Look what showed up in my mail today, my favorite European politics textbook courtesy of @catherinedevries.bsky.social @sarahobolt.bsky.social @sopro.bsky.social @jbslapin.bsky.social. My students love the data exercises built on their custom Shiny apps!

The victory of the opposition in Hungary yesterday, like the Polish election in 2023, is a victory for democracy, not just in Europe but around the world.

AJPS article from @kenbenoit.bsky.social, Scott de Marchi, Conor Laver, Michael Laver, and Jinshuai Ma on using LLMs to analyse political texts. 🧵 1/8 Social science research requires reliable extraction of information from texts to identify authors' preferences on various policies and issues.

A 🧵on how the @vdeminstitute.bsky.social accountability indices help us understand how democratic backsliding is occurring in the United States. tl;dr: in principle, vertical constraints on the president remain strong; in practice, horizontal and diagonal constraints have been greatly weakened.

📢 Out Now! V-Dem Dataset v16 & the V-Dem Institute Democracy Report 2026 💾 The V-Dem Dataset: v-dem.net/data/the-v-d... 📰 The Report "Unraveling The Democratic Era?”: v-dem.net/publications... 📈 Explore the new data with the V-Dem Graphing tools: v-dem.net/graphing/gra... #PoliSky #PoliSciSky 1/3

Congratulations to our Head of Dept @catherinedevries.bsky.social on her latest publication in @thejop.bsky.social. The paper studies the effects of being socialized under East Germany on gender norms and the political engagement of women. Read more here: www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....

@liss.bsky.social more fodder for your ongoing holy war.

I tell my students that one of the main reasons not to over-rely on AI for research/writing is because--at some point in the future--you're going to have a face-to-face conversation with someone who matters, and if you don't actually know some things, that interaction will not go well for you.

Seconded! This was a great experience, reminded me that I could actually write in just 30 minutes and I don’t need a 2 hour block of time.

A profound tragedy, not just for those involved but for public knowledge overall. Completely avoidable tragedy, wrought by plutocrat who has entered "they were careless people, they smashed up things..." hall of infamy. (WaPo's Sports section is legendary; Books excellent too. Semafor screenshot)

A lot of this going around. No surprise that the CFO drove this process and invoked “return on investment” as justification. US higher education drove US global success after WW2 and was the envy of the world so of course we’re going to let accountants and philistines burn it down.

This one hits hard: dailytarheel.com/article/univ... While I was in grad school at Duke, UNC’s Center for European Studies led by my mentor Gary Marks (quoted here) was a vibrant and vital source of scholarship, community, and resources. RIP.

I looked at worldwide surveys on democracy: adamprzeworski.substack.com/p/worldwide-surveys-about-democracy

New out today

The core thesis of our Brextinction paper, beautifully (or morbidly?) summarized in one flowchart (also based on YouGov data). @simonhix.bsky.social @juhoharkonen.bsky.social ejpr.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

📢📢 Happy to announce a new update to the PPEG database! The data now covers - > 3.000 parties - 1.100 parliamentary elections - 402 presidential elections - 2.044 cabinets across 73 countries (1945 - 2025, Oct 31). All info: ppeg.wzb.eu We hope that data is helpful to the community!

Apply now for the 2026 Ralph Bunche Summer Institute by January 25th! The 2026 institute will be held May 24 – June 25, at Duke University. Hear from past #RBSI scholars about program impact on research and graduate pathways. buff.ly/0pLifGl Apply Now! buff.ly/PqPljks

@erikvoeten.bsky.social has built his career on one goal: make ideas flow more freely. In this week’s Etched in Marble, we talked about writing, editing, & how to carry arguments beyond academia without losing their complexity. 🪶 New post: catherineeunicedevries.substack.com/p/etched-in-... 🧵

Check out the @iojournal.bsky.social special issue on the future of world order and global governance! #IOFoGG

Less than 2 weeks to apply to the Open Pool Fellowships of the Institute for #Qualitative & #Multi-Method Research (IQMR) Details: www.maxwell.syr.edu/research/cen... The APSA/IQMR Fellowship for scholar from Arab MENA countries is also open (Dec. 14 deadline): web.apsanet.org/mena/wp-cont...

Check out chesdata.eu for the 1999-2024 CHES trend file, along with individual year surveys with both means and expert-level datasets. We are also happy to release an updated CHES Shiny (CHES Interactive on the website) at chesdata.shinyapps.io/Shiny-CHES/!

The 2024 EU @chesdata.bsky.social has been added to both the trend file (1999-2024) and the Shiny app. Please take both for a spin! www.chesdata.eu/ches-europe chesdata.shinyapps.io/Shiny-CHES/

Kate McNamara, Professor & author of The Politics of Everyday Europe, treats writing as a way of thinking clearly about power, markets & the ideas that connect them. For her, writing isn’t easy, it’s a struggle, but one worth having! 🪶 New: catherineeunicedevries.substack.com/p/etched-in-... 🧵

Thanks for this advice, Anna! It is so helpful and concise. We have had a few this year and have scheduled a few more, so it is great timing for us!


📢 Since launching EPSS in June 2025, we’ve been thrilled by the positive feedback from across the political science community. Now that Call for Papers for EPSS Conference in Belfast has closed, we want to share the response has been extraordinary! 🧵

this is objectively hilarious

Highly recommend adding the @paper-feed.bsky.social feed - only papers from people you follow!

"Within a seminar series, women are interrupted more than men... Interruptions that are negative in tenor or tone, or cutoff the presenter mid-sentence, increase for women presenters"

✔ Claims the power to execute people he deems a threat ✔ Claims the power to spend public funds however he wants, ignoring the Constitutional powers of Congress ✔ Deploys the military in American cities ✔ Purges military and law enforcement who aren't loyal to him ✔ Posts AI slop saying he's a king

so happy to *officially* share that I have been awarded an APSA DDRIG this year! I'm thrilled and honored to be a part of this cohort and very excited to get started on some field work in the UK soon.

Every academic career is built on rejection, but we don’t show it. 
CVs list publications, grants & awards, not rejected manuscripts, unfunded proposals, or failures. 
But those invisible rejections shape us more than our successes ever do. 👉 catherineeunicedevries.substack.com/p/fail-bette... 🧵

This, from @catherinedevries.bsky.social, is really useful advice for young (and, tbh, old!) academics. Worth passing on if you know any, maybe? catherineeunicedevries.substack.com/p/fail-bette...

👏 Maxwell Ph.D. candidates Nicholas D’Amico, Hannah Radner and Jingding Wang have been honored by the @apsa.bsky.social for research on global finance, elections and LGBTQ political identity. @supolisci.bsky.social

After years of complaining about cancel culture, the current administration has taken it to a new and dangerous level by routinely threatening regulatory action against media companies unless they muzzle or fire reporters and commentators it doesn’t like.

By Dennis Rasmussen, one of my colleagues here @supolisci.bsky.social -- also got a very enjoyable audiobook version, highly recommended.

📢 EPSS community updates!
 We’re excited to share some milestones and announcements with you 👇 epssnet.org/news/

Now this is new tech I can get behind: www.bbc.com/news/article...

Congrats @catherinedevries.bsky.social! And I second Vicente’s excitement, what a great move for the department.

this guy is savage

EPSA have announced that they will hold a conference in July 2026. 😵‍💫 We understand that there might be some confusion about EPSS and EPSA. 👉🏽 So we thought we would clarify some things. A short 🧵

kennedy is going to kill a lot of people

🚨 Very excited to share that the call for papers for the EPSS annual conference in Belfast 2026 is live. 🔝 Lots of innovation to enrich the way we exchange ideas in political science in Europe. 🙏🏼 Sharing is caring!

The @epssnet.bsky.social call for the 2026 conference in Belfast opened today! 😮 epssnet.org/belfast-2026... Deadline: 7 November 2025

When is the last time you sent someone a (quick) email to tell them you appreciate their work? It takes only a few minutes and means a lot to people, junior or senior, (pony) famous or not. Particularly important in today’s world, where people get so much negative feedback from anonymous trolls.

Motherfucking wind farms…

the one thing i genuinely did not anticipate from this administration was its vicious, know nothing hostility to any and everything that might even be adjacent to science and scientific research. they genuinely one to destroy the entirety of the nation’s research capacity. and for what, exactly?

among the many things they don’t tell you about having kids is the amount of money you will shell out to buy various berries

My take on the dangers we face as Trump learns to wield power more effectively www.nytimes.com/2025/07/15/o...