Italy 👀

Looking at the USA, the rise of Alt-right, Trump and the Manosphera via Reddit, Podcasts & alternative SNS, we shouldn't be surprised to see Meloni using Podcasts to expand and normalise her radical right opinions. The same playbook used by her American friend.

Preparing the syllabus for the next semester. Inspired by @alessandronai.bsky.social. Goal: checking if students go through the syllabus. **Real Goal**: Be surprised by students on how much they know Italian cuisine besides "Pizza, pasta, spaghetti 🤌" and perhaps have some inspiration for dinner.

A must-read thread 👇

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Just out! 💥 @ecprtheloop.bsky.social Populists often criticise international organisations but still work through them. Trump? More likely to walk out — and make the exit part of the show. My new piece looks at multilateralism, populism, and politics as performance 👇

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For the FES, I wrote a short brief about how mainstream party strategies have fueled far-right success. They move toward more anti-immigration positions to win voters back. This does not work, but shifts public opinion to the right. Parties then react to shifts in public opinion. A vicious cycle.

Great piece, a must-read for populist scholars, and definitely it should push all of us to look more into left-wing populism, too often overlooked. I wonder if the Italian 5-Star Movement and the German BSW are not the perfect "successful" example of Left Patriotism.

"In an era of information overload, there is no scarcity of data or analysis; what is lacking is attention. And whoever controls that controls the debate."

*This*. It cannot be said often enough that Trump's 5th column in the UK is planning precisely the same fascist makeover. In broad daylight, and with "democratic" politicians being silent onlookers. And I wonder if Brits will have the courage of Minnesotans when it comes down to it.

I checked Truth Social for the very first time. I am still alive, but with a lot of questions (not even about Trump, tbh), and I am not even sure I want to hear the answers.

Meloni sticking to her usual strategy, which so far has worked just fine for her. Moderation in foreign affairs; a stable, predictable rapport with the EU Commission; throwing some bones to her electorate and party members on matters related to migration and asylum...

It feels like we are watching a bonfire of international cooperation. And a bit like many EU leaders’ main concern is still reassuring Donald that they support his marshmallow-roasting over the fire.

This goes far beyond the usual populist playbook of loud rhetoric. While leaders like Meloni moderate in office, Trump opts for the real exit. Time to ask: can we still lump all “ RRW populists” together when some dismantle global governance, and others merely complain about it (e.g. Meloni)?

When you get accepted to conferences because you spent too much time writing a punchy and fancy abstract, and now you realise that you actually need to work on the paper.

Amen

After 3 years and 5,322 emails (and counting) our Encyclopedia of Political Communication is finally out at @elgarpublishing.bsky.social 📚 Three volumes ⭐ 431 entries 🎓 581 wonderful authors from across the world A very short 🧵

There is nothing new to this situation, this has been the case for at least 5 years now.... except the use of the nonsensical term "hard right".

Reminder for those who think that authoritarian and corrupt “phases” evaporate eventually. The Berlusconi legacy is healthy and strong in Italy.

🌳 Thrilled to launch The PopulisTree — a new website covering decades of populism in Europe (both national and European elections) using a new taxonomy and dataset. 🔗 populistree.org 📄 More in my brand new article in European Union Politics: 🔗 journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

After a long time in development, {traktok} #rstats is now finally on CRAN! Whether you have access to the Research API or just want to scrape some pages, traktok has you covered jbgruber.github.io/traktok/

🚨New VAA Dataset🚨 @wurthmann.bsky.social, @pluggedchris.bsky.social & I have published a new piece in European Union Politics that introduces our GEPARTEE Expert Survey and Europartycheck VAA data for the 2024 German EP elections: www.researchgate.net/publication/... Some insights 🧵1/n

📣 We're hiring a postdoc in political science for our ReJust project @uni-konstanz.de! Project with Dirk Leuffen @leuffen.bsky.social and Urs Fischbacher 3-year position | Deadline: Dec. 15, 2025 | Start: April 2026 Please share widely 🙏

The book is "open access" - free to read and download for everyone. academic.oup.com/book/60532?l...

For the crowd still raving about the Danish Social Democrats, convinced that all social democratic parties should adopt their course. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/n...

🔴 GASTROPOPULISM THREAD (very random, but why not talking about #populism) I was chatting with a colleague about Markus Söder’s endless beer-and-Bavarian-food pics, and immediately thought of Salvini’s “face + food” posts. I usually laugh about it, but let's have a thread on it.

🎆 NEW OA ARTICLE ALERT 🎆 'Populism, visual technologies, and the self-mediation of ‘the people’ from the 2002 Venezuelan coup to the 2021 US Capitol riots' in @risjnl.bsky.social How do populist publics visually represent themselves & how have shifts in visual technologies altered this process?

for the techno-populism curious, you might want to know that Meloni is also skipping COP30. btw remember the media praise she got re promises about finance at COP28 (300M for Green Climate Fund, 100M for Loss & Damage Fund)? Turns out 1/3 only has been issued and none of this is new money really.

Very excited about the lineup for our #ComparativePolitics & #PoliticalEconomy colloquium in the winter @uni-konstanz.de !! ▶️Hannah Werner @ipz.bsky.social ▶️Fabio Franchino ▶️ @ashelshehawy.bsky.social ▶️Kevin Munger @eui-sps.bsky.social ▶️@rdassonneville.bsky.social ▶️@svenjaahlhaus.bsky.social

New semester, new great lineup for our #InternationalStudies seminar with amazing speakers at @uni-konstanz.de ➡️ Gabriella Gricius @ggricius.bsky.social ➡️ Fabio Franchino ➡️ Livia Schubiger ➡️ Kenneth Schultz ➡️ Giorgio Malet @giorgiomalet.bsky.social ➡️ Timon Forster @timonforster.bsky.social

Just watched Dead to Rights. Hard not to think of Sanseito’s rising nationalist–populist rhetoric, its anti-migration stances also vs Chinese. Japan’s gov’t has acknowledged wartime wrongdoing but never issued a direct apology for the massacre. Ambiguity keeps the wound open & fuels mistrust.

My new my new home for the next two months. Excited to dive into this new adventure at the Monash University! @monashuniversity.bsky.social

With some delay from @ipsa.org, I made it through Seoul’s heatwave and the rainy season. Grateful to have been part of such a vibrant and stimulating environment. Had so many energising conversations with brilliant scholars from all over the world. Still buzzing with ideas!

(1) In the new In_equality magazine by @excinequality.bsky.social, we draw on original survey data from 9 countries to argue that public support for mutlilateral health policy is more robust than populists want to make you believe. bsky.app/profile/exci...

🚨 New #PolComm ECR Club Session coming up! 🙌 🕺 Join us tomorrow (12 June) at 🕰️ 1pm for a discussion of 🎇 Memes during the Czech Elections 🗳️ w/ ✨ Martina Paulenova, Ofra Klein & Ana Langer. ✨ 🖥️ Check events.ecpr.eu/Events/Event... for more details and registration/zoom link! 🔗 @ecpr.bsky.social

Wrapped up a fantastic week at the #ECPR Joint Sessions—grateful for the inspiring discussions and brilliant colleagues. Big thanks to Lisbeth Zimmermann and @raffaelemstr.bsky.social for organizing a great workshop on the international politics of the far right! @ecpr.bsky.social

Guess Merz' version of 'whatever it takes' didn’t include managing fragmented ranks in his own party & the coalition.

Branded as undemocratic, the #AfD now flips the populist script exploiting Merz's failed vote to frame CDU and SPD as the real enemies of the people. Celebrating a democratic deadlock as a response to anti-democratic criticism. I need 🍿

Amen.

"populist backlashes are not always successful. Populism as a thin ideology provides a thin basis for multilateral reform coalitions, making (partial) exit a more likely outcome than reform." [Populism and backlash towards IC] 🤼Reality vs Academia breakingthenews.net/Article/Hung...

📢 PUBLICATION ALERT! New article by @lazaroskaravasilis.bsky.social in @critdiscstuds.bsky.social re-examines how 'the elite' is constructed in populist discourse, using the cases of Die Linke and AfD. A crucial contribution to populism studies! Read here: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

My new office wall meme

I know I'm the last person who should be posting this...

Terrific lineup for our Comparative Politics & Political Economy series this summer,incl @clandwehr.bsky.social @finseraas.bsky.social @eunjikim.bsky.social @ccavaille.bsky.social @anewq.bsky.social & @valentimvicente.bsky.social . Thanks for organizing @tobiastober.bsky.social @na-wehl.bsky.social

So it happened ("ooh that's a big one"), now who is next in the line? Meloni? Wilders? Le Pen? Now that Trump has normalized the withdrawal from IOs, we could expect that more populists will claim the same, supported by their audience already critical towards international governance.

What is the far-right’s foreign policy outlook? @thorstenwojczewski.bsky.social tests a proposed theoretical framework through a comparative analysis of two German right parties. In @polstudies.bsky.social: https://buff.ly/40yvuTA (OPEN ACCESS) @polstudiesassoc.bsky.social @uoypolitics.bsky.social

#RadicalRight parties made significant gains at the ballot box during 2024. Drawing on his recent book @oxunipress.bsky.social, @valentimvicente.bsky.social @ieuniversity.bsky.social argues that this success owes much to the normalisation of their views. @lseeuroppblog.bsky.social

Right now on the other social. South Korea: coup d'etat. Scholars: in 1952 I published this paper about Korea that explains exactly why we shouldn't be surprised. Today I'm expecting, at least, papers about Jean-Marie Le Pen and Pierre Poujade that explains EM défaite.

Optimist: The cup is half full Pessimist: The cup is half empty Political scientist: The cup is affectively polarized