Job vacancy announcement for a postdoctoral position at the University of Vienna Department of Government, starting August/September 2026. Research focus includes political representation, party competition, political institutions, political economy, political behavior, or related fields. Application deadline: 29 April 2026. Full details are also available through the shared link.

🚨 Job Alert 🚨

We have an opening for a 𝗣𝗼𝘀𝘁𝗱𝗼𝗰 𝗣𝗼𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 @stawi-univie.bsky.social starting Aug/Sep 2026!

Focus: political representation, party competition, political institutions, political economy, political behavior, or related fields

📅Apply by 29 April 2026

jobs.univie.ac.at/job/Universi...

Moon content is the wholesome content I did not know I needed. With all the sudden swings of dopamine I crave (Nutella! Wife who died!) but none of the bomb threats.

Thrilled that my paper (w/@sarahobolt.bsky.social,@catherinedevries.bsky.social,@simonecremaschi.bsky.social) was accepted at the American Political Science Review!

We find that declining public services fuel support for the populist right — and show why the right benefits more than other parties 🧵

Elizabeth Mitchell Elder, Podcast Episode · New Books with Miranda Melcher · March 22 · 32m

Had a lovely conversation about my book with Miranda Melcher of @newbooksnetwork.bsky.social! Take a listen for a preview of the book’s arguments about company power, state capacity, and public alienation in mining towns: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/n...

Yes, would be happy to chat! I am Estonian, though it's been a long while since I lived in Estonia, so I will be more useful for general cultural context and less for "what happened in parliament last year".

Because I am a survey researcher, I usually take most surveys that I am asked to participate in. But I am reaching saturation on surveys about AI use in academia... how many teams are out there working on this? Everyone?

Acquiescence Bias and Criterion Validity: Problems and Potential Solutions for Agree-Disagree Scales - Political Behavior Political Behavior - Scholars frequently measure dispositions like populism, conspiracism, racism, and sexism by asking survey respondents whether they agree or disagree with statements...

New w/@scottclifford.bsky.social.

Lots of work uses agree-disagree scales, and a lit review shows these are 1) frequently just measured in one direction (agree = higher trait) and 2) correlated with each other.

This has potentially big issues for conclusions.

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

The pace at which US wealth concentration is rising is simply staggering

The concentration of AI wealth into the hands of a few tech barons + plutocratic capture ==> unchartered territory

Doing my share to reduce the bias of the published research record by file drawering a study with significant results

I once showed my sister that people show up in Google Scholar even if they are acknowledged, not only if they are authors. She told her boyfriend's mom, who had been an administrator in a research lab for years. It brought up dozens of theses where she was acknowledged. There were tears.

Yard sign saying “Abolish ICE is now a moderate position”

You let a public opinion scholar design a yard sign

I’m so sorry Thomas. I’ve been thinking of you as the news has kept coming. And it keeps occurring to me that what we are seeing from regular people there is exactly what I would expect if most Minnesotans are like you.

Reminder: All it would take to end the murder of American citizens by an untrained government goon squad is 16 Republicans in Congress voting with Dems to defund ICE (or 23 to impeach and remove Trump — 3 in House & 20 in Senate). That’s it. 23 Americans can vote for the public and end all of this.

This law group led by @rickpildes.bsky.social had me write for their 100 Ideas series on US democracy

My idea: the rule of law cannot coexist with this level of wealth concentration. Once Musk, Bezos, Zuck, & a few others bend the knee, the authoritarian consolidates too much power

A country that blows up foreign fishing boats for no reason is one that will shoot its own citizens for no reason.

Infographic titled “2025 Billionaire Gains vs. Grocery Spending.” On the left, a large gold square shows that the top 100 richest Americans gained $995 billion in wealth in 2025, about $7,595 per U.S. household, representing wealth gains for just 100 individuals. On the right, a slightly smaller green square shows total U.S. grocery spending of $775 billion, about $5,916 per household, covering roughly 131 million households. A callout at the bottom reads “The Scale of Inequality,” noting that billionaire wealth gains exceeded national grocery spending by $220 billion. Sources listed: Bloomberg Billionaire Index and Bureau of Labor Statistics.

For the second year in a row, the wealth gains for the 100 richest Americans exceeded what ALL American households spent on groceries combined.

~$995B for billionaires vs ~$775B in total grocery spending.

We have an oligarchy and inequality problem masquerading as an affordability crisis.

In our research on socioeconomic background in academia, we ran a survey. Over 2,000 faculty members responded (thanks if you were one!)

Social & cultural capital showed up time and again as key issues.

A few findings you might be interested in...🧵

Racial Resentment Among White Americans by Birth Year and Demographics This figure presents the same four-panel layout (education, gender, geography, religion) but for White Americans from birth years 1940 to 2000. Education panel: A pronounced divide shows non-college Whites with substantially higher resentment across all cohorts, increasing sharply for older birth years. College-educated Whites rise more modestly but remain distinctly lower, especially among younger cohorts. Gender panel: Male and female trendlines rise together, with women slightly higher in mid-century cohorts. Younger cohorts of both genders start lower and climb with age. Geography panel: Regional lines separate clearly: the South is highest in resentment, followed by the Midwest. The West and Northeast show lower levels, with the Northeast consistently at the bottom. All regions slope upward toward older cohorts. Religion panel: Protestants show the highest resentment, peaking among mid-century cohorts. Catholics sit in the middle. Non-affiliated Whites show the lowest resentment, especially among younger respondents, with a small rise among mid-century generations. The figure notes CES 2024 data with GAM-smoothed trendlines.

Those claiming Dems should retreat on racial justice aren't hard-headed realists, they're pushing against the electoral tide rather than leaning into it. The story of Gen Z isn't about racist backlash or red-pilled young men. It's the most racially progressive generation in American history. 🧵

🚨Elites often warn: taxing the rich hurts everyone.

🤔But do citizens buy that story?

With @bcastanho.bsky.social & Hanna Lierse, we find: They don’t! Most people believe progressive taxes can deliver both — more equality and more growth. @jpublicpolicy.bsky.social #openaccess cup.org/3JVuvHm

So much more informative than the maddeningly common "Arrived yesterday, looks great, can't wait to give it to the child."

Why Centrist Democrats Keep Being Wrong About Elections A new 60-page report insists the party is too radical. But the problem isn’t the party platform. The problem is the broader environment.

“Deciding to Win' also displays little awareness of what winning elections is for. There is an obvious reason why the Democratic Party ought not abandon its commitment to preventing the climate crisis," writes @davekarpf.bsky.social. Excellent piece. newrepublic.com/article/2023...

A guy I used to work with was a tenured psych/CS professor as well as on an elite amateur crew team.

He said "you're never going to make learning easier, just like you're never going to make rowing easier."

I think about that a lot.

I had some coffee and remembered this is a dog. Day is going well.

I need the “this is fine” mouse but with popcorn looking out the window at a different burning house.

"Wealthy, mostly/largely democratic countries" seems to be front-runner for new summary.

Here is a very niche sign of how far the US has fallen.

If you attend a political science conference today, you will hear scholars stumbling over how to introduce datasets that until last year were known as describing "wealthy industrialized democracies".

Wow, wow, wow. This has always been legally possible but the law has virtually never been enforced — and now this is the SECOND case I've heard of in the last month (first involving a person with a green card) of a noncitizen being charged for failure to carry their papers.

What a treat, in every sense of the word, to be in Munich for the #isiwealthconference2025 @isi-munich.bsky.social

“Portland‘s protest frogs are multiplying”

I laughed. But also, completely seriously, can anyone point me to things written on Duverger vs. recent polls out of the UK?