Long ago, in a study of the democratic attitudes in Germany, Dalton raised the possibility of “Fragebogendemokraten” (questionnaire democrats): people who hesitate to express their sincere dislike for “democracy” in surveys, providing instead the “socially desirable” response (1)

📄 🚨 New Research on Polarization, Fragmentation, and Democracy in @democratization.bsky.social Nils-Christian Bormann and I explore the impact of ideological polarization and fragmentation on the democratic systems of interwar Europe: lnkd.in/erjJr9qF #polarization #democracy #data #history (1/4)

Some thoughts on the strategic rationale behind the "Brandmauer” – the cordon sanitaire vis-à-vis the AfD – and the challenges associated with maintaining it. Seems pertinent, given that senior CDU/CSU figures regularly float the idea of ditching it and exploring avenues for closer cooperation.

My sabbatical leave allowed me to reflect on my professional life. As I’ve stepped into more senior roles in academia (plus gotten a bit older), I often get asked: 
“How do you keep writing academic articles, policy work, opinion pieces, while juggling everything else?” My answer: skillpower 🧵

We finally published the Archive of Interwar Europe Election Data and Assemblies (AIEEDA)! 🗳️💽🤓 Find out more about party positions, cabinet formation, and parliamentary elections in 25 European democracies between 1919 and 1939! We also collected geo-referenced data for 6 countries! 🗺️📍 rdcu.be/ehRgD

🎉 Big step for #MEDem! We’ve officially applied for the #ESFRIroadmap2026— backed by 15 governments, 1,000+ researchers & 100+ institutions/associations. One more milestone toward building Europe’s infrastructure for comparative #DemocracyResearch ✅ Read more on our #MEDemBlog 👉

Do you care about democracy in the EU? @ec.europa.eu wants to hear your views on disinformation, information manipulation, elections, free media, civil society, societal resilience, citizen participation and engagement. Researchers - share your evidence! Deadline 26 May ec.europa.eu/info/law/bet...

Leben auf Okinawa in Japan so viele Hundertjährige wie nirgends sonst auf der Welt? Nö. Medien behaupten das trotzdem immer wieder. Jetzt ohne Paywall lesen: uebermedien.de/103765/japan...

Quick reminder: Join us on August 1, 2025 for a short online conference discussing your research ideas! 😎

📣 Last Chance to join! #GESISworkshops

Earlier this month, Paul Bederke had the opportunity to attend the 1st OSCARS Annual Meeting in Rome (March 3–4, 2025), where he represented our HarDIS project – Harmony in the Democratic Ideological Space. oscars-project.eu/projects/har...

In about a month, we submit our application for the ESFRI Roadmap 🇪🇺 Help us reach 1,000 researchers by showing your support here: forms.gle/dm8K4xFgXD9b... ⚙️ Regardless, we’re sure you’ll find MEDem’s tools & services useful once they’re live. We’re already working on first prototypes this year! 🏗️📊

The actual datasets are now also available online via the Harvard Dataverse: 🕵‍♀️ doi.org/10.7910/DVN/...

Basierend auf einer Vielzahl von Datenquellen zeigen wir in unserem Research Brief eine Sache: Verluste an die radikale Rechte sind nur marginal relevant für die elektorale Krise der Sozialdemokratie. Anders gesagt: heutige Wähler von radikal rechts sind keine früheren Sozialdemokraten.

This overview deserves another share, important to be informed of the extent of the authoritarian actions of the Trump administration

#GESISblog #blog Data Spotlight #7 on the GESIS blog: Dr. Alex Jedinger and Dr. Christina Eder introduce a thematic data collection on elections and political attitudes: blog.gesis.org/data-...

The DOGE firings have nothing to do with “efficiency” or “cutting waste.” They’re a direct push to weaken federal agencies perceived as liberal. This was evident from the start, and now the data confirms it: targeted agencies overwhelmingly those seen as more left-leaning. 🧵⬇️

*JOB* befristete Stelle bei @gesis.org im Kontext des Aufbaus eines Datenportals für die Rassismus- und Rechtsextremismusforschung (DP-REX) speziell zu online Inhalten über AVERA datenportal-rechtsextremismus.de/rex-forschun.... Ausschreibung unter: www.hidden-professionals.de/HPv3.Jobs/ge...

New data & publication at BJPols Studying Multi-Level Systems with Cross-Level Data - by Leonce Röth @dasalgon.bsky.social @dielea.bsky.social & André Kaiser 💥 2,226 regional elections | 21 countries | 1941-2019 Data portal: multi-level-cross-level-politics.eu Data: github.com/leonce-colla...

New data out for studying party politics and elections across levels in 21 democracies worldwide! 🗳️🧐🥳🤓😎 Check out our online data visualization tool, too: multi-level-cross-level-politics.eu And our data: doi.org/10.7910/DVN/...

Are you a PhD student or early career PostDoc researching how citizens and parties behave in democracies, what factors weaken democracies, and what factors strengthen them? Are you currently working on one of your first academic manuscripts? We are organizing a workshop just for you! Please share!

📢 Ready to dive into computational text analysis with #rstats? Join @dielea.bsky.social, @janschwalbach.bsky.social & @jwaeckerle.bsky.social for the #GESISworkshop and gain hands-on skills to enhance your research! More info & registration ➡️ t1p.de/comp-text-an...

📣 Calling all curious minds! Interested in human behavior, decision-making, or social interactions? 🧠 Learn to design, run, and analyze lab experiments on trust, cooperation, and competition with hands-on guidance from Florian Heine @vuamsterdam.bsky.social. ➡️ tinyurl.com/LaboratoryEx...

*Introduction to Computational Text Analysis with R* by @dielea.bsky.social, @jwaeckerle.bsky.social & @janschwalbach.bsky.social. 🗓️ 01 – 03 April 2025 🏢 Online 🌐 t1p.de/comp-text-an...

🎓 We are looking for a dedicated Post-doctoral Researcher in Empirical Approaches to Rule of Law to join our interdisciplinary Horizon Europe NET-ROL project. This full-time, 36-month position is based in the heart of The Hague! To learn more about this call, see👇

Lets study Party Competition over democracy with political science tools - I argue in a recently published paper on Democracy as Electoral Issue in Germany - to better understand the effect of pro- and anti-democracy appeals in elections! | www.cogitatiopress.com/politicsandg...

Delighted that the European Election Study (EES) 2024 🇪🇺 is released today! This is only possible thanks for the generosity of academic colleagues across Europe who funded it and the hard work of the EES exec and GESIS Hope you enjoy the data!

In the European Research Council MULTIREP project we are looking for a postdoc in Computational Social Science. If you are a political/social scientist doing technical/methods stuff or data/computer scientist working on social science applications, 👇 is for you wratil.eu/files/MULTIR...

I am so proud that my #openscience project Harmony in the Democratic Electoral Space (HarDIS) will start in January next year. Funded by the OSCARS, we will extend Party Facts, design community-based linkage key databases, and harmonize data: www.oscars-project.eu/projects/har... Stay tuned! 🤓

Reminder: Let us know how we can support your research best by filling out this short survery! We at #MEDem want to know about your challenges and appreciate your feedback! 😊🤓

🌍🔬 MEDem Community Survey! 🔬🌍 To better understand your personal needs, motivations, and expectations as researchers in the #MEDem #Community, we are conducting a short survey. It only takes 4 minutes! 📋 Share Your Voice here: unipark.de/uc/medem-use... Thank you! 🙏

Another week, another list of new publications in the field. So much exciting scholarship has appeared. 1. Widmann & Simonsen show in PSRM that radical right challengers play an important role in shaping public discourse in a negative moral-emotional direction www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

📄New article out with @gessler.bsky.social: With a vignette survey experiment in Germany and Poland, we show that citizens’ attitudes towards democracy vary substantially, clearly influencing their reactions to undemocratic actions. doi.org/10.1017/gov.... 1/8

🚨📣 🚨We are hiring! One great fully-funded PhD position at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam on Simulation & Virtual Field Experiments for Democratic Citizenship. 🚨📣 🚨 Reach out to me for more information! #Commsky #CSS #polcomm workingat.vu.nl/vacancies/ph...

After receiving reviews, we published an update to the Democratic Electoral Systems data, 1919-1945, now also including data on the length of parliamentary and presidential terms. Thank you, reviewers! 🙏 #polisky #histsci #data 📄Manuscript: doi.org/10.12688/ope... 💾Data: doi.org/10.7910/DVN/...

Glaubt irgendjemand da draußen wirklich, dass wir die Grenzen nur hochziehen müssen und dann wird das schon: mit bezahlbarem Wohnraum, mit guten Löhnen und besserer Gesundheitsversorgung für alle? Oder werden dann neue Schuldige gesucht? Bürgergeldempfänger*innen? Queere Menschen? Kinderlose?

Eine starke Zivilgesellschaft für die Demokratie braucht: Geld. @OlafScholz stellen Sie sicher, dass diese Organisationen im #Haushalt berücksichtigt werden! #GeradeJetztFuerAlle weact.campact.de/petitions/de...

Rechte Gewalt im Landkreis Sonneberg stieg im letzten Jahr sprunghaft an. Gibt es einen Zusammenhang mit dem neu gewählten AfD-Landrat? www.volksverpetzer.de/analyse/sonn...

Are you a graduate student studying the controversies, dilemmas, and promises of a democratic society? Consider applying to present at the Annual Graduate Workshop organized by Penn's Andrea Mitchell Center for the Study of Democracy. See docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Excited to share a new R-package (written w/ @aaoritz.bsky.social)! "nuts: Convert European regional data in R" tinyurl.com/4yhbnpxn nuts allows to harmonize and aggregate European regional data across all NUTS versions (2006, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2021) & levels (NUTS-3 to NUTS-1). 1/4

🚨Deadline extension for #EPOP2024 abstracts🚨 You now have until next Tuesday (28th May) to submit abstracts for our annual conference. To do so, follow the link below.

Man sollte nicht leichtfertig auf den Move des Rassemblement National hereinfallen. Das hat wenig mit echter Erschütterung über die AfD zu tun, sondern mit französischer Innenpolitik und Konkurrenz im Rechtsaußen-Lager. „Selbst dem RN zu rechts“ stützt die Verharmlosungsstrategie.

Finally out with the EPSR. 🥳🎉 In this study, I test for social desirability and concept-measurement consistency in questions surrounding citizens' support for and understandings of democracy. The paper is published open-access! Have a look. 😉🕵️‍♀️✨ #polisky #democracy www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

🚨 New data release! 🚨 GLES Candidate Study European Elections 2024, Social Media Accounts (ZA7959)! 🎉 The data covers accounts from Facebook, Instagram, X, and personal websites of German candidates for the upcoming European Elections. ➡️ doi.org/10.4232/1.14...

The @eesresearch.bsky.social data will be available @ GESIS by January 2025. Stay tuned!

Now also for those interested on the PolDataSky or the PoliSky, and for those interested in historical data. 👩‍💻🤓 (I keep forgetting how to use social media...)

We published new data on Democratic Electoral Systems data, 1919-1945. 🥳 While at the Danger project (erc-danger.de), we have been extending the DES data to the European interwar period. Short note: doi.org/10.12688/ope... Data access: doi.org/10.7910/DVN/...

It’s a wrap! #MEDemConference2024 Two intense days discussing #Services & #Tools that will help make data more comparable & interoperable. 🔗 We are now entering the decisive phase for #MEDem to become the #EuropeanInfrastructure for #DemocracyResearch! ✊🏻

🚨PUBLICATION ALERT! How do far-right actors and issues become mainstream over time? Very excited that our with Daniel Saldivia Gonzatti article is now out in Political Communication #openaccess Polisky commsky @polcomm.bsky.social🔓 doi.org/10.1080/1058... 🧵1/8

Almost forgot it myself so here is a reminder for everyone who is like me and waits last minute: Don't forget to submit your proposal to EPSA! The deadline is already tomorrow - 15.12.! epsanet.org/epsa2024-gen...