Upcoming Guest Talk! 🎤
We are happy to announce that @jwaeckerle.bsky.social will be holding a talk about the interplay of power and femininity in politics on 4th of May.
Not in Vienna? Feel free to join online!
Find all details here:
staatswissenschaft.univie.ac.at/news-detaila...
📢 We’re looking for a writer to join our team at Our World in Data!
What we’re looking for is quite unique: someone who writes excellent narrative articles on large global problems, finds memorable framings to make hard ideas easier to understand, while being genuinely obsessed w/ technical details
🚨 NEW REPORT! 🚨
What is the state of the UK academic job market in politics, and what does this mean for the field and #highered?
In a new @psaecn.bsky.social report, @lawrencemckay.bsky.social @williamlallen.bsky.social and I find worrying trends in job adverts and HESA data from 2012-25
#PSA26
Happy to see my chapter on #directdemocracy out!
It shows that referendums have become a widely used tool far beyond Switzerland. Our meta-analyses find that direct democracy can have important positive effects, eg strengthening citizens’ sense that they have a say link.springer.com/rwe/10.1007/...
We are hiring a tenure track (!) senior researcher in political economy!
This is obviously a great job (permanent without teaching obligation) and I hope you all apply.
However, I would like to take a moment to share just how significant this is in the German academic context ⬇️
Also finding it hard to keep up with new research? I built something to fix this.
SciLove — swipe through recent papers in your field. The feed learns from your saves. Also matches you with researchers saving your work back (opt-out if you prefer).
www.scilove.app
3,000+ journals, updated daily
📢 Call for Papers – EUI PEARL PhD & Postdoc Workshop
The Florence Political Economy Applied Research Lab is hosting a two-day workshop at the European University Institute.
June 8–9, 2026.
We'd love to see your work!
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📢APPLY NOW! The Department of Social Policy & Intervention and the Centre for Advanced Social Science Methods at DPIR seek to appoint an Associate Professor of Causal and Experimental Methods in Politics and Social Policy. 🗓️ CLOSES: Noon (BST) 27 April: https://ow.ly/PLO850Yv8na
„The USA loses its long-term status as a liberal democracy – for the first time in over 50 years. […] The speed with which American democracy is currently dismantled is unprecedented in modern history“ (V-Dem 2026)
Delighted to see our collaboration out in doi print 🎉 In this paper, we qualitatively and quantitatively analyse the concept of 'electoral personalism' through the case of Milei in Argentina and identify 3 key elements: self-promotion, ideological rhetoric and moral appeals.
See link for more 👇
Congratulations! That looks like a great special issue and my reading list just got longer.
Very pleased to announce the publication of our recent special issue on "Citizenship in the global struggles for democracy", co-edited with Jelena Džankić and Szabolcs Pogonyi @scmrjems.bsky.social @lsemethodology.bsky.social www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
🔥 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...
From the AP story this is based on: apnews.com/article/suic...
FULLY FUNDED PHDs IN POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY
I'm looking for *two* PhD students to join my ERC project on refugee-led approaches to displacement justice. The positions are funded for four years, and you get to join our lovely community in Bristol. Please share widely!
philjobs.org/job/show/30997
📍Democratic Resilience Syllabus 📑
I'm sharing my master’s seminar syllabus on democratic resilience. I *loved* teaching it and had great students. I hope I get to do it again some day. ❤️
If you use it or adapt the syllabus, I’d love to hear how it goes.
klaudiawegschaider.com/media/democr...
This was one of the classes I wished I was a student again to join! 👇👇
📍Democratic Resilience Syllabus 📑
I'm sharing my master’s seminar syllabus on democratic resilience. I *loved* teaching it and had great students. I hope I get to do it again some day. ❤️
If you use it or adapt the syllabus, I’d love to hear how it goes.
klaudiawegschaider.com/media/democr...
The temporal paradox: uncertainty about the extent of a threat to democracy often leads to delayed responses. But waiting for more information on the threat often means confronting illiberals who are stronger, more entrenched, and harder to defeat through democratic means. 3/7
New article and special issue!
Just out in Comparative Political Studies: “Countering Illiberalism in Liberal Democracies: Information, Legacies, Temporalities", the intro to a special issue on countering illiberalism in liberal democracies.
journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
Thread 🧵1/7
For the FES, I wrote a short brief about how mainstream party strategies have fueled far-right success. They move toward more anti-immigration positions to win voters back. This does not work, but shifts public opinion to the right. Parties then react to shifts in public opinion. A vicious cycle.
🎉 New paper out in Political Behavior (with @gijsschumacher.bsky.social & @mrooduijn.bsky.social)
Why do some people feel stronger emotions about politics than others?
💡Not political knowledge, but interest and confidence-in-knowledge drive emotional engagement.
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
🧵
This past Winter Term, I taught an introductory class in Quantitative Methods at the University of Vienna. I think it went really well, so I’m sharing the course material (including editable slides and markdown files) for anyone that might be interested. ucloud.univie.ac.at/index.php/s/...
“What we are seeing is the weakness of strong states. Regimes that rely on repression face a challenge: The more force they deploy, the more they risk exposing their own brutality to politically persuadable observers. Overreach doesn’t just project strength; it also undermines legitimacy.” Gift link
"In an era of information overload, there is no scarcity of data or analysis; what is lacking is attention. And whoever controls that controls the debate." So true also way beyond IR, e.g. in government vs opposition dynamics of both authoritarian and democratic regimes.
From context to congruence: Immigration salience and voter socialization Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 January 2026 Leonardo Carella and Francesco Raffaelli This paper considers how issue salience environments affect long-term patterns of political choice via processes of political socialization. Drawing on the well-known ‘impressionable years’ hypothesis, we theorize that voters who grew up in high-immigration salience contexts subsequently exhibit higher levels of voter-party agreement on immigration (issue congruence). We find support for this hypothesis from two studies, which leverage cross-sectional variation within cohorts in exposure to immigration salience in voters’ formative years. The first employs congruence data from a survey of 10 European countries, linked to historical salience data from the Comparative Manifesto Project. The second is a within-country study, measuring salience and congruence from two long-running German public opinion survey series. The analysis suggests that growing up at times when immigration is high on the political agenda can have long-term consequences for the relationship between voters’ preferences on that issue and their political choices, shedding light on the mechanism behind ‘generational realignment’.
Really happy this work with @fraraffaelli.bsky.social found a home at EJPR. We show that growing up at times of high salience of immigration produces cohorts of voters who are more likely to vote for parties that they agree with specifically on immigration.
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
If the Minnesota resistance has an overarching ideology, you could call it “neighborism”—a commitment to protecting the people around you, no matter who they are or where they came from. The contrast with the philosophy guiding the Trump administration couldn’t be more extreme. Vice President Vance has said that “it is totally reasonable and acceptable for American citizens to look at their next-door neighbors and say, ‘I want to live next to people who I have something in common with. I don’t want to live next to four families of strangers.’” Minnesotans are insisting that their neighbors are their neighbors whether they were born in Minneapolis or Mogadishu. That is, arguably, a deeply Christian philosophy, one apparently loathed by some of the most powerful Christians in America.
Neighborism.
www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
The elites and institutions have folded but regular people haven’t
📣 Call for Papers:
🗓️ 23-24 April 2026 at LSE
Submit full papers: forms.office.com/e/9qVWeNTK0p
Please share with colleagues & early-career researchers!
With the irreplaceable help of @davidsteinecke.bsky.social, Christina Zuber and I venture into legislative studies with this analysis of party groups and role call voting in parliaments in multinational societies.
@uni-konstanz.de @lsqjournal.bsky.social
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....