American Journal of Political Science | MPSA Journal | Wiley Online Library Many citizens find politics too uncivil, and incivility is often considered a source of political disaffection. However, research studying these effects almost exclusively relies on survey experiment...

➡️ Crucially, it's the incivility that does the damage, not substantive disagreement. Citizens can tell the difference between fierce issue-based conflict and personal nastiness. 🎯

🔗 doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12897
Wilma, PhD (Pretty helpful Dog) and #postdog 🐾
@au.dk
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➡️ Political incivility erodes citizens' trust in politicians. 😞

➡️ It also depresses satisfaction with democracy and willingness to comply with public policies — so uncivil behavior doesn't just damage reputations, it weakens the system's capacity to solve problems. 🏛️
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A study by @tboeggild.bsky.social and Jensen asks what happens when politicians insult, interrupt, and generally snap at each other.
They find:
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#Wilmasreview
Wilma 🐶 turned 8 this weekend 🥳
So instead of reviewing her own misbehavior (food steals, couch crimes, selective deafness), we turn to the misbehavior of politicians. 🐾
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Patterns of bureaucracy: Conceptualizing administrative traditions Abstract. Administrative traditions (AT) are a prominent approach to classify and compare administrative systems across countries, yet there is a lack of a

🔗 doi.org/10.1093/jopart/muaf012
Wilma, PhD (Pretty helpful Dog) and #postdog 🐾

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➡️ The well-known country families — such as "Germanic" or "Scandinavian" — turn out to mask important variation: countries within the same supposed tradition can differ substantially, questioning the descriptive power of these labels. 🗺️ 5/🧵

➡️ A factor analysis of 49 countries identifies two core dimensions underlying these traditions: Citizen orientation (does public administration serve citizens or those in power?) and structural concentration (is governance centralized or dispersed?). 🔍 4/🧵

➡️ A systematic review of 505 publications reveals that scholars use at least ten different attributes to define "administrative traditions" — but rarely agree on which ones matter most, and more than a fifth of studies don't even define the concept at all. 🤯 3/🧵

Different countries, different trees, different timing — and, as it turns out, different bureaucracies, too!
A new study by @marlenejugl.bsky.social in @jpart1991.bsky.social takes a rigorous look at how we compare administrative systems across countries: 2/🧵

#Wilmasreview
Wilma is standing in the beautiful @au.dk park and can't believe it — it's mid-April, and the trees are still bare! 🪵 Where she grew up, it would already be lush and green by now. 🌳

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🚨New preprint and our results are rather concerning..

We find the "boiling frog" equivalent of AI use. Using large-scale RCTs, we provide *casual* evidence that AI assistance reduces persistence and hurts independent performance.

And these effects emerge after just 10–15 minutes of AI use!

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Academic Experts in Policymaking: Divergent Patterns but Persistent Profiles Across Parliament, Government, and Media Despite the growing interest in expert involvement in policymaking, we lack a comprehensive and detailed understanding of how experts engage across both direct and indirect arenas, and which experts ...

Government advisory councils have the most gender balance (36% female) — likely thanks to formal selection procedures and quotas.

🔗 doi.org/10.1111/padm.70057

Wilma, PhD (Pretty helpful Dog) and #postdog 🐾
@au.dk

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➡️ The arena can shape who gets in: media op-eds are supply-driven (academics pitch themselves) and show the most academic involvement (31%) but also the strongest male dominance (80%). 🏛️
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➡️ 92% of experts are active in only one arena, and only few show up across all three examined policy areas. 🔀
➡️ The typical profile of the scientific expert: senior, male, professor, social sciences or humanities. 78% of involved academics are male, compared to 49% in the academic population. 👨‍🏫
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But which academics get close to political power? A study by Janne Ingelbeen, Tessa Haesevoets and @bramwauters.bsky.social in @journalpa.bsky.social examines who gets a seat at the policymaking table in Belgium:

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#Wilmasreview Wilma 🐶 knows a thing or two about being close to power. Strategically positioned near the dinner table, she is a genius in the art of being in the right place at the right time — waiting for the baby to drop the good stuff. 🍌

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<em>Public Administration Review</em> | ASPA Journal | Wiley Online Library This study examines whether street-level bureaucrats' preferences toward algorithmic decision support (ADS) induce a unilateral shift of technology-related risks onto clients of the public employment...

🔗 doi.org/10.1111/puar.70111
Wilma, PhD (Pretty helpful Dog) and #postdog 🐾
@au.dk

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➡️ Keep it in-house: systems developed by the agency’s own IT unit are far more trusted than those from private companies – especially foreign ones. 🏛️

💡 Organizations designing AI for public services may profit from involving the people who actually use these systems.

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➡️ No black boxes allowed: case managers strongly prefer systems they can actually understand, even if that requires extra training days. 🔍

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➡️ Case managers reject mandatory algorithmic recommendations and insist on keeping their professional discretion – even when the system promises major time savings. 🙅

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A new study by Martin Dietz, Christopher Osiander, Mareike Sirman-Winkler & @markustepe.bsky.social in PAR asked 1,400+ case managers at the German Federal Employment Agency what they want from algorithmic decision support systems:

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#Wilmasreview Wilma 🐶 takes guardrails very seriously – so seriously, in fact, that she sleeps with one. But what about the guardrails for AI in public services?
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💡 Physical attractiveness shapes who gets hired, promoted, and paid - and we seem to be barely aware of it.
🔗 doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000459

Wilma, PhD (Pretty helpful Dog) & #postdog 🐾
@au.dk

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➡️ When asked to freely describe a biased hiring outcome, ~70% flagged gender or race discrimination — but only 1 in 4 noticed attractiveness bias, even when every single hire was attractive. 🔍

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➡️ This isn't genuine tolerance. When the bias was explicitly pointed out, participants stopped seeing it as acceptable. The seeming social approval of "lookism" reflects a failure to notice the bias — not moral approval of it. 👀

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➡️ People quickly spot and condemn gender and race bias, but attractiveness bias flies right under the radar — even when it is equally strong. Across 8 studies with 3,591 participants, attractiveness-biased outcomes were judged as barely less fair than unbiased ones. 🫣

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#Wilmasreview Wilma 🐶 has strong opinions about food. The smiley watermelon 🍉? Objectively delightful. Would she hire it over a plain onion 🧅? Absolutely. Is that bias? Would anyone even notice? According to @bxjaeger.bsky.social, @gpaolacci.bsky.social & Johannes Boegershausen — maybe not.

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How Do Strikes and Lockouts Affect Applications to Danish Public Service Professional Education Programs? A Synthetic Control Analysis With fewer young people entering public service, public employers and the corresponding trade unions aim at signaling that they offer attractive working conditions. However, in the struggle for attra...

🔗 doi.org/10.1111/padm.70053
A special shout-out: first author Christian started this research as a master student project! 🎓 Now it is published in @journalpa.bsky.social .

Wilma, PhD (Pretty helpful Dog) and #postdog 🐾
@au.dk
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💡 Public employers and unions involved in labor market disputes should be aware that escalating these disputes may undermine their recruitment efforts. Potential future employees are watching — and some decide to look elsewhere.
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