🚨CfA🚨 We're looking for a postdoc joining us in summer in Berlin. 3-year position @hertieschool.bsky.social @hertiedatascience.bsky.social. Pursue your own research agenda in data science for public policy - ML/AI, causal inference, computational methods. Questions? Don't hesitate to reach out!
📣 Call for Papers!
Die Themengruppe Vergleichende Parlamentarismusforschung lädt zur Tagung am
🗓 1.–2. Oktober 2026
📍 in Greifswald (dieses Jahr bei uns vor Ort – ich freue mich sehr!)
Einreichungen bis 15. Mai 👇
Hier gehts zum Call for Papers shortlink.uk/1tdsI
The European Political Science Review (EPSR) has published my solo-authored paper on Affinity Voting in Europe 🤓
In it, I ask:
Do voters prefer in-group politicians?
Answer:
Sometimes, sometimes not. Minorities prefer their in-group less often than majorities do.
🧵
doi.org/10.1017/S175...
The special issue of @cpsjournal.bsky.social “Back from the Brink: Countering Illiberalism in Liberal Democracies”, co-edited by myself and Isabela Mares, was just published. The issue includes 8 articles, many of which set new research agendas. A🧵w/overview 1/10
journals.sagepub.com/toc/CPS/curr...
Herzlichen Dank an die @bertelsmannst.bsky.social , insbesondere an @unzi.bsky.social, für die Idee zu einem Debattenbeitrag zur Stärkung lokaler Demokratie.
Ein großer Dank auch an @christinajuen.bsky.social für eine weitere kritische Durchsicht des Beitrags.
Freue mich auf die Diskussion! 🙂
3/3
3️⃣Das Kommunalwahlrecht muss umfangreich reformiert werden
4️⃣Kommunalpolitik muss weniger ehrenamtlich und mehr hauptamtlich betrieben werden
5️⃣Die lokale Öffentlichkeit muss gestärkt werden
👉Main claim: Wir brauchen wieder mehr Parteien vor Ort
2/3
Wie kann die lokale Demokratie wieder aufgewertet werden?
Für die @bertelsmannst.bsky.social durfte ich 5 Thesen hierzu aufstellen: tinyurl.com/5dbvxzj9
1️⃣Es braucht mehr Politik vor Ort
2️⃣Die lokale Ebene muss rechtlich als politische Ebene betrachtet werden & für mehr Transparenz stehen
1/3
Ein paar Infos zur @pvs-journal.bsky.social im Kontext des Wechsels Chefredaktion von Chemnitz nach Mannheim: link.springer.com/article/10.1...
In dem Zusammenhang nochmals herzlichen Dank an Eric Linhart und Niclas Hüttemann für deren hervorragende Arbeit in den letzten sechs Jahren!
Was ist die Sicht der Politischen Theorie auf eine mögliche Dienstpflicht (in Deutschland)?
@svenaltenburger.bsky.social diskutiert Begründungen, Einwände und Institutionelle Designs in einem neuen open access Artikel.
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
LMU CSS Master
Jetzt an der LMU: Master Computational Social Science (M.Sc.)
Bewerbungen für die 2. Kohorte sind offen. Der interdisziplinäre Studiengang verbindet Kommunikationswissenschaft, Soziologie und Politikwissenschaft mit daten- und computergestützten Methoden. Info-Sprechstunde: 27. April.
The most famous warm-up in football history.
On this day in 1989, Napoli faced Bayern Munich at Olimpiastadion in Munich and Diego (inadvertently) created a piece of art for the ages 🥹
First page of the article "Measuring issue salience for political parties using LLMs" by Kenneth Benoit and Michael Laver, published online first in West European Politics. Shows the title, authors, and abstract.
Box plots showing the distribution of 'budgeted' issue salience scores across six policy dimensions (economic, social, environment, EU, decentralization, immigration), comparing expert surveys, Manifesto Project codings, and LLM-based estimates.
🎉 Online first:
LLMs estimate party positions well. How about issue salience?
@kenbenoit.bsky.social and Michael Laver show its harder: salience is inherently relative and more implicit. LLM's salience estimates are usable but track experts less closely than positions.
🔗 doi.org/10.1080/0140...
🚨 New Podcast Interview 🚨
I always enjoy talking about soccer and politics! This was a great interview with @gollnerphilipp.bsky.social about my ideas and research on "soccer as civil society".
With shout outs to @wienersportclub.bsky.social 🤍🖤 & @bfcdublin.bsky.social ❤️🖤
Hope you like it! 🤞
Do citizens care who makes policy?
In Germany, some policies can be adopted either by federal or state governments. But do voters have preferences over which actor adopts a policy?
Turns out, they mostly do not.
New paper out @epsrjournal.bsky.social 🧵 1/8 www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
🚨 Content alert 🚨
New recording and workshop materials published!
➡️ Politics in Action: Studying Multimodal Data from Local Meetings to National Parliaments
👤 @ankuepfer.bsky.social (TU Darmstadt & University of Birmingham)
📺 youtu.be/hdhVq5bWi2k
🗒️ github.com/SocialScienc...
🚨 New paper in the @apsrjournal.bsky.social:
Nils-Christian Bormann and I propose to model the electoral effects of ethnic and other cleavages with a new *Covoting Regression Model*. A short on the method and our results on ethnic voting in Sub-Saharan Africa. doi.org/10.1017/S000...
😀 Very excited about my new article in Party Politics: "Determined by place or party? Issue salience in local election manifestos"
📖 Read it here in full: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
or this short thread 🧵👇
Poster for the Summer 2026 joint lecture series “Democratic Challenges in Europe” organized by Baltic Peripeties / IFZO at the University of Greifswald. Features seven lectures between April and July 2026 on topics including affective polarization, democratic backsliding, migration, youth representation, the radical right, and ethnic domination.
This summer term, our joint lecture series at @baltic-peripeties.bsky.social and @ifzo.bsky.social returns with "Democratic Challenges in Europe".
For this term's programme, @oksanaalekseev.bsky.social and I invited 7 fantastic scholars to discuss democratic resilience, stability, and contestation.
New #OpenAccess -
"Beyond Numbers: Ideological Motivations in Local Coalition Formation in Flanders" - cup.org/4cqqOF4
by @rafreuse.bsky.social & @martingross.bsky.social
#FirstView
Abstract of the article "A party's pledge fulfillment and procedural transparency affect voters' trust" by Ann-Kristin Kölln, published online first in West European Politics. Shows the title, author, and abstract summarising a survey experiment on how party performance cues shape trust.
Figure 2: point estimates of voters' trust in the party (scale 0–1) under three experimental conditions — control, good pledge fulfilment, and bad pledge fulfilment — with 95 percent confidence intervals. Trust is highest under good fulfilment (~0.52), intermediate under control (~0.48), and markedly lower under bad fulfilment (~0.36).
Figure 6: two line plots showing predicted effects of perceptions of a party's pledge fulfilment (left) and law compliance (right) on voters' trust (0–1), both measured on a 1–7 scale with 95 percent confidence ribbons. Trust rises steadily with perceived pledge fulfilment and law-compliance.
🎉 Online first:
What moves voters' trust in a political party?
@annkristinkolln.bsky.social's new study shows that a party's pledge record and its procedural transparency shift trust by 7–26 points — read by voters as signals of ability and integrity.
🔗 doi.org/10.1080/0140...
@marcdebus.bsky.social zur @dpa.com :
"Die CDU in Rheinland-Pfalz ist nach unseren Daten eine moderat ausgerichtete Partei, sie unterscheidet sich in gesellschaftspolitischen Fragen zwar nach wie vor, aber nicht mehr allzu stark von den Sozialdemokraten."
👉 www.n-tv.de/regionales/r...
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...
How does coalition participation influence party membership?@hannaeback.bsky.social @michaelimre.bsky.social and I find that junior coalition partners lose more members than parties that govern alone, and an increasing ideol. diversity within the cabinet is related to a decreasing number of members.
Warum genau fragt irgendjemand Juli Zeh danach? Ist sie jetzt neuerdings Politikwissenschaftlerin? Diplomatin? Expertin in für Sicherheitspolitik? Amerikanerin?
Ich setz mich auch nicht zu Maybrit Illner und erkläre den Prenzlauer Berg im Spiegel der Romanliteratur der frühen 2000er Jahre.
Very happy to see this out in @jeppjournal.bsky.social - radical left and right movements and parties alike increasingly define themselves around explicitly European identities - but with very different ideas of what "Europe" means: ⬇️
📢 New publication! 📢
So happy to see this paper finally out @epsrjournal.bsky.social !
Looking at public perceptions of party positions in 29 elections across 20 European countries, I test whether populist radical parties are seen as more moderate when they are part of a government coalition.
👇🏼👇🏼👇🏼
Happy that our article is now available online at JEPOP!
Using German data, @salvabarbaro.bsky.social, Maike Roth and me illustrate how voter preferences are translated into electoral outcomes, challenging common narratives about declining support for social democrats and rising right-wing support.
„Gemeinsam gegen Rechts, für Demokratie und Vielfalt“ Welche leeren Signifikanten wurden zur Mobilisierung genutzt und wie wurden sie gefüllt? Welche Reaktionen gab es darauf?
Ronja Hoffmann und Stefan Matern untersuchen das Beispiel des Protests in München 2024
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
🚨 New paper with great co-authors (@oguzhan-alkan.bsky.social @rdassonneville.bsky.social @zeynsom.bsky.social) in Political Behavior!
How well do citizens perceive where parties stand? 🤔
Open access: rdcu.be/fb83Z
📢 Are women MPs better at estimating their party voters’ preferences on women’s issues? In our new paper (with @stefaniebailer.bsky.social and @breunig.eurosky.social), we analyze whether and under which conditions women MPs assess these preferences more accurately.
doi.org/10.1017/S147...
