Merry Strangemas! (Spoiler: Listening to Max's blabbering rather than running up that hill ASAP is absolutely excruciating)

A fight broke out in the 🇦🇱 Albanian Parliament last week during a vote for the next ombudsman. Probably the last entry for my parliamentary violence dataset in 2025.

There is no coming back for the Tories when they can't even secure the support of Ebenezer Scrooge 🤭🤭🤭

I'm hosting Christmas dinner this year, on the menu is Salmon en Croute and Roast Chicken #Poliscicooks

After living in the UK for over a decade, I have my first encounter of the often hyped "War on Christmas" I was canvassed at my home to not celebrate Christmas by a bunch of extreme left wokeratis from a group called……(check note)…… Jehovah Witness

Trump has announced his own Hunger Games…… I suppose we are not far away from having the first Purge

Maybe the way forward for the BBC is to put @number10cat.bsky.social in charge?

Hey Gemini, creat the cast photo of a TV series that is "The Boys" meets "The West Wing"

Freedom and democracy have toppled, only capitalism remain standing

Comic Sans would have been a better fit with the vibe of this administration

Just finished Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir As a fan of sci-fi, it's a great read. But as a political scientist it's nonsensical Nothing, not even a dying sun, is going to result in the kind of international cooperation and decisive action from society and governments as depicted in the novel

The pool draw for 2027 Rugby World Cup 🏉 is out! I can't believe I gotta see Hong Kong play against the All Black!

😢

Hang this in front of every DHS/ICE office!

Ta Kung Pao, one of the most pro-china news outlets and usually seen as Beijing's mouthpiece in Hong Kong, has apparently censored its own investigative report into suspected rigging of the bid for the renovation project that led to the Wang Fuk Court fire, first published on Friday.

Multiple local new sources in Hong Kong are reporting that the police have begun arresting activists calling for independent inquiries and accountability for the Tai Po fire 😡

Residents of Wang Fuk Court in Tai Po spent more than a year trying to raise the alarm about use of substandard construction materials. They were ignored. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/28/w...

Regarding the Tai Po fire, Hong Kong Security minister Chris Tang said the mesh netting covering the buildings had met fire retardant standards 😡

International media, you can do better than this. "Bamboo" is maybe exotic and a compelling hook but it is too easy. The real story here is the growing culture of corruption, including a lack of accountability and oversight, that enabled a chain of human errors that led to this disaster.

I'm speechless. This is terrible. This brings back memories of Grenfell Tower but its so much worse. My thoughts are with those who are affected by this tragedy 😢

NEW ARTICLE: @palesl.bsky.social, Vesa Koskimaa and I have an letter out in JOP, "Politicians talk less about the future as they age" doi.org/10.1086/739406 (1/10)

People value free and fair elections, and prefer living in a country with free and fair elections but with less desirable outcomes (e.g. low levels of wealth) to living in a country without free and fair elections but with better outcomes journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00104140251392539

You deserve all the ridicules you receive if you are reposting stuff from a website called "Dunning-Kruger-Times.com"

In a sense, I would never have guessed………

Vivian Kong, retired 🤺 who won 🥇 for Hong Kong in the Olympic in Paris, announced her candidacy for the Tourism sector seat for the upcoming LEGCO election While it's not uncommon for former athletes to enter politics, this case highlights the absurdity the electoral system in Hong Kong, a🧵 1/

🚨 EPSS Belfast 2026 Call for Papers - One week to go! 🚨 Don't forget to submit your paper or panel proposal to the European Political Science Society @epssnet.bsky.social 2026 conference - just one week to go before the deadline: epssnet.org/belfast-2026...

🚨New paper out in @jeppjournal.bsky.social: doi.org/10.1080/1350... @manuelwagner.bsky.social & I re-conceptualize class representation to take into account social mobility between classes and variation in how individuals enter politics.

You may have heard about UK ministers' plan to double to 10 years the time needed to reached settled status in the UK. But did you realise that it threatened access to pensions for the 180,000 people who came from Hong Kong on the UK government's visa scheme? My dispatch: www.ft.com/content/8b91...

Why do rustbelts vote radical right? Studying the German Ruhr area, @nilsblossey.bsky.social, @lstoetze.bsky.social and I show: it’s not just about deindustrialization, but also about the original industrialization. Where coal is buried deeper and mining started later, the AfD is stronger today 1/12

In this paper, we will exploit the temporary disruption of mobile signal coverage in a quasi-experimental research design to explore……

Under Pope Leo, the Catholic Church has resumed burning of dissidents 😂

💥Online first: "How populist citizens see the people and their place in representative democracy" by Rosa Kindt @robert-a-huber.bsky.social & @kristofjacobs1.bsky.social doi.org/10.1080/0140...

And the farm is now covered in literal patriotic bullshit 😎

Post for the House of Commons Modernisation Committee's consideration 😏

I suspect that, in a hundred years, "Members cannot vote whilst on a vehicle" is going to be one of those archaic parliamentary rules that political scientists introduce to amusing students in parliamentary study modules

Growing up in Hong Kong, waking up in the middle of the night to watch the world cup is kinda normal

Look! PR is the clear winner under FPTP😜

I fear I can just keep reposting this until the end of the season/whenever he has been sacked 🤦🤦🤦

Said the person who required us to show our photo ID before we could cast our vote

For the Guardian, @turnbulldugarte.com and I discuss our research that clearly shows one thing: Labour's anti-immigration strategy will only strengthen Reform and weaken its own electoral prospects. It won't win voters back but ultimately normalizes the far right www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

"For the first time today, a member of parliament stood at the lectern of the German Bundestag with her baby," the parliament announced on its Instagram account.

“There is not only a strong moral case for the UK to keep its word to those who are already in the UK under various visa schemes awaiting permanent residency, but in the case of Hongkongers, a significant economic rationale as well.”

So we're all in agreement that copy-editing is dead, right?

He should invite Eminem to perform Without Me in his first show 😂

Maybe those who have been complaining about pronouns do have a point 🤦🤦🤦

Just out at JOP (www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/epdf/10....) : Why do so few working-class people hold office? It's not lack of interest. Noam Lupu and I ran 10 surveys in 8 countries and found no evidence of a social class gap in how often qualified people consider running.

Superhappy to see this paper out in Politics & Governance. Together with Gijs Jan Brandsma (Radboud University) I show that size of PPG staffs increases parliamentary activity but decreases social media activity www.cogitatiopress.com/politicsandg...

I want my country back. The country that welcomed my Grandfather fleeing from the Armenian genocide. That welcomed the Polish grandfather of our political editor, who then fought against Hitler. That welcomed the Indian parents of our editor-in-chief, as citizens of the British Empire. That country

Not that I doubt the impact of AI on MPs speeches, but some of the examples here seem to show a)Gradual increasing trend on either side of the treatment, and b)Delayed explosive growth post-treatment. Could some of these be partly explained by high turnover from GE24?

The Hong Kong Legislative Council has just rejected the second reading of the same-sex partnership registration bill proposed by the govt. This is a rare occurrence of a govt defeat in LEGCO, especially since the purging of any meaningful opposition in the chamber after the 2021 electoral "reform".