Knife crime! Pronouns! Meat bans! Some political issues lead to "hotter", more emotional and polarizing debates than others. We show how these "trigger points" reveal a contested structure of moral expectations and how they get weaponized by polarization entrepreneurs. OA @bjsociology.bsky.social 🧵
📢 Out April 16th: Growth, Democracy, or Climate Action? co-authored with Aidan Regan, Cyril Benoit & Tim Vlandas. As fuel prices rise and governments buckle under competing pressures, the book could not be more timely. www.agendapub.com/page/detail/... (1/6)
I am looking for a postdoc to join my team at the University of Bremen. 5-year-contract, top-up to 100% possible for most of the contract period.
Apply by 04 May 2026.
If you have questions about the position, send me an email!
www.uni-bremen.de/en/universit...
New paper out in @thejop.bsky.social : "Immigration, Public Housing, and Support for the French National Front."
How does expanding public housing affect far-right support? The answer depends heavily on local conditions, and specifically on local immigrant shares.
Paper: doi.org/10.1086/736361
Today we had @franziskaveit.bsky.social presenting her work in our department, marking the end of her visiting stay with us. Thanks for an excellent presentation that sparked a very pleasant discussion!
We are hiring! The Department of Inequality, Transformation and Conflict is looking for Postdoc & Doc Researchers (m/f/d). Find out more & apply via www.ips.mpg.de #MaxPlanck #Postdoc #PhD #Sociology #SocialScience #PoliticalScience #Inequality #Conflict www.ips.mpg.de/13135/stelle...
Glückwunsch Anton!
Einmal mehr: Keine Altersgruppe wählte *SO LINKS WIE DIE 18-24 JÄHRIGEN*.
Die AfD war bei den Jüngsten *SCHWÄCHER als bei den 35-60 Jährigen*.
Also finding it hard to keep up with new research? I built something to fix this.
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Are we accurately interpreting election results? In our new paper, forthcoming in @ejprjournal.bsky.social, Tim Vlandas and I discuss the risks associated with drawing inferences about national level outcomes based on individual-level analyses- i.e. the 'atomistic fallacy'.
🔥 POSTDOC POSITIONS ON CHILDREN'S POLITICAL SOCIALIZATION 🔥
Wanna understand young people's beliefs about political leadership, politics, and power? Then this is your chance! I'm looking for two 2-year postdocs to join my ERC-funded research project @au.dk
international.au.dk/about/profil...
Excited to be visiting the University of Milan for the upcoming weeks to continue my research on the intergenerational transmission of economic insecurity & how it affects political behavior. Thanks @mathildevanditmars.eu for hosting me!
If you're around Milan while I’m here feel free to reach out!
Really excited to see my final dissertation paper out 🎉
Do parties shift their issue priorities when polls decline?
Looking at press releases from 68 parties in 9 countries, we find little evidence that they do.
Periodic reminder that paper-picnic.com is a terrific one-stop-shop to stay updated on the latest publications in the social sciences. Thanks Moritz! Pro tip: installing the website as an app on your phone to easily access it from your home screen: support.google.com/chrome/answe... (Android/iOS)
Formative economic experiences help explain why perceptions of economic threat vary between otherwise similar individuals. They may also help us understand political legacy effects of labor market crises, + how economic uncertainty is transmitted across generations
A mediation analysis indicates that a meaningful share of the total effect operates through respondents’ worry about their own economic situation, supporting the idea of an economic-socialization pathway.
The relationship holds when taking local contextual conditions (industry structure, immigrant share, partisan climate) + family characteristics into account, in separate East/West analyses, and among movers. A two-step FE approach suggests that this is not simply ongoing contextual exposure
Empirically, I link data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (1993–2023) to historical employment data at the district level. Main finding: individuals who grew up in districts with higher unemployment express stronger concern about immigration in adulthood.
If individuals repeatedly observe unemployment + shrinking opportunity structures in their local environment while growing up, this may foster a persistent sense of economic vulnerability. These perceptions later inform how immigration and other political challenges are interpreted.
The argument builds on political socialization research that identifies adolescence as a critical period for attitude formation. During these "impressionable years", experiences have a disproportionate impact.
I argue that the missing link is formative exposure to economic insecurity. Rather than current material hardship, exposure to local unemployment during adolescence shapes enduring perceptions of economic risk across the life course.
Economic explanations of anti-immigration attitudes face a persistent puzzle: individuals’ current economic conditions only weakly predict their immigration attitudes. Yet economic insecurity clearly matters in broader accounts of nativism and far-right support.
New working paper!
I examine whether exposure to local unemployment during adolescence shapes immigration attitudes in adulthood, focusing on the long-term imprint of early economic insecurity
doi.org/10.31235/osf...
The next conference of the DVPW Section Political Economy takes place 24–25 Sept 2026 at Freie Universität Berlin.
Contributions in English and German are welcome. Please send us your paper or panel proposal by next Friday, 27 Feb 2026.
All info in our Call for Papers: www.dvpw.de/fileadmin/us...
BJPolS abstract text discussing economic inequality in the United States, focusing on its impact on the belief in the American dream among adolescents. It highlights findings from a study related to socioeconomic factors and belief systems.
NEW -
Adolescent Exposure to Economic Inequality and Belief in the ‘American Dream’ on Entering Adulthood - https://cup.org/4rmfyyE
- @sldemora.bsky.social & Benjamin J. Newman
#OpenAccess
Excited to welcome the fabulous @tinepaulsen.bsky.social today at our Politics Lecture Series at @humboldtuni.bsky.social. Come and join us!
🚨Happy to finally see this out in the @ejprjournal.bsky.social (with @leonardocarella.bsky.social)
⁉️ Does growing up when immigration is salient make people vote for parties they agree with on immigration *for the rest of their lives*?
doi.org/10.1017/S147...
📣 Call for Papers:
🗓️ 23-24 April 2026 at LSE
Submit full papers: forms.office.com/e/9qVWeNTK0p
Please share with colleagues & early-career researchers!
Happy to share this new paper @jeppjournal.bsky.social with my great colleagues @dweisstanner.bsky.social & Carsten Jensen.
In "Winning with equality", we show "how left-wing parties attract votes but [in doing so] amplify electoral cleavages"
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Key points in 📈👇
The real ones know: there is only one SPSA conference today! 🇨🇭
Looking forward to present two brand-new paper projects ((Paper 1) co-authored with @hannaschwander.bsky.social and @franziskaveit.bsky.social & (Paper 2) co-authored with @juliusk.bsky.social) in Zurich today and tomorrow!