Happy to report that I have started a new position at @kompz-kfe.bsky.social, with a fantastic kick-off at Lake Starnberg. After one year of policy research at @deval-institute.bsky.social, it is back to academia.

📢 Job Opportunity in International Relations! If you work in IR (broadly defined) and are searching for a permanent professorship, we have an opening you’ll want to see. 🗓 Deadline: 29 April 🔁 Please boost/RT! #Polisky #InternationalRelations #PoliticalScience www.jobbnorge.no/en/available...

📦 I got tired of constantly battling TikZ or Word for decent causal diagrams, so decided to do something about it. Here is a first public version of 𝗰𝗮𝘂𝘀𝗮𝗹𝗽𝗹𝗼𝘁, an R package for creating clean, publication-ready causal diagrams with minimal effort. #rstats github.com/sebastianvan...

Software von #Palantir hat verheerende Risiken. Das ist das Ergebnis einer Risikoprüfung in der Schweiz. Aber für deutsche Polizeien soll die Palantir-Software gut genug sein. Nimmt #Dobrindt diese Risiken in Kauf? netzpolitik.org/2025/schweiz...

My new article with Mert Can Yilmaz out in Research & Politics! An investigation into what does drive differences between UCDP and ACLED data and a response to a series of unfounded claims made by Clionadh Raleigh et al in a 2023 article. (1/4) Read it here doi.org/10.1177/2053...

It was such a pleasure to kick off #NEPS2025 with @kmross.bsky.social presenting on mass mobilization and collective music listening behavior, and a fascinating presentation by @chrisvsteinert.bsky.social on police violence!

"What Good is a Regression? Inference to the Best Explanation and the Practice of Political Science Research" from Spirling and Stewart journal: doi.org/10.1086/734280

Hyunjung Park, Nathan Timbs and I are organizing a workshop on "Rebel behaviour and external support" at this year's ISA-BISA Conference in Newcastle, UK. We aim to gather a mix of experienced and early career scholars. The call is out! www.isanet.org/Conferences/...

@kmross.bsky.social and I wrote a small opinion piece on #peacekeeping. We bring attention to this year's #PeacekeepingMinisterial and the opportunity it presents for states to reaffirm their commitment.

Appeasement, as Churchill warned, is like feeding a crocodile and hoping to be the last one eaten. Levitsky, Way, and me today in New York Times www.nytimes.com/2025/05/08/o...

Ever felt uneasy about how concepts & measures of "grey zone" autocracies are used interchangeably across the literature? Then check out my 🚨new paper🚨 in @democratization.bsky.social and get some substance to back up your gut feeling: tinyurl.com/ypdm2kna Or at least read the main points below ⬇️

today we will all read imbens 2021 on statistical significance and p values, which is a strong contender for having the best opening paragraph of any stats paper pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdf/10.1...

📢 New booklet: Beyond Compliance Symposium - How to prevent harm and need in conflict. Features 14 articles (of 24 blog posts so far) which reflect the BCC's core research conceptualisation. Read and download the booklet: bit.ly/blog-booklet...

First day #ISA2025 - join us in the afternoon for an exciting panel on protest trajectories!

Democracy researchers please take note, and tell relevant colleagues: The Dep. of Pol. Sci. in Gothenburg is hiring a new Director for the V-Dem Institute. The Director will also serve as permanent (tenured) member of the Dep., with reduced teaching responsibilities during their tenure as Director.

If you've ever used the Polity data, read this from Monty Marshall. tl;dr Polity is coding recent US events as an executive self-coup and an adverse regime change.

🎉 Thrilled beyond words! As a master’s student, I dreamed of publishing in JPR. Never did I imagine winning the Best Article of the Year! 🏆✨ Even more surreal: it’s also the runner-up for Best Visualization! Huge thanks to everyone who made this possible! 🙌 doi.org/10.1177/0022...

This was an interesting piece to work on. At the @beyond-comp-cons.bsky.social, we are looking into armed actors' behavior & how that maps onto IHL. While working on this, we noticed a mismatch between IHL defs and common quant measures. This post summarizes some core points. shorturl.at/SeeVK

📣 Attention all peace and conflict scholars and practitioners! The call for the Conflict Research Society Annual Conference 2025 is out! Get your paper, panel and workshop submissions in by 17th January 😀 conflictresearchsociety.org/call-for-pap...

Our current take on #protest in #Mozambique /w Salvador Forquilha and Karina Mross. German version: shorturl.at/Iubkx English version: shorturl.at/e8mSG

@hannefjelde.bsky.social and me have a new open access article out in @democratization.bsky.social! doi.org/10.1080/1351... We study how militarized elections shape citizens’ support for democratic rights – and present evidence from a vignette experiment in India 🪖🗳️ Thread follows ⬇️

📢🎓 PhD position in my new "The future of EUrope" project 💶 Good salary & project money for data collections, travels, etc. 📝 International supervision team 🌍 Trondheim 🇳🇴 lively student city with great nature 🗓️ DL 10.12. www.jobbnorge.no/en/available... Thanks for sharing and RT! polisky EUsky

Is your Bluesky feed missing in conflict analysis? I made a starter pack of peace and conflict scholars to follow here. DM me if you want to be included. #Conflictsky go.bsky.app/7o8tZt2

Beyond happy that @chrisvsteinert.bsky.social and my paper on protest mobilization and political imprisonment was awarded the Will H. Moore prize. Many thanks to PSSI and the award committee! #contentiousky Paper: shorturl.at/eQRZ3

Which dictatorships hire Public Relations (PR) firms, under what conditions, and with what effects? Christian Gläßel, @alexdukalskis.bsky.social, and I offer first answers with data on 7k contracts between autocracies and US-based PR firms (1945–2022).

We are hiring: shorturl.at/bptuG Please share widely. - 3-year quant postdoc. - 100% research and data collection. - On violent conflict and humanitarian law. - Grade 7 salary (more than most UK postdocs). - Works with me in a large team across politics and law.

The econ paper that found a 42-64% increase in rapes after prostitution banned (in Sweden)? Turns out result from coding error + Stata prioritization rues + seasonality. * always plot raw data * always sniff test your estimates * open science works! On X or here: drive.google.com/file/d/1oGP3...

Are international human rights bodies remedies for elites? My new study shows that socio-economic elites are more likely to file complaints to UN human rights bodies, while marginalized groups from low-income countries are underrepresented (1/7) academic.oup.com/isq/article/...

Barren Fields and Empty Stomachs: Afghanistan’s Long, Punishing Drought: In a country especially vulnerable to climate change, a drought has displaced entire villages and left millions of children malnourished. 3 of out every 4 provinces now experiencing "severe or catastrophic" drought conditions

Two more days to apply! We are already looking forward to our 8th Workshop on Conflict Dynamics at TU Munich (9-10 October). Submit your abstracts by 15 March via our website: t.co/eF1U5lNqqg

🚨 How do states and ethnic groups shape each other? Two new articles of mine in the AJPS explore this issue – I’m very happy that they were both published online over the weekend! Thread 🧵 doi.org/10.1111/ajps... and doi.org/10.1111/ajps...

🚨Job Alert 🚨 We are looking for a Post-doc to help us forecast the next German federal election, zweitstimme.org! 3-year position at University Witten/Herdecke. Application deadline: 04 April 2024. Please apply and reach out for questions uni-wh.softgarden.io/job/42530117...

🚨Come join the Workshop on Conflict Dyamics! One of the best workshops I've attended as a PhD student - super excited that we could host it here now. Two more days to apply! www.polver.uni-konstanz.de/conflict-dyn...

Now officially online first @JPR_journal : journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... our work on the perception of visual propaganda in Venezuela.

Very happy to see "Preventing Dissent: Secret Police and Protests in Dictatorships" now published as a "just accepted" paper in @thejop.bsky.social! It's joint work with Ioannis Choulis and Abel Escribà Folch, examining how the presence of secret police organisations affects protests.

We are thrilled to finally see our article on Co-ethnic Concentration, Spatial Disadvantage, and Voter Registration in France with @haleymcavay.bsky.social published online at the Journal of Politics!! Polisky www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/epdf/10....

LEGACIES is also hiring a PhD candidate in CP/IR: www.jobbnorge.no/en/available... Super exciting project and a fantastic PI! You will also become a part of our research group @NTNU «Political Instability and Armed Conflict» Application deadline: 17.03.2024 polisky conflictsky

Come join us in Trondheim! Two weeks left to apply for the postdoc position in the very cool (both people- and research-wise) LEGACIES project: www.jobbnorge.no/en/available... #polisky #conflictsky

How did membership in China's Belt and Road Initiative shape voting behavior in the UN General Assembly? We (my excellent colleague David Weyrauch and me) provide novel empirical evidence on this question in our research paper in Research & Politics: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

We are planning the first WhoGov Workshop to be held in Oslo on the 29-30th of August 2024. We welcome all research using WhoGov in some capacity and we have funding to cover travel expenses for participants. Find the call for papers through the link or use the QR code: bit.ly/WhoGov_Workshop

New paper in the Journal of Peace Research with Tabea Palmtag and @tobirommel.bsky.social! 🥳 journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Very excited to start my stay as a guest researcher at GESIS in Cologne! Many thanks to @sziaja.bsky.social for hosting me and I look forward to talk data with many stellar colleagues.

New paper with Abel Escribà Folch, studying the logic of autocrats' recruiting foreign legionnaires, out in Democratization. Legionnaire recruitment is associated with increased personalization and decreases the risk of coup attempts and mass protests. Available open access!

In Tunisia's revolution, Gen. Rachid Ammar refused Ben Ali's orders to fire on protesters. Right? Turns out, this was just a rumor. But because it was widely believed, the rumor itself had real-world consequences that fueled the success of the uprising. My latest: newlinesmag.com/essays/how-d...

Very happy to have worked on this PS article with @chknutsen.bsky.social, @acrowinghen.bsky.social, @medzihorsky.bsky.social, @danpemstein.bsky.social, @silindberg.bsky.social and four other colleagues! 1/6 doi.org/10.1017/S104... polisky poldatasky openaccess

We are hiring! The German Longitudinal Environmental Study opens several positions: LMU: shorturl.at/ikyRZ (Survey Management) LMU: shorturl.at/muLNZ (User Service) LMU: shorturl.at/buV14 (Data Scientists) LMU: shorturl.at/bdpzC (Survey Programmierer) RPTU: shorturl.at/dnqAM (PostDoc spatial data)

Causal salad, causal design, causal inference. I did a 3 hour workshop in Leipzig yesterday on causal inference, aka why your regressions are garbage lolsob. Here below a recording of me covering the same content, I promise it's not boring #stats 🧪 (Link to slides/code github.com/rmcelreath/c...)

New PhD positions open in Gothenburg! It's an incredibly supportive and smart environment to be in as a PhD student. Consider applying or telling your students to apply (that's how I mustered the confidence to apply for a PhD).