One of my students is on the list. I hope he will do a good job :-)

Three 2-year Postdoctoral positions at Aarhus University: Projects on personality cults and strategic communication in autocracies - Vacancy at Aarhus University Vacancy at Department of Political Science, Aarhus University

Three 2-year full-time postdoctoral positions in autocratic politics at the Department of Political Science at Aarhus University (in connection to projects headed by Jakob Tolstrup and Alexander Baturo). Flexible start date. Application deadline: June 1, 2026.
international.au.dk/about/profil...

Academic Freedom in Europe: safeguarding democracy, science and innovation YouTube video by MySTOA

At #STOA’s High-Level Conference on #EP4AcademicFreedom on 4/3, policymakers, researchers et al. discussed measures to safeguard scientific independence & #democracy

With @president.europarl.europa.eu, Commissioner Zaharieva, MEP Ehler & Prof @skaaning.bsky.social

www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Zr2...

A 🧵on how the @vdeminstitute.bsky.social accountability indices help us understand how democratic backsliding is occurring in the United States.

tl;dr: in principle, vertical constraints on the president remain strong; in practice, horizontal and diagonal constraints have been greatly weakened.

This post raises a several important questions about the @vdeminstitute.bsky.social indices that I'll try to discuss broadly, then specifically in the case of Mongolia.

Important caveat: I am not a Mongolia expert, so can't speak substantively about the case; I can discuss the V-Dem methodology.

Two map graphs show the state of liberal democracy according to the V-Dem Liberal Democracy index for 2025 and 2024. The higher the score (or darker blue), the more democratic the country. Lower scores (or dark red) mean less democratic. While North and South America, Western Europe and Oceania are mostly in the blue, most parts of Asia and Africa are in the red in 2025. In comparison to the map for 2024, the map graph for 2025 shows democratic backsliding in some traditionally stable democracies in Western Europe and North America, in particular the USA, United Kingdom and Italy.

📢 Out Now! V-Dem Dataset v16 & the V-Dem Institute Democracy Report 2026
💾 The V-Dem Dataset: v-dem.net/data/the-v-d...
📰 The Report "Unraveling The Democratic Era?”: v-dem.net/publications...
📈 Explore the new data with the V-Dem Graphing tools: v-dem.net/graphing/gra...

#PoliSky #PoliSciSky
1/3

The V-Dem Steering Committee's release statement for v.16 of the dataset (link in the post below):

In the run-up to Wednesday's high-level #EP4AcademicFreedom conference:

👉Interview with academic keynote speaker Prof @skaaning.bsky.social of @aarhusuniint.bsky.social on #Democracy & #AcademicFreedom: wp.me/panTdn-4vZ

#ESMH @ep-eprs.bsky.social @linagalvez.eu @eua.eu @guildeu.bsky.social

Sage Journals: Discover world-class research Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

How do different forms of state capacity protect democracy? D Andersen, @chknutsen.bsky.social & @skaaning.bsky.social argue coercive & administrative capacity affect stability in distinct ways depending on threat: buff.ly/6lpO8S3

@polstudiesassoc.bsky.social @uoypolitics.bsky.social @sagepub.com

Joint work with the brilliant
@kristianvsf.bsky.social
@sirianned.bsky.social
@aykutozturk.bsky.social

Open access article here 👇
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Our 32-country conjoint study on which societal characteristics citizens prioritize is now published at @bjpols.bsky.social

w. excellent @anjaneundorf.bsky.social @sirianned.bsky.social @aykutozturk.bsky.social

🚨 3-Year Postdoc in Political Science at Aarhus University 🚨

I’m seeking to recruit a postdoc for my @erc.europa.eu research project 𝑬𝑸𝑼𝑰𝑳𝑰𝑩𝑹𝑰𝑼𝑴 on state-citizen interactions.

Link and more information in second post.

Position Start: Fall 2026
Application Deadline: ‼️ February 5, 2026, 23:59 CET ‼️

Our study shows that escalation is shaped by patterns of state response and that exclusion sometimes emerge as result of violence. It also demonstrates how comparative qualitative case-studies can trace mechanisms, address endogeneity and measurement validity, and support cautious generalization.

In three of the cases, mobilization was followed by inconsistent response by the government. In the last six cases, conflict itself produced exclusion, revealing recursive dynamics rather than a one-way sequence.

Does ethnopolitical exclusion cause civil war onset via grievances? In a new article, @lleipziger.bsky.social, Lasse Lykke Rørbæk, and I reassess this relationship based on 15 case studies. Six of the cases followed the grievance/mobilization/rejection pathway proposed by the general theory.

so well put

Fascinating paper by @grattonecon.bsky.social, @bartonelee2.bsky.social, and Hasin Yousaf!
The paper addresses a fundamental question: Why do some democracies chronically avoid ambitious, long-term reforms even when they have decent institutions?
They argue that what matters is not only

Interesting! Should be room to discuss this when we both visit Carl Henrik in a month from now :-)

The findings will hopefully deepen our understanding of public commitment to democracy and inform strategies to strengthen it.

Through a multifaceted theoretical framework and comparative experimental surveys, DEMTRAP investigates when and why citizens come to see democracy as costly, how crises and polarization shape these beliefs, and what this means for democratic resilience.

Although democracies generally perform as well as or better than autocracies, many people believe democracy can be too slow or divided to solve major problems. Such views may erode support for democratic norms and open the door to authoritarian leaders.

Happy to announce that I, together with @kristianvsf.bsky.social, have received DKK 3,167,689 from Independent Research Fund Denmark to pursue the project Democratic Tradeoff Perceptions (DEMTRAP). We will explore citizen perceptions of possible tradeoffs between democracy and effective governance.

New article out on the relationship between different dimensions of state capacity and modes of democratic breakdown.

New version (0.6.0) of my #rstats package {democracyData} xmarquez.github.io/democracyData/ with @freedomhouse.bsky.social data to 2024, as well as several other sources, plus minor improvements all around

And another great potential read for graduate students on the measurement of "waves" of democratization and autocratization by @skaaning.bsky.social especially helpful for students thinking about periodization (including thinking about the contemporary "moment").

doi.org/10.1080/1351...

🚨 Are you interested in Historical Political Economy? 🚨

At the Virtual Workshop in HPE (VWHPE)—organized jointly with @dkofanov.bsky.social & @tinepaulsen.bsky.social—we discuss state-of-the-art research on a regular basis.

‼️ We have just issued a new call for papers. ‼️

Link & info in post #2.

How do different forms of state capacity protect democracy? Andersen, @chknutsen.bsky.social & @skaaning.bsky.social argue coercive & administrative capacity affect stability in distinct ways depending on the threat: buff.ly/Q4HDylB

@polstudiesassoc.bsky.social @uoypolitics.bsky.social @sagepub.com

How do different forms of state capacity protect democracy? D Andersen, @chknutsen.bsky.social & @skaaning.bsky.social argue coercive & administrative capacity affect stability in distinct ways depending on threat: buff.ly/Q4HDylB

@polstudiesassoc.bsky.social @uoypolitics.bsky.social @sagepub.com

Happy to have been part this new publication on the relationship between different dimensions of state capacity and modes of democratic breakdown!

Forlaget har vist udskiftet linket til bogen. Den kan nu tilgås her: unipress.dk/udgivelser/d...