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.

As the Hormuz crisis becomes a food security crisis, the @wfp.org is going into 2026 in a massive funding hole due to aid retrenchment by the US and many European donors facing the prospect of rearmament. The geopolitics driving the crisis are also leaving the cupboard bare for crisis response.

❓ Ständig im Krisenmodus?
❗ Wie wir als Gemeinschaft Krisen bewältigen
📆 Mi., 11.3., 17:30
📍 Aula im Mannheimer Schloss

Öffentliche Podiumsdiskussion mit den MZES-Forschern Marc Helbling, @valentinlang.bsky.social und Kolleg*innen verschiedener Disziplinen:

👉 www.uni-mannheim.de/newsroom/pre...

Morgen Abend Podiumsdiskussion hier👇

Freuen uns auf Besuch!
www.uni-mannheim.de/newsroom/pre...

Baden-Württemberg was divided into an American and a French occupation zone after WW2 along a highway. Settlement patterns of German refugees from the East differed, and so does the vote for the AfD today. 👇🏻

... und hier der aktuelle Artikel der Stuttgarter Zeitung dazu:

... Jetzt mit Daten bis zur Wahl 2025, neuer Evidenz zu Mechanismen und einem ähnlichen Muster in ganz Deutschland ...

Rechtzeitig zur #Landtagswahl: eine neue Version von „Immigration and Nationalism in the Long Run“
(mit schneiderst.de/)

-> Die historischen Erfahrungen mit Einwanderung wirken sich dort bis heute auf die Wahlergebnisse der #AfD aus. <-

papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Wer vor der Landtagswahl am Sonntag noch etwas richtig interessantes über Wahlergebnisse in Baden-Württemberg lesen will, hier entlang:

1/3 A new study by @valentinlang.bsky.social & Stephan A Schneider suggests that 🇩🇪 regions that received a high number of refugees in the wake of WWII are less likely to be deceived by the siren songs of far-right parties in today’s elections than regions that received few migrants in the late 1940s

It’s insane this is legal. People around Trump are profiting off war and death. I’m introducing legislation ASAP to ban this.

must read 👇

IE SPEGA had the pleasure to host the 18th edition of @the-peio.bsky.social, a truly transatlantic conference that brings together senior and junior scholars from both sides of the Atlantic doing state-of-the-art work in the fields of international political economy and international organizations.

Withdrawing the United States from International Organizations, Conventions, and Treaties that Are Contrary to the Interests of the United States MEMORANDUM FOR THE HEADS OF EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENTS AND AGENCIES By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United

If you're in Europe and just waking up, here are the 60+ bodies - around half of them under the UN umbrella - from which the US has withdrawn

The full spiked 60 Minutes CECOT package, clean & subtitled. 1/5

Herzlichen Glückwunsch Thomas!

Don’t say you weren’t warned.
New poll suggests Jordan Bardella would win second round of 🇫🇷 presidential election against any other of four tested candidates ⬇️

AI presents a fundamental threat to our ability to use polls to assess public opinion. Bad actors who are able to infiltrate panels can flip close election polls for less than the cost of a Starbucks coffee. Models will also infer and confirm hypotheses in experiments. Current quality checks fail

abstract

Happy to share that our paper on the ideological biases of international organizations is now out in the current issue of the AJPS (@ajpseditor.bsky.social):

dx.doi.org/10.1111/ajps...

@the-peio.bsky.social @mzesunimannheim.bsky.social @akentikelenis.bsky.social

Congrats! I really like this paper.

Latest projection suggests that more than 505,000 adults and kids have died due to USAID's illegal dismantling by Musk, Rubio, and Lewin

Source: www.impactcounter.com/dashboard?vi...

Genau! Und dieses Muster wiederholt sich in der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik in unterschiedlichen Kontexten immer wieder – wie unser Paper zum Thema zeigt: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

What If A.I. Doesn’t Get Much Better Than This? GPT-5, a new release from OpenAI, is the latest product to suggest that progress on large language models has stalled.

Last week, OpenAI finally released GPT-5, which many had hoped would usher in the next significant leap in A.I. capabilities. But it is just the latest product to suggest that A.I. might not get much better.

Media, Spillovers and Social Norms: The Electoral Impact of Anti-Far-Right Protests in the 2002 French Election Abstract. We study the electoral impact of protesting against the far right by investigating the demonstrations held during the 2002 French presidential el

Our paper with @nicolaslagios.bsky.social & @ilantojerow.bsky.social is now out in the Economic Journal ( @resmedia.bsky.social). It shows that demonstrating against the far-right in France had the intended effect. 1/18
academic.oup.com/ej/article-a...
1/18

Freue mich drauf!

Important and interesting work on EU regional cohesion policies and how they need to be reformed.

Yesterday, the Commission proposed piling a whole heap of new goals—from competitiveness to defense—onto the EU’s regional policy.

Since that’s pretty much the opposite of what @valentinlang.bsky.social, @danbischof.bsky.social, and I argued in a recent paper, a quick recap of our main points:

sickening grotesque repugnant horrifying repugnant nauseating shameful shame shame shame shame shame