Today marks the end of my fellowship at AxPo @sciencespo.bsky.social. Grateful for the freedom to pursue my research and for the brilliant colleagues who made this journey so rewarding. In particular @oliviergodechot.bsky.social, Allison Rovny, Noam Titelman, Ulysse Lojkine, Meryem Bezzaz.

Fellow academics, I need to replace my old Mac laptop. Do you think a MacBook Air can handle R, Stata, QGIS, etc., or do I need a MacBook Pro? Many thanks for the tips!

3rd IAST-OXPO Conference in Political Economy Tomorrow, @catarinaleao.bsky.social will present her work "Past Benefits Today Keep Extremism Away. Authoritarian Privileges Withdrawal and the Emergence of Contemporary Extremism: Evidence from Post-WWII Italy". ⤵️ www.nuffield.ox.ac.uk/news-events/...

🚨 Big News for European Political Science 🚨 We’re thrilled to announce the launch of the European Political Science Society (EPSS): a new, member-led, not-for-profit association built to support our scholarly community. 🔗 epssnet.org Here’s a thread with everything you need to know. 🧵

#EPSA2025 starts tomorrow! A dozen of our scholars have papers on political lotteries, challenges to democracy, autocratic legacies, the fate of mainstream parties, group-targeting in politics and media, climate politics, culture wars / backfire... 👉Details here: www.sciencespo.fr/centre-etude...

I look forward to meeting many of you soon in Madrid for EPSA 2025. In case that’s helpful to anyone, here are some of my personal Madrid favorites:

Looking for a last-minute #EPSA2025 Reception ticket. Happy to buy if anyone can’t make it.

According to «objective» democracy measures, we have learned nothing about the trajectory and state of democracy in the US since January. That strikes me as pretty damn absurd..

If you read just one opinion piece about the latest Portuguese election, make it this one.

I've been running online surveys in #Romania about the presidential elections. Lots of crazy stuff but the graph below took me by surprise (and I'm someone who studies communist legacies). This is the share of the second-round vote for Simion as a function of what respondents think of Ceaușescu.

You've (probably) got mail! ✉️ Heading to #EPSA2025 in Madrid? Consider signing up to our buddy/mentor scheme that the diversity committee has set up to help first-time attendees navigate Europe's biggest political science conference Questions? Send them over to @alonadolinsky.com or me 🙂

Overleaf is down. Use Word, or preserve your dignity by doing nothing.

Boa escolha de nome.

It’s so funny how MAGA thinks the Pope is ‘woke’ for his views on migration and helping the poor—when that’s literally one of the most basic tenets of Christianity. The level of dissociation is off the charts.

Amen to that

Even established authoritarian regimes consider arresting defiant judges an extreme tactic—a serious escalation usually reserved for after one-party rule is firmly entrenched. Seeing a judge arrested in the US today should alarm everyone who values democratic governance. This cannot be allowed. 🧵

My first post at the newly revived @misofact.bsky.social is a nerdy take on why it seems like experts are decrying rising autocracy in thd US, but for most folks, life goes on as usual. How much authoritarianism has the US actually seen so far in Trump-II? open.substack.com/pub/misofact...

Just posted updated version of our DID textbook! We now have drafts of all chapters, including the one on general designs! Now you can tell your friends still on X that they are DID-outdated :-) Happy easter for those of you that celebrate it. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

🚨 New paper🚨 on how AI can help us doing research (or not) with my office mate @phbono.bsky.social We test whether LLMs (ChatGPT, MistralAI) can be used to ideologically position parties in real time. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... 1/3

#VendrediLecture📚 Do citizens learn more after rejecting EU referendums? @ronjasczepanski.bsky.social new study in Journal of European Integration finds no major knowledge gain post-vote. Dive into the analysis ⤵️ www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1...

“In March, @stevelevitsky.bsky.social and fellow prof @ryanenos.bsky.social authored a letter, co-signed by 800 colleagues, calling on Harvard to defend itself and academic freedom more broadly by mounting ‘a coordinated opposition to anti-democratic attacks.’ Their pressure seems to have helped…”

"You boy! What tariff is it today?"

My book Democracy Under Strain is finally out, and I couldn’t be happier. 🥳 It’s been a long, challenging journey—but one that’s shaped me deeply as an academic. Here’s what it’s about 🧵 #DemocracyUnderStrain (1/11)

This is the most incredible commentary on what is happening in the US, by one of the most eminent political scientists on the planet. You have to read this. open.substack.com/pub/adamprze...

Research into how #disinformation affects democracy has never been more important. But #autocrats and #populists discredit any findings that challenge their worldview. @krycztof.bsky.social describes how #Trump is changing the rules of communication, and manipulating public discourse bit.ly/42qko2x

No dia 21, pouco antes do 25 de abril, dou um Webinar acerca da normalização da direita radical no Centro de Estudos Interdisciplinares em Educação e Desenvolvimento. Muito grato ao André Freitas pelo convite. A participação é aberta mediante inscrição aqui: ulusofona.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...

On my way to Chicago to attend MPSA. I look forward to seeing may of you there! I will be part of a great panel on responses to a normalized far-right (details attached). 1/2

Political regimes are choices. Worth saying though that, while it is fast to break things, it always takes longer to repair them.

University students occupied the streets in Turkey after Erdoğan detained the highly popular presidential candidate İmamoğlu, the current mayor of Istanbul. I am so proud of all these young people 🇹🇷

🇹🇷🇹🇷🇹🇷

Lenin's theory of imperialism & capitalist peace theory sound like strange bed-fellows, but @torewig.bsky.social , @sirianned.bsky.social, @magnusrasmussen.bsky.social & I integrate them in this article. Published today in @ejir.bsky.social! On business elites in politics & international conflict

The race for AI depends on accessing land and resources. That will get harder as the costs stack up. My latest Substack here michaelalbertus.substack.com/p/the-race-f...

As expected (despite many last-minute twists), the PT government fell yesterday and the country is headed to new elections. These are the fourth in 5.5 years, something the country didn’t witness even in the very unstable First Republic in the early 20th century. www.publico.pt/2025/03/11/p...

Our data paper on the Regime Support and Opposition Groups data was just published in @bjpols.bsky.social ! Co-authored with @sirianned.bsky.social , @magnusrasmussen.bsky.social and @torewig.bsky.social Here comes a relatively long thread (as is appropriate for a long-term project)

Facts

Looking forward for this great panel at the APCP conference tomorrow. I’ll present work with Guilherme Fasolin on how extreme weather events influence political selection. Join us if you’re around!

Since 2019, no cabinet has endured an entire legislature in Portugal. Ironically, the last one that did was a "contract parliamentarism" solution between center-left, Communists, and left radicals that people joked about by calling it "the contraption." www.politico.eu/article/port...

Partis politiques et environnement en Europe : 2 grandes tendances d'après @malojan.bsky.social à partir de l'enquête @chesdata.bsky.social ⤵️ ▶️ les partis les + opposés aux mesures environnementales (à l'extrême-droite) s'expriment davantage ▶️ les partis pro-environnement en parlent - qu'avant

Just published on APSR First View: "Political Emancipation and Modern Jewish National Identity" by Carles Boix. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

I will be presenting my work on autocratic legacies and contemporary extremism on this brilliant panel tomorrow at the Portuguese Political Science Association conference. Hope to see you there!

Any doubts left?

We spent years listening to hawkish pundits arguing that the energy transition would make us poorer. We didn’t spend enough time talking about how the transition to full-blown fascism can make us much, much poorer.

Student expulsions, funding threats, and labels like “agitators” and “illegal protests” are straight out of the playbook of communist parties and modern autocrats like Orban. He’s trying to do away with the freedoms of speech, association, and inquiry, and it’s not going to stop with universities.

The Republican Party has officially become a cult.

Zelenskyy stayed in Kyiv while Russia was bombing the city and sending in hit squads to kill him. J.D. Vance fled to an undisclosed location because some peaceful protesters yelled at him while he was on vacation. This is why I believe victory over these people is still possible.

Sunday’s @thetimes.com cartoon times.newsprints.co.uk/morten-morla...

Zelensky, the man you are.

Garry Kasparov is right, I’m afraid: they are breaking everything so quickly even though it’s unpopular, because they never expect to face real elections again. www.theatlantic.com/internationa...

The most striking result from yesterday’s German election #btw2025 🇩🇪: 🔹 35 years after reunification: The GDR is redrawn on this map. 🔹 The AfD won 45 out of 48 electoral districts in the East. 🔹 In some parts of Saxony, they came close to 50%! Why is this happening? Here’s my take 👇