Should I open this sweet poster I bought about 30 years ago?

🚨 New piece out at @poqjournal.bsky.social with superstar @cvargiu.bsky.social We use the #Mangione killing as a natural experiment to investigate partisan shifts in support for #PoliticalViolence TLDR: ⬆️ support among DEMS after the arrest Open paper: tinyurl.com/4hrnp5aj Open data: osf.io/y5mn3

Big thanks to @adamgurri.liberalcurrents.com for drawing attention to my and others’ historical work on PR adoption. newrepublic.com/article/2125...

More fascinating figures from BLS. Through 2023, local gov and local education tracked. And 2024 and on, they don't.

What works of political theory do you think most influenced the U.S. Constitution and/or founding?

An important new essay on the field's progress when it comes to comparative studies of state legislatures. With the current dysfunction in DC, states are as important (and understudied) as ever: www.cambridge.org/core/service...

This story strikes close to home, and the intransigence of the University of Michigan in the face of clear wrongdoing is probably the most frustrating part. What Kame is requesting is modest and well within the university's power to grant.

I interviewed with two conservative/civic-ed programs last year. We’ll see what the research says when the time comes. My new prior is that these are no more committed to scientific inquiry than programs grounded in critical theory. “It’s all relative” and subordinate to the party line.

The word “would” is used too casually in policy writing. We don’t know what would happen if most proposed interventions were enacted.

From April 2026 - The First Wave of Globalization and Electoral Populism in the United States - https://cup.org/4vVZx50 - Ze Han & Helen V. Milner #OpenAccess

Are you interested in the #RadicalRight in Germany? → S. Hillen and J. Kuhlmann. “Blocking the Radical Right: Evidence from Strategic Candidate Voting Against the AfD in Germany's 2025 Federal Election”. In: Politische Vierteljahresschrift (2026).

Funny how the “clone candidate” technique from the early post-communist period is spreading in the US. Yet another illustration that the teleological view of new, immature vs old, consolidated democracies was misguided.

Since 2021 both parties have progressively said "progressive" less and less

Yes!

NEW PUBLICATION!🚨 The 2023 Swiss federal elections were the first ever held under mandatory campaign finance disclosure rules. So how does an open-list PR influence campaign spending? Greater voters' ability to cast preference votes = more money spent onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Stop telling people they’ll get more parties out of PR. This claim is decreasingly consistent with the data on U.S. cases where PR is under serious consideration, and it’s never been consistent with data from interwar Europe on PR introduction and the effective number of electoral parties.

Democratization paper explaining why - Switzerland is a 𝗺𝗮𝗷𝗼𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗮𝗿𝗶𝗮𝗻 democracy - proposals for a "parliamentary" USA 𝗮𝗿𝗲𝗻'𝘁 parliamentary - standard definitions of the 𝗻𝗼-𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗳𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝘃𝗼𝘁𝗲 are wrong - a personalist autocracy 𝗮𝗯𝗼𝗹𝗶𝘀𝗵𝗲𝘀 presidential elections ... www.researchgate.net/publication/...

This type of situation led to the adoption of proportional representation in several European cases. It was about institutionalizing factions rather than factionalizing existing parties.

Yesterday was the first time since 2022 that progressives have successfully primaried Democratic incumbents. I have a working paper on the "Tea Party of the Left" since Bernie Sanders's 2016 run. Paper is mixed method with candidate interviews and causal analyses papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

related finding: in my 2023 state identity survey, I asked, "If someone asks you what state you are from, do you say [state of residence] or do you say someplace else? 81% said their current state of residence. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

There are bugs in Apple Pages. Is anyone else experiencing them?

Here’s a weird little book I discovered during my dissertation days. I didn’t know how it would become useful. It sat in a pile of things l felt I needed to read on urban politics. archive.org/details/soci...

The most open question concerns MMP performance: manhattan.institute/article/refo...

One thing I’ve noticed about this “à la carte” economy is that it could be overworking institutional finance departments. I’m thinking of reimbursements for fly-out expenses and payments for contract work.

a new working paper with Chris Johnston & @stephenvaisey.com! we study issue opinions among a novel sample of 10-12-year-olds, showing that children, contrary to received wisdom, express reasonably structured preferences. a working paper here: tkeskinturk.github.io/poldevelopment.pdf

What do academic historians of the American left make of these developments? I know the topic indirectly from studying historical development of American electoral systems. CW in that field is that left radicalization led both major parties’ leaders to take steps to cut it off.

If you'd like to read something that tries to think through the implications for democracy of limited citizen attention, have I got the book for you: press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...

Except when what one has to say runs afoul of potential colleagues’ preferences about political institutions.

I've published 5 peer reviewed articles on pork barrel politics & a couple of others that never got published & a chapter in a book and you can read all of that, or you can read the first half of this article which is one of the best journalistic treatments of the subject I've ever seen.

Kudos to Journal of Legislative Studies for adding this check off box to their reviewer submission form.

Separate from the need/non-need, the developments Lee wrote about created a chill in the academy and caused any offer of alternatives to be seen as “advocacy.” The analogous situation in medicine might be punishing a physician for writing an op-ed saying people should consider quitting cigs.

IYKYK

What if, and stick with me, I told you our entire public participation model at the local level has been broken since forever, and this is just another manifestation of it?

Here are two old blog posts in view of last week’s events with respect to primary reform.

if you asked a representative sample of n=1000 American adults to rate the color of the water in this photo on a 0-10 scale anchored by ‘green’ at 0 and ‘blue’ at 10, my guess is that responses would be substantially correlated with the 7-point American National Election Study party ID scale

SCOTUS reform: -21 justices -staggered terms w/ 20yr limits -every case gets a random draw of 7 justices -no gifts allowed (i.e., trips, homes, etc.)

Thwarted by the lack of a stinkin’ little RCA cable!

Unopened bottle of Lipton iced tea from Woodstock ‘94

Good review by Yvonne Galligan of Eoin O'Malley's bestseller Charlie vs Garret in DRB. A tangential point: the phrase ‘would be like turkeys voting for christmas’ was first coined not by TD Alice Glenn in 1986 but by a Cornish MP in 1977 & used by UK PM James Callaghan in 1979. www.drb.ie

This is bonkers www.anthropic.com/news/fable-m...

Unopened, bought at Arlington Cemetery just about 30 years ago.

Excited to share our new paper in @thejop.bsky.social with @krausewe.bsky.social! Parties polling just below an electoral threshold are far less likely to clear it: a self-fulfilling prophecy that diminishes when polls communicate uncertainty. 🗳️📊 www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

The 4th of July is in three weeks. Tune out national politics to enjoy it.

"...nearly a third of the Democratic supporters couldn’t tell the Times what they thought about socialism — a concept considered pretty basic among most elites. This indicates a low level of engagement with these subjects among the general public." (1/2)

The “America 250” flag would have been better with just “250.”

NBC Washington is doing a good job on voter ed. www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/s...

This piece goes nicely with yesterday’s on the NYC charter commission and recent first-round election in Los Angeles. I add to the conversation by asking whether council/chamber expansion should be on the table. www.voteguy.com/2026/06/10/d...

This podcast with @gelliottmorris.com gives an example of why I called my book “More Parties or No Parties.” The audience for the title was academic. substack.com/app-link/pos...

Very excited to see this published!