V-Dem v.16 is now released, w. updated scores for 2025.

Most countries remain stable from 2024, but some clear improvements (on diff’t democracy indices), incl. S. Korea, Sri Lanka & Mauritius.

Largest declines came, by far, in the US.

This figure shows 10-yr changes on the Liberal Dem. index.

@europeansocreview.bsky.social, the correct Bluesky accounts of the first two authors are @gianlucapasin.bsky.social and @aronszekely.bsky.social :)

An experimental study on institutions and social norms of tax payment Abstract. The production of public goods, which are fundamental to well-functioning societies, requires the payment of taxes, but taxpayers have clear ince

Thrilled that our findings, showing how social norms and institutions interact in Italy to shape tax reporting, are now out at:
academic.oup.com/esr/advance-...

@gianlucapasin.bsky.social @squazzoni.bsky.social

@europeansocreview.bsky.social, the correct Bluesky accounts of the first two authors are @gianlucapasin.bsky.social and @aronszekely.bsky.social :)

How do institutions and social norms affect tax payment?

Results: social expectations predict payment; High-quality institutions boost compliance, indirectly by shaping social norms; In low-quality contexts, norms can trigger vicious cycles of evasion—even when evasion is socially disapproved.

NEW: Turgut Keskintürk, Kevin Kiley, Stephen Vaisey, "What Are You Talking about? Discussion Frequency of Issues Captured in Common Survey Questions" sociologicalscience.com/articles-v12...

Details of the publication with abstract which reads: Honor killings, which occur when women are perceived to have broken purity norms and bring “dishonor” to their family, pose profound moral and societal problems and underrecognized sociological puzzles. Given the immense cost, why do families murder their own daughter, niece, or cousin? Conversely, given the tragic consequences, why are norms broken in the first place? Drawing on accounts of honor killings, we characterize the key actors, actions, and incentives, and develop two interlinked theoretical models, one on norm-enforcement and another on norm-breaking. The former specifies the conditions under which honor norms should hold, the latter, counterintuitively, predicts that honor killings occur most frequently when honor norms are contested; not when they are strictest. Analyzing data from 24 countries and ~26,000 individuals and building a unique dataset of honor killings from Turkey, we find support for the hypotheses. Honor norms are stronger when laws offer leniency for honor killings, families’ loss of reputation is more consequential, and community cohesion is higher. Actual killings have an inverse-U-shaped link with the prevalence of honor norms. Our work advances the theoretical understanding of honor norms and killings and offers one of the most comprehensive empirical analyses of the factors influencing honor killings.

Figure 1 from the paper. Within-Family Interaction and Probabilities of Interaction Outcomes Note: Panel A shows an interaction within a family. Panel B shows the probability of breaking a norm (p2) in the game tree in panel A; the probability of the existence of an honor norm in the repeated norm-enforcement game (p1, i.e., conditions given in Hypotheses 1, 2, and 3 obtain); and the probability of honor killing (p3), which is the product of the former two probabilities, as a function of repeated norm-enforcement game parameters.

Figure 3 from the paper. Support for Honor Killings; Coefficients from Multilevel Regressions with Random Intercepts for Countries Data source: PEW (2013) World Muslims Survey. Note: N (response) = 26,458. N (country) = 24. Countries that adopted laws that allow leniency for honor-based violence: Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Niger, Palestinian Territories. Countries that have adultery laws: Afghanistan, Pakistan.

Figure 5 from the paper. Results of Poisson Models Predicting the Monthly Number of Honor Killings Note: Predictive margins for the association between support for honor norms and honor killings (top panel) and the average marginal effect of passing law 6284 according to support for honor norms (bottom panel).

📢 My paper w Aron Szekely on honour-based violence is published online (Open Access): journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10....

We explain this puzzling phenomenon applying game-theory and testing it using large-scale data on norms and actual femicides.

@sriucl.bsky.social @uclsociology.bsky.social

Corporate needs you to handle misinformation yourself – behavioural science can help Misinformation thrives in an environment where platform providers shape the rules yet evade responsibility. As companies like Meta and X dismantle fact-checking and relax content moderation, users are left to navigate a fragmented and often deceptive digital landscape. But behavioural science offers solutions. In this blog, Christoph M. Abels walks us through the strategies that help individuals critically assess information, resist manipulation, and adapt to a world where platforms no longer seriously attempt to verify content for accuracy.

Corporate needs you to handle misinformation yourself – behavioural science can help

Misinformation thrives in an environment where platform providers shape the rules yet evade responsibility. As companies like Meta and X dismantle fact-checking and relax content moderation, users are left to…

A systematic review of worldwide causal and correlational evidence on digital media and democracy

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

#Misinformation #Disinformation

Do we cooperate because of institutions, or do institutions exist because we cooperate?

In this @pnas.org paper led by @jliep.bsky.social, with @lfitouchi.bsky.social & N. Baumard, we develop a mathematical model that answers this question.

👇

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

🚨 New paper 🚨 with @pstanig.bsky.social forthcoming at @thejop.bsky.social 🎉 about the political consequences of climate-related disasters 🌲💦⚠️

Pre-print 👉 osf.io/preprints/os...
Summary 🧵👇