most? An analysis of how different types of internal boundaries affect voting behavior, by Jona-Frederik Baumert www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

The Swedish 🇸🇪 Parliament just approved a law that would create a tiered citizenship scheme, with a 1st class (mostly for the native born) that cannot be revoked and a 2nd class (mostly for the naturalized) that can: www.svt.se/nyheter/inri... Only two parties (Left and Green) voted against.

On 7 May 2026, Britain ran a PR experiment: Scottish Parliament: a Mixed-Member Proportional system Welsh Senedd: a (new) Low-Magnitude Party List system Same day, same political context, different outcomes. Which version of PR would be better for Westminster? 🧵

In further embrace of flexibility over unity, German foreign minister Wadephul today held a speech calling for institutional reforms in EU foreign policy. Some aspects are standrd German positions, such as majority voting, but Wadephul also called for using Enhanced Cooperation in foreign policy.

🗣️ Do citizens believe parliamentarians when they call out autocratic behavior? A survey experiment by @jmvanlit.bsky.social, @mauritsmeijers.bsky.social & Carolien van Ham suggests that credibility depends on government/opposition status and consistency 👇️ 🔗 www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

NEW - The First Wave of Globalization and Electoral Populism in the United States - https://cup.org/4vVZx50 - Ze Han & Helen V. Milner #OpenAccess #Populism

Very happy to see our APSR paper out today. Figure 2 tells the main story: in Norway, criminal backgrounds become rarer at each step from citizens to candidates to elected officials. Additional analyses point to political parties as key gatekeepers. cup.org/3OKSdbH

Technical but important step - for the first time since Croatia joined in 2013, the EU has today started drafting an accession treaty, with Montenegro:

From our FirstView: The Green Transition and Political Polarization Along Occupational Lines by VINCENT HEDDESHEIMER, @hannohilbig.bsky.social and @erikvoeten.bsky.social. doi.org/10.1017/S000...

🚨 New paper in the @apsrjournal.bsky.social: Nils-Christian Bormann and I propose to model the electoral effects of ethnic and other cleavages with a new *Covoting Regression Model*. A short on the method and our results on ethnic voting in Sub-Saharan Africa. doi.org/10.1017/S000...

Do citizens care who makes policy? In Germany, some policies can be adopted either by federal or state governments. But do voters have preferences over which actor adopts a policy? Turns out, they mostly do not. New paper out @epsrjournal.bsky.social 🧵 1/8 www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

I am looking for a postdoc to join my team at the University of Bremen. 5-year-contract, top-up to 100% possible for most of the contract period. Apply by 04 May 2026. If you have questions about the position, send me an email! www.uni-bremen.de/en/universit...

Hungary: National parliament election Turnout at 3:00 PM CEST 2010: 46.78% 2014: 45.02% 2018: 53.64% 2022: 52.75% 2026: 66.01% Source: Nemzeti Választási Iroda ➤ europeelects.eu/hungary #Hungary

🧠 Do citizens take information into account when forming an opinion about new policy proposals or do they just follow their priors? @jannikfenger.bsky.social suggests they do by exploiting panel data on EU referendums in Denmark and the UK 👇 🔗 www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

New paper out in @thejop.bsky.social : "Immigration, Public Housing, and Support for the French National Front." How does expanding public housing affect far-right support? The answer depends heavily on local conditions, and specifically on local immigrant shares. Paper: doi.org/10.1086/736361

People who normatively endorse greater influence by ordinary citizens simultaneously show limited willingness to exercise such influence, posing significant democratic challenges journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

🚨 Just shipped a major update to GERDA, the German Election Database. - State elections update: new years + mail-in - 3 new election types: Mayoral, County, European - Municipal elections: 1984-2025 - Meinungsbild public opinion - New website & features german-elections.com

Die Bundesregierung macht falsch, was man nur falsch machen kann. Statt eine gesellschaftliche Vision zu entwickeln für ein besseres, gerechteres, prosperierendes Land macht sie Angst, baut Druck auf, verteilt Lasten ungerecht und belehrt das Volk, "es sei zu Opfern bereit". So verliert man Wahlen.

🤔 When is migration politicized? Chendi Wang examines how the three factors problem pressure, public salience, and political pressure contribute to politicization 👇 🔗 www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

The flagship journal of the European Sociological Association, European Societies, makes published articles free for everyone & does not charge authors a publication fee. Authors of quantitative work are required to openly share data & code. No @asanews.bsky.social journal shares all these traits.

Man sieht auch absolut keinen Rechtsruck unter Arbeiter:innen, wenn man Rechts-Links-Positionierungen anschaut. Der Teil der Arbeiterklasse, der vorher schon rechts war, hat in der AfD eine Partei gefunden. Linke Arbeiter wurden dagegen vergessen und demobilisiert.

🗳️ Planning Europe’s elections just got easier. The updated Europe Elects Election Calendar is your one-stop hub for every vote across the continent—from local races to the next EU Parliament election. Check the full schedule: https://europeelects.eu/calendar

📢 Out Now! V-Dem Dataset v16 & the V-Dem Institute Democracy Report 2026 💾 The V-Dem Dataset: v-dem.net/data/the-v-d... 📰 The Report "Unraveling The Democratic Era?”: v-dem.net/publications... 📈 Explore the new data with the V-Dem Graphing tools: v-dem.net/graphing/gra... #PoliSky #PoliSciSky 1/3

Trouble brewing in German European politics - research from @dpa.com released over the weekend shows that cooperation between the EPP and the far-right including the ESN/AfD on migration policy is far more extensive than argued by Manfred Weber:

Udligning eller ej #fv26 #dkpol

Well, two months later the article and its fake literature references are still online 🤦‍♂️

"Violence can destroy power; it is utterly incapable of creating it." -- Hannah Arendt www.jstor.org/stable/23025...

On Sunday, one of Germany’s largest states went to the polls in a closely contested election. What can we learn from the results & how do they relate to looming deindustrialization in one of Germany’s industrial heartlands? A thread with some decriptive patterns from data on 1,101 municipalities. 🧵

New EU court case III Rule of law/asylum law Hungary sues EU court for damages, saying that the EU court breached EU law by fining Hungary for *its* breach of EU law eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-conten...

🔍 How does economic inequality impact beliefs in meritocracy? Using comprehensive survey data from 39 advanced capitalist democracies over more than three decades, Markus Gangl & I examine how rising economic inequality has been shaping citizens' belief in meritocracy. 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/ser/mwag016

Rechtzeitig zur #Landtagswahl: eine neue Version von „Immigration and Nationalism in the Long Run“ (mit schneiderst.de/) -> Die historischen Erfahrungen mit Einwanderung wirken sich dort bis heute auf die Wahlergebnisse der #AfD aus. <- papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Paper w/ @carogarriga.bsky.social: Academia’s Class Problem. PoliSci is dominated by the upper middle class / people with parents who went to university – unlike society as a whole. dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn...

Hey people, stop using Claude to code or write your next paper for you. Be more imaginative. Here is what Claude did when I asked it to turn one of my recent columns into a standup comedy routine. docs.google.com/document/d/1...

Peep this from @anthlittle.bsky.social & @tompepinsky.com. We CAN learn even from biased estimates if we do exactly what @stablemarkets.bsky.social is saying. www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....

#OpenAccess from @ejprjournal.bsky.social - Reference groups and electoral behavior - https://cup.org/46neAJZ - Rune Stubager, Christoffer Hentzer Dausgaard, @lenamariahuber.bsky.social#OpenAccess& Michael Lewis-Beck #FirstView

"But at the beginning of the period of my investigation, it was actually possible to disappear on Danish soil and become someone else. And by the end of the period in 1850, that became almost impossible" Johan Heinsen. ML showing it's possible power as a tool in research. #skystorian #skystorians

🚨🚨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...

Perhaps a good time to bring up again our proposal with @dimitrispieker.bsky.social and Ulrich Karpenstein on how to suspend Hungary’s voting rights based on a breach of solidarity in CFSP: www.delorscentre.eu/en/publicati...

This would be quite an escalation by Orbán - as he promised at the European Council in December to exactly not veto this, as long as Hungary was not part of the Enhanced Cooperation. This would make it a huge breach of trust (if there is any left).

This Hungarian veto is poised to trigger outrage because: - The loan was agreed at the highest level by EU leaders - Hungary secured an opt-out through enhanced cooperation - Ukraine needs the money no later than April - Von der Leyen and Costa will be in Kyiv next week for the fourth anniversary

65.1🦋 Resentment and democracy under strain ✊ @mfilsinger.bsky.social & Steffen Wamsler of @ecpr-ead.bsky.social show how #SGRD shapes not only radical political support, but also citizens’ commitment to democracy 🏛️ drawing on survey data 📊 across six European countries

1/ Sorry for double-posting from X. Sharing a new working paper for the Year of the Horce 🐎: "An AI-assisted workflow that scales reproducibility in empirical research" (bit.ly/repro-ai) w/ Leo Yang Yang

📚 2 PhD positions in International Relations at @stockholm-uni.bsky.social! The positions are linked to my ERC-project about local change and public support for protectionism #academicsky #polisky Deadline April 10, 2026, apply here! 👇 su.varbi.com/en/what:job/... - su.varbi.com/what:job/job...

#AffectivePolarization ≠ only #Partisanships 🎉 Ida Bæk Hjermitslev & @markuswagner.bsky.social widen the lens on political identity, looking in Germany, where ideological identities (left/right) are as strong as party IDs and shape how people judge others 🤔

As expected, all three votes today on the aspects of the 'safe third countries' list at EU level were carried by the EPP with the three far-right parties. Each of the votes looked like a variation of this (data via @howtheyvote.eu):

65.1🦋 Do campaigns matter? 🤔 Denmark’s 2022 EU defence opt-out vote show that #Campaign information matters. While fear-based messages influences #Voters at the start, their effect declines as voters learn more. @rsenninger.bsky.social, J.Fenger & D.Beach of @ecprsgeu.bsky.social

🧵I am happy to announce a new article in Political Behavior @polbehavior.bsky.social, “Are the Politically Active Better Represented?”, co-authored with @jenny-oser.bsky.social, @rdassonneville.bsky.social, @professormpersson.bsky.social, and Anders Sundell. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Today in @theguardian.com, I argue that Donald Trump’s foreign-policy playbook is increasingly about attention capture, or what I call geopolitical clickbait. Plus I outline why this matters for Europe & what to do about it. 🧵 www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

partycoloR is now on CRAN! Started as a simple idea 6 years ago, now it's a full-featured package. Extract party colors and logos from Wikipedia with one line of code. It's already powering ParlGov Dashboard. install.packages("partycoloR")