I just…

I cannot think of a democracy anywhere in the world where this sort of thing could happen. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/17/b...

Fancy half an hour of me coming up with increasingly obscure ways of noting that Keir Starmer is not gifted with charisma? Listen or watch below.

Delighted to have the cover story this month on whether there is a left populist solution for Keir Starmer’s Labour. TLDR? Nah, it’s not too long - so read it…

❗Among their electoral potential, social democratic parties face very few strategic dilemmas. Left-progressive appeals resonate most strongly. New study in @worldpolitics.bsky.social with @tabouchadi.bsky.social , @indubioproreto.bsky.social, Nadja Mosimann, and @markuswagner.bsky.social Thread👇

I’m sure everybody needed yet another ‘Labour One Year In’ piece ;) But how many others draw on Jon Elster and the problem of ‘byproducts’?

I grew up in rural South Carolina with a single mom who worked multiple jobs. At times, we relied on Medicaid and SNAP—like so many others. My heart breaks for those now wondering if that help will still be there. Imagine having all that power and choosing to make people’s lives worse. Shameful.

I am excited to see my ARPS article reviewing the return of industrial policy with @dbreznitz.bsky.social is now published! www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

Have written up some of my thoughts about the increasingly sinister use of 'non-UK born' and 'white British' in the British press. The obsession with 'white British' citizens over other British citizens harms all of us and needs to be called out. benansell.substack.com/p/who-counts

📌 What Poland’s razor-thin presidential election result tells about crisis for liberal democracy across the West, where centrist coalitions are eroding, and populist forces are gaining ground. My piece in Social Europe: www.socialeurope.eu/polands-pola...

#FarRight forces in Europe & beyond are trying to redesign education systems to promote their illiberal & authoritarian principles🧑‍🎓 This ProgPost dossier discusses this w/ articles by @anjagiudici.bsky.social @neszter.bsky.social & @jovanakaraulic.bsky.social 🗞️ feps-europe.eu/dossier/the-...

I'm increasingly concerned by the elision of the science lobby and the tech lobby in the US and elsewhere. Michael Kratsios, a Thiel acolyte, was formerly chief technology officer. Now chief science advisor. Scientists need to unhitch their wagons from tech www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-st...

I get personal about the Trump administration's latest visa moves in FT Opinion.

1/A government that is willing to do this is the same government that would nationalize a company. It is the same mentality of state-market relations. This is not an issue of Universities need to stand up. The whole free market system needs to stand up. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/22/u...

🚨 NEW REPORT: Progressive parties are losing the battle of ideas – and votes – to the populist right. The centre-left must reinvent or die. Today, we launch a new project to forge a bold new identity for progressives in the 21st century. Read here: www.ippr.org/articles/fac...

What do tax cuts for the rich do? They increase inequality. They have no effect on economic growth or unemployment. "Our results provide strong evidence against the influential political–economic idea that tax cuts for the rich ‘trickle down’ to boost the wider economy."

At some level, the SC majority is clearly aware that they are risking the full faith and credit of the United States. They are trying to go right up to the line but no further. It won’t work.

The entire nation should protesting this utterly unwarranted, unprecedented, & probably illegal on-going attack on a university. It's right out of the authoritarian playbook. It's an assault on possibility free speech, free thought, & dissent. Fascism is coming small step by small step, not at once.

Three things made the US a rich and powerful nation: the rule of law, its science & innovation system, and openness to foreign talent. Remarkable how Trump has taken a sledgehammer to all three. No enemy of this country could do more.

'Adoption' is entirely the wrong word for this. AI systems are incomplete. They are not plug-and-play. Their 'adoption' is actually a process of continued innovation, which requires additional work.

NEW: The rate of sepsis in Houston surged 63% after Texas banned abortion. In the Dallas-Fort Worth area, where hospital leaders empowered doctors to intervene before patients’ conditions worsened, it rose just 29%.

WHAT THE LENTIL KING OF SASKATCHEWAN KNOWS ABOUT WORLD TRADE @tracyalloway.bsky.social and I talked about the global ag trade with the one and only Murad Al-Katib, the man who turned the province into a pulses-exporting powerhouse. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/w...

A big feature of AI's irresponsibility is its lack of purpose. @anildash.com has proposed an excellent set of innovation targets here. He wants LLMs to be hallucination-free, green, actually open source, community-led and built on data consent www.anildash.com/2025/05/01/w...

Governance can't be automated. My latest comment piece in @science.org www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

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."

A colleague at Stanford’s business school used The Stanford Daily to argue—poorly—against DEI. The piece was riddled with historical errors and left one searching for fact, so I broke my public writing hiatus to respond. I hope you’ll read and share the piece. stanforddaily.com/2025/04/22/w...

If the IRS deprives Harvard of its tax-exempt status, that's very bad for Harvard but it's also a catastrophe for the IRS. Instead of a neutral agency that enforces tax law, it will become a tool of partisan warfare. It may never recover.

It’s here, in my hot little hands! Official pub date (w open access on the website below) is 5/27. Launch event at Strathclyde Univ. on 5/28. Mark your calendars! @profbambra.bsky.social @profkatsmith.bsky.social policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/getting-better

At a time when international students and scholars are turning away from America, instead of seizing this opportunity, Number 10 have a steely focus on winning the Runcorn by-election to help defend their wafer-thin majority of 174 seats.

Those trying to understand the tariffs as economic policy are dangerously naive. No, the tariffs are a tool to collapse our democracy. A means to compel loyalty from every business that will need to petition Trump for relief. 1/ A 🧵 to explain his plan and how we fight back.

This would - and should be - a clearance-pulling, career-ending scandal in any other administration. At minimum, Waltz has to resign. 🎁 www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...

🌭🐆📈NEW POST ON FADFO 📈🐆🌭 Wait, what's FADFO? A sneaky attempt to coin a neologism & a response to the memes you see in the emojis: hotdog suit guy, leopards eating faces party, and the FAFO graph. What happens when you F#$% Around but you Don't Find Out? 1/n benansell.substack.com/p/fadfo

The contrast between a society that realises democracy is at stake and one that doesn’t.

As I often post these days, I have a book out about the statistics we need - any day now 🙂 press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

Stop pretending that the authoritarian repression is BECAUSE of the problems in {higher education, the media, the law, government, immigration policy, etc.}. This is what authoritarians do. If they didn't focus on these justifications, they'd come up with other ones.

This is correct. There is no plausible argument that Democrats will be blamed shutting down the government if they stand up to Musk and Trump. Senate Democrats must vote against cloture.

The institutional Democratic Party is guided by an almost pathological level of conflict avoidance in almost every direction. “What can we do to make the least number of people mad?” is just a bankrupt way to operate.

New from me - is it possible we are actually at peak populism? This post is an exercise in working through a scenario - I may very well be wrong. But also, outside of America, I think something is shifting. Because of America. 1/n benansell.substack.com/p/twilight-o...

Lots of talk about ‘left behind’ places & far-right’s rise. How do industrial decline, economic hardship, & resentment actually fuel far-right support? In new @apsrjournal.bsky.social paper exploring Xylella epidemic that devastated centuries-old 🫒 groves in 🇮🇹, we find out shorturl.at/xgeho

Some of my reflections @theguardian.com today on what the US embrace of Russia means for the EU & how Germany can play a leading role. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Musk/DOGE cuts are (1) wildly unpopular, (2) plainly illegal, and (3) utterly incompetent, and yet the DC political establishment is unwilling or unable to stop it. They are bowing to a regime of government by billionaire fiat.

Do resources exist for the climate transition? In our PPRN brief Elsa Massoc argues that the answer is yes. She goes under the hood of European state spending, and finds substantial fiscal headroom for climate policies.

Everyone who was paying any attention at all knew that the goal was to enable a new Trump administration to ban student protests. Everyone knew exactly what they were doing, and they should be ashamed of themselves. It's an utter disgrace.

1. The Atlantic Order is over. Time for Europe to seize Russian assets and commit them to Ukraine. kyivindependent.com/can-europe-g...

Had the absolute pleasure of chatting with the brilliant @benansell.bsky.social about a super easy not-at-all-world-moving topic: the possible death of liberalism. Really, folks, no big deal. Just light conversation. Do check it out on Radio 4 this afternoon!

Congrats again, everyone, on four years of unserious, unending discussion of the imminent Biden “recession.” Well done. Now begins the Finding Out about what actual recessions look like & what actually causes them.

Medicaid at 60 special issue from JHPPL is out, ungated. All-star lineup includes: @povertyscholar.bsky.social @pamherd.bsky.social @laurawherryr.bsky.social @joefigs.bsky.social @charleywillison.bsky.social @ericpatashnik.bsky.social & more read.dukeupress.edu/jhppl/issue/...

Tremendous fun to talk to @benansell.bsky.social for this episode, all the more so given it was alongside @himself.bsky.social and @abenewman.bsky.social whose book Underground Empire is just fascinating. Have a listen. If you find my voice as irritating as I do you can always skip those bits👇