And the paper is online (open access) at: academic.oup.com/ser/advance-...

This is the *fifth* study to undermine the idea that the muted political response to inequality is due to growing meritocracy beliefs, esp. among the poor. - Inequality erodes meritocracy beliefs - Poor meritocrats still want redistribution - What matters is the politicization of inequality Links:

🔍 How does economic inequality impact beliefs in meritocracy? Using comprehensive survey data from 39 advanced capitalist democracies over more than three decades, Markus Gangl & I examine how rising economic inequality has been shaping citizens' belief in meritocracy. 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/ser/mwag016

Publication alert @pvs-journal.bsky.social! In a new research note, @marcdebus.bsky.social, @pluggedchris.bsky.social and I investigate how past support for far-right extremist parties shaped the AfD's electoral success in the 2024 European elections. A thread 🧵. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

We find a similar pattern in a secondary analysis at the more granular level of municipalities in Saxony & Baden-Württemberg. The AfD vote share is strongly correlated with prior DVU/Republikaner support, but gains are not. Only in Baden-Württemberg is a weak effect on the AfD's gains apparent.

Are we underestimating popular discontent with welfare state change, and the damage done to political-institutional trust? New measures of "welfare state emotions" suggest as much. With Tor Syrstad and Atle Haugsgjerd. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

I just realised that there are "gift links". So, if anyone is interested but does not have institutional access, please feel free to download the paper through this link: academic.oup.com/ser/article/...

Die Sektion Wirtschaftssoziologie freut sich sehr, auch in diesem Jahr wieder den Karl-Polanyi-Preis für eine herausragende Monografie auf dem Gebiet der Wirtschaftssoziologie auszuloben. (Selbst-)Nominierungen nimmt der Vorstand gerne bis zum 30.4. entgegen. Wir freuen uns über Reposts :)

Effort versus Advantage: Visualizing (Relative) Belief in Meritocracy, 1930 to 2022—A Comment on Mijs (2018) Socius, Volume 12, January-December 2026. In this comment, the authors reevaluate the claim put forward by Mijs that popular belief in meritocracy has increased across a b #sociology link

🎙️Can #Inequality be Fair? In the latest episode of the In_equality Podcast, @mbusemeyer.bsky.social & Gabi Spilker @uni-konstanz.de speak with David Rueda (@ox.ac.uk)about fairness, meritocracy & redistribution. Tune in now: t1p.de/bt6j0 🎧 New episodes every first Wednesday of the month.

One position is in our interdisciplinary „PerFair“ project on highschool students‘ fairness perceptions and meritocratic beliefs - and how these translate into behavior towards students from different backgrounds. Please apply and/or get in touch if you have any questions!

5/6 🧵In JEPP, @alexanderhorn.bsky.social & co-authors study equality & party competition. Text & election data in 🇦🇺🇩🇰🇩🇪🇸🇪🇨🇭🇬🇧. Show center-left parties can gain votes by emphasizing econ. equality & equal rights, postmaterialist left parties only by emphasizing the latter. doi.org/qm52

How has the public belief in meritocracy changed over time? We address this question in our new Data Viz (@sociusjournal.bsky.social) by examining trends in popular beliefs across cohorts and periods in 35 countries, based on two datasets. 🔗 journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/23780231261425841

💸🚨I am hiring 2 Postdocs for my ERC-funded project SOCDEBT on #debt dynamics across countries. One position: #SocialStratification + strong quantitative skills. The other: qualitative research and #EconomicSociology. waitkus.github.io/SOCDEBT/ 🚨💸

Excited to share a new #OA study with @dariatisch.bsky.social and @schechtlm.bsky.social🎉We show that while most people prefer equal inheritance, wealthy individuals are more willing to support unequal transfers when they help preserve wealth across generations ➡️ academic.oup.com/sf/advance-a...

Excited to see page numbers on our paper. 👇 If you are interested in the link between perceptions of inequality in society and support for populism, this paper is for you. We present both observational and experimental evidence on it.

"Behind Closed Doors: Intra-Couple Pension and Wealth Gaps in Germany and Beyond" 🚪👩‍🦳👴 @lisdata.bsky.social / @liser.lu policy brief by @nicolekapelle.bsky.social and me out now! Read more here 👉 www.lisdatacenter.org/newsletter/n...

📢 We're hiring!!! 📢 If you are interested in comparative social policy, welfare state research and quantitative methods, then this might be the job for you! Interested? Link to the call: www.mpisoc.mpg.de/karriere/ste... Need more info? Please check out our website!  inequalityhub.org

Happy to share this new paper @jeppjournal.bsky.social with my great colleagues @dweisstanner.bsky.social & Carsten Jensen. In "Winning with equality", we show "how left-wing parties attract votes but [in doing so] amplify electoral cleavages" www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... Key points in 📈👇

Even after two world wars and a century of upheaval, wealth in 🇩🇪 shows strong persistence. About 8% of today’s top fortunes trace back to the early 1900s: 82 of the richest families today were already among the richest in 1913, challenging the idea of a fully meritocratic elite.

⏰ Job alert: We are looking for PhD Researchers! Only one week left to apply for our open #PhD positions in #socialpolicy at CRC 1342 | @unibremen.bsky.social. 🗓️ Application deadline: 14.01.2026 Details: www.socialpolicydynamics.de/about-the-cr...

🚨Job alert! 🚨 I'm advertising a PhD position (66%) in Comparative Politics at HU Berlin. Ideal candidates combine a research interest in autocratic politics, conflict, and/or political violence with strong quantitative methods skills. ⏳ 4 (+2) years | 🗓 DL 16.01; Start March/April 26 More info:

This article seeks to differentiate between different types of radical right-wing voters in Europe, analysing their social characteristics and identifying different voting motives. #EarlyView in #BJS ➡️ onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Just in time before the end of the year: My first dissertation paper, in which I examine whether the public response to rising income inequality is really lacking, has officially been published in the latest issue of the Socio-Economic Review #SER. 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/ser/...

My main current research focus is on the way statistical significance (SS) can mislead us when evaluating quantitative results. A new demonstration: Use of SS suggested that Right-to-Work laws had a “null” impact on occupational fatalities. But the data came from (US) state-level death rates. 1/3

1/ Does growing up poor always lead to political apathy? Very happy to share my first paper published (open access) in @electoralstudies.bsky.social, where I show that parents' influence mitigates the poverty gap in participation, while economic mobility does not. 🔗 shorturl.at/p5Bac

📢New publication: The poor want redistribution regardless of whether they think society is meritocratic. 🎉 Big congrats to my former supervisees — now co-authors, @irenepaneda.bsky.social, @jonnekamphorst.bsky.social, and Bala Battu! 🔗 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

1/ My new article in European Sociological Review (@europeansocreview.bsky.social) examines how class-based network segregation and national-level inequality shape support for redistribution, using data from 32,717 individuals across 31 countries. DOI: doi.org/10.1093/esr/... 👇

Jeepers @nature.com I thought we were past this Abstract: "we demonstrated an association between higher physical activity and slower cognitive and functional decline" Press brief: "taking as few as 3,000 to 5,000 steps per day can help to stave off mental decline" www.nature.com/articles/d41...

📣 In a new open access article in @environmentalpol.bsky.social, I examine how appeals to "economic realism" – like the claim that we "can’t afford climate policy" – have long structured far-right #climateskepticism @cidape.bsky.social @ifswien.bsky.social www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

'Why Inequalities Persist: Parties’ (Non)Responses to Economic Inequality, 1970–2020' by @alexanderhorn.bsky.social, Martin Haselmayer & @klueserthan.bsky.social was the most-downloaded @apsrjournal.bsky.social paper in August 2025. You can read it #OpenAccess here - https://cup.org/4nwEeCo

"Overall, our findings suggest a “ratchet-effect” heuristic: left parties may still push back against rising disparities but have given up on lowering existing levels of inequality" www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

I am looking for a PhD student in Comparative Politics @powimz.bsky.social. My research focuses on political (in-)equality, representation, and responsiveness. I would be grateful if you could help to spread the word. stellenboerse.uni-mainz.de#/jgu/job/49637

Glad to share a symposium on my book "How the Radical Right Has Changed Capitalism and Welfare" with SER: academic.oup.com/ser/advance-.... Featuring @alexandreafonso.bsky.social, @vapunkt.bsky.social, @ankehassel.bsky.social, @danielk24.bsky.social, @gscheiring.bsky.social, & rejoinder by myself 👇

Very happy to be part of this special issue on "Gender and Wealth Accumulation" in @sasemeeting.bsky.social next to a fantastic group of scholars ✨ @dariatisch.bsky.social @schechtlm.bsky.social @nicolekapelle.bsky.social @pmlersch.bsky.social @shayobrien.bsky.social academic.oup.com/ser/article/...

1/3) 📣Out in Party Politics: We trace the equal rights and economic equality positions of 69 center-right and far-right parties since 1970 in 12 countries. We find that center right parties did not react to/address equal rights concerns and economic inequality journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10....

📬🚩 Our article on parties' programmatic responses to inequality - and more often the lack of responses - will come out in APSR! Here is the @excinequality.bsky.social working paper: kops.uni-konstanz.de/bitstreams/4... with @klueserthan.bsky.social & Martin Haselmayer 🧗🙏

We are seeing multiple instances of reviewers doing manuscript reviews via use of AI/LLM. If you don't want to do a review the old-fashioned way, better to decline the request. Giving someone else's manuscript to AI is a violation of intellectual property rights/laws; the manuscript isn't yours...

Thanks to everybody who chimed in! I arrived at the conclusion that (1) there's a lot of interesting stuff about interactions and (2) the figure I was looking for does not exist. So, I made it myself! Here's a simple illustration of how to control for confounding in interactions:>

First Wednesday of the month – time for a new In_equality podcast! This time, our hosts @mbusemeyer.bsky.social and Gabriele Spilker @uni-konstanz.de talk with @juandiego48cr.bsky.social about how people (mis-)perceive inequality – and why it matters for politics. ➡️ inequality.uni.kn/podcast

My first paper of my dissertation 'Patrimonial Relations. Kinship, capital and conflict in super-rich Families' is out now on open access! Here I discuss how super-rich families use relational work on affective family ties as an economic resource. @bupjournals.bsky.social

My colleague Cristobal Young and co-author Erin Cumberworth just released their book on multiverse analysis, a set of tools that help resolve the "garden of forking paths" and "file-drawer" problems and, in the process, improve quantitative social & behavioral science. Highly recommend.

🔔 Call for Participation 🔔 Lab² is inviting researchers to take part in a multi-analyst study on the effects of having daughters on various outcomes. Join this metascience project as a co-author and gain the opportunity to work with SOEP data!

Here's an update on sociology (and some demography) journal editorial polices with regard to sharing preprints before submission and after acceptance. A big improvement from the last edition of this table. With one exception.

🚨 Join us for the next edition Summer School for Women* in Political Methodology in Bremen 🚨 Open to PhD students and early career scholars Fully-funded places available for applicants, deadline 1st of May 📅 summerschoolwpm.org

Since the publication of our study on rising inequality ➡️ public support for redistribution (doi.org/10.1111/1475...), 2 independent studies on this relation have come out. Reassuringly, they come to the same conclusion: 1. doi.org/10.1093/ijpo... 2. @twiesner.bsky.social‬: doi.org/10.1093/ser/...

The deadline has now been extended to *14 April*. I am also extremely happy that there will be keynotes by two of my sociological heroes, Patrick Sachweh and Michael Vester.

Had a great time at the conference #SocialPolicy and #Inequality in the #Polycrisis. Thanks to Corinna Kleinert, @apweiland.bsky.social (📸) and @katjamoe.bsky.social for the opportunity to present my first paper, which is now available to read in SER (academic.oup.com/ser/advance-...)

Already next week: Very much looking forward to host you at our conference Social Policy and Inequality in the Polycrisis @uni-bamberg.de ! Supported by @lifbi.bsky.social @difis.bsky.social #Sozialpolitik #SozialeUngleichheit #socialpolicy #SocialInequality www.uni-bamberg.de/sfa/veransta...