The UCL Portico building is in the background with a purple tinted filter on in. Text is overlayed, reading: WE ARE HIRING. Lecturer in Public Policy. The UCL Department of Political Science and Public Policy logo is in the bottom left corner.

📣We are hiring

The Department of Political Science and School of Public Policy at UCL is seeking to appoint a Lecturer in Public Policy and invites applicants with teaching and research expertise in any area of public policy.

Find out more: tinyurl.com/uclppjd

#Jobs #Policy @ucl.ac.uk

A few people have asked for the syllabus from my grad seminar on Generative AI for social science -- just posted it here:
statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2026/03/10/n...

Paper Picnic 2.0 In August 2024, I launched Paper Picnic, a weekly research digest with the latest published research articles from across political science and adjacent fields.

While there is much new, Paper Picnic 2.0 remains committed to simplicity: no alert chaos, no registration, no clutter. Curious about the details? Read more on the Paper Picnic Substack: substack.com/home/post/p-....

The refurbished website gives you more control over what you see: toggle journal visibility and drag and drop to reorder journals. There is now also a dark mode 😎 and you can export BibTeX citations for new papers directly to your clipboard 📋(and from there to your reference manager).

Working papers from SocArXiv (osf.io/preprints/so...) and OSF Preprints (osf.io/preprints) are now integrated directly into the main site. Make sure to submit your working papers in the category “Social and Behavioral Sciences” to appear on Paper Picnic.

We now cover 142 journals — the top 20% of political science journals (N=70) and the top 5% of journals in adjacent fields. To rank journals, we used the Journal Citation Reports’ Article Influence Score.

🧺 Paper Picnic 2.0 is here! More journals. New features. An easier way to keep up with the latest research in political science and adjacent fields. 🧵👇

What is the most profitable industry in the world, this side of the law? Not oil, not IT, not pharma.

It's *scientific publishing*.

We call this the Drain of Scientific Publishing.

Paper: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820
Background: doi.org/10.1162/qss_...

Thread @markhanson.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy 👇

Thank you! Bsky thread to the paper: bsky.app/profile/mori...

We demonstrate that there is a compositional effect: using survey data, we show that leavers were 18 pp less likely to support the incumbent than stayers. Thus, in constituencies with more out-migration, the incumbent vote share increased.

Using constituency-level electoral data, we show that in East German constituencies with more out-migration between 1990–1994, the incumbent vote share increased. What explains this? Do voters reward the incumbent for high out-migration (sparked by increasing unemployment)? Unlikely.

To illustrate the formal results, we study the case of East Germany after reunification, when more than 9% of East Germans moved to former West Germany. How did this exodus affect electoral support for the incumbent coalition government in the 1994 federal election across East Germany?

These two types of effects are conceptually similar but different to natural (in)direct effects in mediation analysis. We discuss how to identify, estimate, and bound the compositional effect from in- and out-migration.

We use Rubin's potential outcomes framework to formally define compositional effects and to decompose the total causal effect of internal migration into exposure effects and compositional effects.

When studying how internal migration affects changes in district-level electoral outcomes, it is important to separate the compositional effect (heterogeneity in political behavior between movers and stayers) from the exposure effect (change in political behavior due to exposure to migration).

🚨New working paper: Compositional Effects, Internal Migration and Electoral Outcomes

osf.io/preprints/so...

#polisciresearch

paper-picnic.com updated at 3:44 AM (github.com/sumtxt/picni...) and dispatched email but UCL mailman system seemed to have delayed outbound emails until 11 AM. No idea why. 🫠

Welcome! You are invited to join a webinar: Science of International Migration Seminar. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email about joining the webinar. Please click one of the Add ... Welcome! You are invited to join a webinar: Science of International Migration Seminar. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email about joining the webinar. Please click one of the Add ...

📣 Join us for a new monthly online (Zoom) seminar: Science of International Migration Seminar (SIMS). We have a great initial lineup of speakers including @mclem.org, Leah Boustan, Giovanni Peri, and @profzeke.bsky.social. Things kick off Ocotber 9th! Register here: stanford.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

Short summary in the working paper bsky thread: bsky.app/profile/mori...

The impact of private hosting on the integration of Ukrainian refugees in Germany - Nature Human Behaviour Herpell et al. use data from Germany to study the short- and medium-term effects of a programme to match Ukrainian refugees with private hosts on integration outcomes. Hosting led to improvements in s...

Now in print: "The impact of private hosting on the integration of Ukrainian refugees in Germany" with Mathis Herpell, @niklas-harder.bsky.social, @alexandra-orlova.bsky.social, Dominik Hangartner & Jens Hainmueller

doi.org/10.1038/s415...

@immigrationlab.bsky.social @uclspp.bsky.social

I have been attending EPSA since 2014, but I’m excited to attend EPSS in Belfast next year instead. Below some clarification how EPSS differs from EPSA.

The European Political Science Society is now accepting paper & panel proposals for its annual conference!

📢 Call for Papers: EPSS 2026 – Belfast

🗓️ June 18–20, 2026

📍 ICC Belfast

📬 Deadline: Nov 7, 2025

🧵

🚨 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.

🧵

Und wohin geht dann die Erststimme?

Das Wählerverzeichnis ist in der Verantwortung des Kreiswahlleiters und nicht des Bundeswahlleiters. Es gibt also nicht 1 WZ in D. Wählen (persönlich und per Brief) kann man daher auch nur im jeweiligen Wahlkreis weil nur dort die Registrierung der Stimmenabgabe im WZ möglich ist.

A few months actually. Launch date was August 23, 2024.

@dezim-institut.de @uclspp.bsky.social @uclpolicylab.bsky.social @ethzurich.bsky.social

Preparing For the Next Crisis: Lessons from Germany’s Language Programs for Refugees - Immigration Policy Lab A study of two language programs Germany offered refugees in 2015-16 reveal the temporary, ad hoc language program the German government rapidly assembled in had no impact on employment while its pre-...

Working paper: osf.io/preprints/so... Research brief: immigrationlab.org/project/prep...

6/ For policymakers preparing for future refugee arrivals, this research highlights the need to balance urgency, capacity, & effectiveness in integration programming. Scaling existing, proven programs may be more effective than building large-scale initiatives from scratch.

5/ The limited number of classroom hours (320 vs. 600 hours), a non-standardized curriculum, and a lack of certification might explain the differences between the two programs.