Here's the final program for PEEP 2026: the Political Economy of Europe Pre-APSA Conference (Sept 2, Harvard). To attend, sign up here: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F... Excited to hang out again next month! CC @mariacarreri.bsky.social @gemmadipoppa.bsky.social @awiedemann.bsky.social

Absolutely essential reading about the impact of vibe coding on open source and the practice of software development generally, by @samlearner.bsky.social www.ft.com/content/cec8...

"While the terms used to describe fractal patterns often lie in mathematics and semiotics from nature, the settlement patterns in Africa, which are a precursor to these terminologies, are drawn from cultural practices and societal norms" www.africanhistoryextra.com/p/fractals-a...

*not-so-fun fact There is still no authoritative translation of the Ethiopian bible, more than 500 years after the outside world learned about it So it will be long before we get any translations of the hundreds of thousands of African manuscripts discovered in the last 30 yrs

I had never thought about it either. Also, it’s worth remembering that you can, in fact, dramatically improve the world by thinking of a simple thing that would make a difference and becoming obsessed with it. 🤗

From our FirstView: Coethnics Covote in Africa: Studying Electoral Cleavages with a Covoting Regression Model by @carlmc.bsky.social and NILS-CHRISTIAN BORMANN. doi.org/10.1017/S000...

A heartfelt thank you to our amazing outgoing #EPSS president @sarahobolt.bsky.social, who was not only instrumental to creating EPSS, but also sheparded it so successfully through its first year. And equally huge thanks to incoming EPSS president @simonhix.bsky.social for his fabulous leadership!

It seems a good day to remind people that in the UK 3 times as many people work in Indian restaurants or for McDonalds as in the whole coal and steel industry. 5 times as many are academic staff at universities. If Labour does not understand its electorate, there is no way to appeal to it.

A fully funded 2-year postdoc for my ERC project on climate politics, comparative politics and political economy. Deadline: 29 July 2026, 10am CET Starting date: Jan 2027 (flexible) Feel free to reach out next week at EPSS if you’d like to discuss the position www.sciencespo.fr/centre-etude...

📢 The program for the 4th edition of the Yale-UB Historical Political Economy Workshop is out! 📍 Barcelona · 🗓️ June 29–30 Two days of talks ahead — really looking forward to it! Jointly organized with the great @Didacqueralt.bsky.social

We're hiring 2 postdocs at @uio.no on my ERC-Cog project on how authoritarian regimes shape scientific knowledge. 3–4 years, U. of Oslo. Deadline: 10 Sept 2026. Great dept., terms, well funded, bustling & green Scandi capital. Apply! 👉 jobbnorge.no/en/available-jobs/job/303060/postdoctoral-fello

Surprising: frontier models (Claude, ChatGPT, Deepseek V4) produce the most predictable text of any local AI model or human text I've ever tested. Not surprising: Finnegans Wake is off the charts, by far least predictable—Shannon & Lydia Liu proved right—and Hemingway the most predictable human.

Great and sobering.piece on what AI might mean for universities by @rorytruex.bsky.social rorytruex.substack.com/p/will-ai-br...

Universities run on what we might call "integrity tasks"—little pieces of work that are expected to be done honestly, by a person, but with minimal policing and oversight.

So exciting to see my paper "Ethnic Geography and the Colonial Design of Administrative Units in Sub-Saharan Africa" out in @cpsjournal.bsky.social ! Administrative regions and districts are important but why did (colonial) rulers shape them the way they did? A 🧵 journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Thrilled to see Making a Career in Dictatorship featured in The New York Times @nytimes.com My favorite line: “[The book] reads like what you might get if you crossed Hannah Arendt’s ideas about the ‘banality of evil’ with a business school guide on how to get the most out of low performers.”

Very grateful for this excellent review of our recent book *Nationalism and the Transformation of the State* by Michael Hechter in Perspectives on Politics: doi.org/10.1017/S153...

One of the main political stories of the last 50 years, but especially the last 20, has been the displacement of planning by prediction.

English version of early thoughts about the Mali situation. Might post additional remarks below

From our February Issue: The Train Wrecks of Modernization: Railway Construction and Separatist Mobilization in Europe by YANNICK I. PENGL, @carlmc.bsky.social, ROBERTO VALLI, LARS-ERIK CEDERMAN and LUC GIRARDIN doi.org/10.1017/S000...

Mali : les rebelles touareg et les groupes djihadistes prennent le contrôle de Kidal

Whatever happens next in Mali, the face of the regime has already changed

🚨 The APSA Experimental Research section (@experimentsapsa.bsky.social) invites research proposals from post-prospectus PhD students for its 2nd Experimental Research Early-Career Fellowship. The program prrovides a mentor and some funding. (1/2) Apply by June 15 forms.gle/fXHaqYK3TEL3...

Somewhere Bismarck is looking down in confusion as Germany projects power by sending 4,000 pensioners, 12 buffet stations and a TUI loyalty program through the Strait of Hormuz

Our paper, “The Politics of Black Classification: Sociopolitical Cues and Racial Perception” (w/ Lauren Davenport & @hrendleman.bsky.social), has been conditionally accepted at Perspectives on Politics! Sharing abstract below. Long time coming, but we are really proud of this paper. More soon!

📢 Call for Papers: first Annual Digital Publics Conference 📅 21–23 October 2026 | Digital Society Initiative, University of Zurich 👉 To submit: forms.cloud.microsoft/e/BxVnAMyxNh ❗Deadline for abstract submissions is 31 May 2026❗Acceptance notifications will be sent by early july.

🚨New Paper in PNAS: "Refugee Labor Market Integration at Scale: Evidence from Germany’s Fast-Track Employment Program" www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... Ungated preprint osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/px9ew_v3 w/ J Hainmueller, D Hangartner, @niklas-harder.bsky.social & E Vallizadeh #econtwitter #econsky

🚨 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...

🚨 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...

Reuters says Tisza has at least 135 seats: 133 is the constitutional supermajority! Live by highly disproportional electoral systems (which Orbán made even more disproportional with the extra compensation votes awarded to winners), die by highly disproportional electoral systems.

Great articulation of my main worry about AI use among researchers (including myself!) Among current students, a hugely beneficial trait will be the ability to force oneself to sometimes do hard stuff on their own to really understand it even when AI is faster. ergosphere.blog/posts/the-ma...

John Mulaney had it right in 2019: being governed by Trump is like having a horse loose in a hospital. And that "the creepiest days are where you don't hear from the horse at all." However, we have heard a lot from the horse in recent weeks. 2/n www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhkZ...

Must-read piece on the role of tech and policy in the killing of 180 Iranian school girls by US bombs:

This is an excellent summary of the US War on Iran current situation. I’m an existentialist and borderline absurdist and even I struggle with the current moment. This summary is just fantastic.

This article on medieval itinerant rulership (Ottonian, Salian, Staufen), previously available as a preprint, is now published. You can also view the itineraries themselves on a fun accompanying website carlmc.shinyapps.io/hre-itinerar...

Deliberately and explicitly targeting civilian infrastructure is a war crime under the Rome Statute of the ICC. ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/ihl-treat...

This, so many times. Finding good questions that venture into the unknown is much harder than finding good answers to a given question.

what if, rather than approximate answers to the right questions, we got exact answers to the wrong question, made ever more precise, more quickly?

Awards nominations are open for African Politics! Please share widely! @jsteend.bsky.social @stephaniewanga.bsky.social @evlieb.bsky.social @africasacountry.bsky.social @jsas-journal.bsky.social @chinemeluokafor.bsky.social @thelauram16.bsky.social @woldense.bsky.social

I'm very excited that you all can now read about Itinerant Rule in the Holy Roman Empire from 919-1519 in the @ajpseditor.bsky.social! Thank you @claranw.bsky.social, @andrejkokkonen.bsky.social and Jørgen Møller for a great collaboration! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Also finding it hard to keep up with new research? I built something to fix this. SciLove — swipe through recent papers in your field. The feed learns from your saves. Also matches you with researchers saving your work back (opt-out if you prefer). www.scilove.app 3,000+ journals, updated daily

2013

Preferences over contested territory in #Ukraine are addressed in the Wk 7 #RESCMondaySeminar. Speakers: @carlmc.bsky.social & @marniehowlett.bsky.social. Co-convenor Roy Allison for @osgaoxford.bsky.social @ox.ac.uk @lseblogs.bsky.social. In-person only - all welcome! talks.ox.ac.uk/talks/id/8c8...

**CALL FOR PAPERS** LSE–NYU Conference 2026 Making States Work: Capacity, Accountability and Economic Foundations. If you are interested in presenting a paper related to these themes 🗓 Deadline: 6 March More details and how to submit your paper 🔽 sticerd.lse.ac.uk/_new/events/...

Excited to present my paper "Sidelining the Leader? Information Flows during the Outbreak of War" at the Virtual Workshop in HPE today (6.30 PM CET). Thanks to @dkofanov.bsky.social, @tinepaulsen.bsky.social and @janvogler.bsky.social for organizing and to Lina Skoglund for discussing my paper!

Russia, Venezuela, Iran, China, the Sahel region, the United States ... Want to know why state agents carry out brutal repression — or participate in illegal coups? Our new book "Making a Career in Dictatorship" provides answers — it just got published by @academic.oup.com: tinyurl.com/ystwm3tf

One of every thousand American residents has been taken into custody by ICE in the last year.

PEEP is back this year🤌 ! The 4th Political Economy of Europe APSA Pre-Conference will be hosted at Harvard on Sept 2, the day before APSA. We welcome observational, experimental and formal theory work focused on Europe. Deadline: March 1st. forms.gle/V6NEy4AfnSs7...