New publication on citizen forums: We highlight the risks of exclusion, elite cherry-picking, and limited public awareness, and argue that such forums should be viewed as one component of a broader healthy “discursive infrastructure” rather than a panacea for democratic decline. Link below ⬇️

NEW - Elections Without Constraints? The Appeal of Electoral Autocracy Across the World - https://cup.org/49auQPf - @anjaneundorf.bsky.social, @sirianned.bsky.social, Kristian Vrede Skaaning Frederiksen & @aykutozturk.bsky.social #OpenAccess

🫶 Wishing everyone restful holidays and a happy start into the new year! We look back on many inspiring moments in 2025, and forward to many more interesting discussions and projects in 2026 ✨🎄

🚀 How do citizens imagine their future democracy – on Mars and on Earth? Using large survey experiments in the US and Germany, we explore how people envision democratic governance with and without path dependencies 🪐 Read the preprint here ➡️ osf.io/preprints/so...

Yesterday, the DDME Team held a workshop as part of the Freedom Week in Berlin, where participants got to design democracy on Mars! 🚀 💡 It was an inspiring experience to turn survey research into practice and watch participants discuss the pros and cons of involving different actors in the process.

I can't wait for our Workshop on "Democracy on Mars" during the Berlin Freedom Week, with my favourite colleagues AND hosted in my favourite place, the Schwarzkopf-Stiftung Junges Europa 🚀 🫰 Sign up if you are in Berlin on November 15th! berlin-freedom-week.com/event/wie-so...

🥳 I'm excited that my project on opinion formation around the future of citizenship has received funding by @dfg.de 🔎 On this highly polarized issue, I will investigate opinion and opinion change in 4 migration societies. 💡This will include an issue-specific analysis of the transnational cleavage.

❓Are cosmopolitans participatory, technocratic or representative democrats? Despite their active role in society, few analyze cosmopolitans' governance preferences. My preprint uses cosmopolitanism as a multidimensional concept to investigate this question 🤔👇 Any feedback is welcome!

Last week, @franziskamaier.bsky.social @anjarieker.bsky.social @vanessaschwaiger.bsky.social presented work on governance preferences, social divides, and methods of assessing citizen preferences at the EPSA (now @epssnet.bsky.social) in Madrid☀️ Thanks for great feedback and conversations! ✨

Our @demolabs.bsky.social crew is on the way to Madrid for #EPSA - looking forward ☀️📚🚀 @anjarieker.bsky.social @vanessaschwaiger.bsky.social

🧵 THREAD: Can a short online intervention help defend democracy against partisan polarization? In our new study - just published in the @bjpols.bsky.social - my colleagues and I tested this question across 33 countries 🌍 with over 41,000 participants 🧑‍🤝‍🧑. Here’s what we found 👇

Who does Spiderman vote for? Who you vote for. In a new paper w/ @markuswagner.bsky.social we show that people engage in motivated projection of political identities. In the absence of explicit info on politics, individuals rely on valence to infer the politics of others doi.org/10.1017/psrm...

Woran man übrigens auch sehr schön sehen kann, dass Wahlrechts- und Repräsentationsfragen immer auch umkämpfte normative Fragen sind: Einfach mal vergleichen, wie die Diskurse um "verwaiste Wahlkreise" vs. Repräsentation von Frauen verlaufen. (Parität ließe sich ja auch über Wahlrecht sichern)

Today we had a joint meeting with our group and @demolabs.bsky.social to talk about current projects! We never thought about democracy on Mars - Thanks for the visit!

The most striking result from yesterday’s German election #btw2025 🇩🇪: 🔹 35 years after reunification: The GDR is redrawn on this map. 🔹 The AfD won 45 out of 48 electoral districts in the East. 🔹 In some parts of Saxony, they came close to 50%! Why is this happening? Here’s my take 👇

If you sum it up, 49% of young German men voted for a right-leaning party, but only 28% of young women. Conversely, 59% of young women voted for a left-leaning party, but only 38% of young men. (BSW left out.)

The German election campaign has been dominated by migration. How might it affect pol behavior? Francesco Veri and I show that negative news coverage on migration triggers willingness for hostile political action. Read more in our Political Psychology article now published here (open access!) 👇

Seems like a good day to reshare this recent study that shows how mainstream parties can fuel the success of the radical right by opening the door to them

Yesterday, the wonderful Lea Kaftan @dielea.bsky.social shared her valuable insights on how authoritarianism and populism shape citizens' support for democracy and are linked to vote choice 🗳️🔍

🚨 Only 3 weeks left to apply! 🚨 Postdoc position in Advertising Democracy. An excellent opportunity to join a dynamic team and do impactful research.

Look back at 2024 with us💁: Our team travelled to several conferences (like the Deliberative Democracy Summer School in Canberra, ECPR Joint Sessions, EPSA), and workshops (on methods, and democratic preferences). @vanessaschwaiger.bsky.social @seraphinearnold.bsky.social @anjarieker.bsky.social

Hello! 🦋👋We are the democracy research unit at the University of Stuttgart. Follow us for insights into our research on democratic preferences, democratic reform, and the future of democracy. 👇📚☕

This week we hosted André Bächtiger and the ERC project Designing Democracy on Mars and Earth at @unisg.ch for a 2-day workshop 🤓 with our SNF project Varieties of Expertise (with @amberzen.bsky.social and Pradeep Krishnan). We had rich discussions on what citizens want from their democracies 🗳️,

How democratic are ordinary citizens in Western democracies? If you're curious, here’s a starter pack of researchers studying citizens’ democratic values on Bluesky 🔵 Let me know if you’d like to be included in the list! 👇🏽 #Democracy #PoliticalScience go.bsky.app/HX24CcL

Seems lots of new people joined Bluesky over the weekend, so I'm re-upping this starter pack I created of people working on democratic innovations for a more participatory and deliberative politics. Still room for others to be added, so give me a shout if I missed you. go.bsky.app/LX11yEA #polisky

Unbedingt lesen!

Polish elections are big for the EU – but what do 👉Polish citizens👈 think about EU integration after an era of Eurosceptic government? We ran a survey just before the election. Indeed, most Poles prefer intergovernmental solutions though there is also support for federal ones.

What conditions have led to successful uptake of minipublic recommendations? We're excited to present our work in the Participedia Governance Seminar Series next week! Tune in if you're interested 👇 www.eventbrite.ca/e/participat... Polisky

Who should be entitled to political rights? Our research on deliberating on the boundaries of the demos is out with EJPR as OpenAccess Polisky We find that deliberation does not lead to more progressive views on non-citizen enfranchisement. Why? ejpr.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....