Danbischof

We're hiring across Political Science at the department of political science @uni-muenster.de : 3 postdocs, a doctoral position and a research associate position, spanning methods, democracy and sustainability. Details and deadlines below. Please share widely; questions welcome!

Comparative Politics / Political Behavior: stellen.uni-muenster.de/jobposting/2... International Relations and Sustainability: stellen.uni-muenster.de/jobposting/c... Quantitative Methods: stellen.uni-muenster.de/jobposting/8...

Postdoc position within my group 3 years (100% TVl-13): stellen.uni-muenster.de/jobposting/2... ⏱️ 06.11.2026 If you have questions: get in touch!

The position will allow you to have enough time to work on your own projects; the goal is not to hire a workhorse for a project.

Postdoc position within my group 3 years (100% TVl-13): stellen.uni-muenster.de/jobposting/2... ⏱️ 06.11.2026 If you have questions: get in touch!

📄 New working paper w. Alex De Juan, @felixhaass.bsky.social & Henry Thomson: We study Weimar Germany in 1932 to ask whether far right electoral success pacifies extremist movements - or can fuel violence when mandates do not translate into power. osf.io/preprints/so...

📌 The dilemma is grim. Exclusion can fuel disillusionment and violence. But inclusion may provide legitimacy, immunity, and even more violence down the road. Paper: osf.io/preprints/so...

📄 New working paper w. Alex De Juan, @felixhaass.bsky.social & Henry Thomson: We study Weimar Germany in 1932 to ask whether far right electoral success pacifies extremist movements - or can fuel violence when mandates do not translate into power. osf.io/preprints/so...

📈 Membership records tell a similar story. Where mandates had been won, SA membership kept growing. We do not see the same pattern for the formal party organization.

📄 New working paper w. Alex De Juan, @felixhaass.bsky.social & Henry Thomson: We study Weimar Germany in 1932 to ask whether far right electoral success pacifies extremist movements - or can fuel violence when mandates do not translate into power. osf.io/preprints/so...

⚠️ The mechanism is not simple loser grievance. Violence increased where Nazi candidates won mandates, not where they narrowly lost. Representation without power seems to have redirected frustration toward the movement's violent wing.

📄 New working paper w. Alex De Juan, @felixhaass.bsky.social & Henry Thomson: We study Weimar Germany in 1932 to ask whether far right electoral success pacifies extremist movements - or can fuel violence when mandates do not translate into power. osf.io/preprints/so...

🔎 Main finding: post-election Nazi-communist violence was substantially higher in towns represented by elected Nazi MPs. A town with an elected Nazi MP was more than twice as likely to experience a post-election SA-KPD riot.

📄 New working paper w. Alex De Juan, @felixhaass.bsky.social & Henry Thomson: We study Weimar Germany in 1932 to ask whether far right electoral success pacifies extremist movements - or can fuel violence when mandates do not translate into power. osf.io/preprints/so...

🗂️ to be able to understand the link between elections and violence we digitize Nazi candidate lists and Prussian police records on street violence. Then we link riots to Nazi candidates' home towns.

📄 New working paper w. Alex De Juan, @felixhaass.bsky.social & Henry Thomson: We study Weimar Germany in 1932 to ask whether far right electoral success pacifies extremist movements - or can fuel violence when mandates do not translate into power. osf.io/preprints/so...

💡 Elections are supposed to reduce violence: representation gives actors a stake in institutions and a peaceful route to influence. But what if a violent far right movement wins seats and is still excluded from power?

📄 And another working paper: **Pretty much all citizens say they support democracy.** But what do they mean by that? We ask whether voters from different partisan camps mean the same thing when they talk about "democracy." Paper: osf.io/preprints/so...

📌 Bottom line: The danger is not only that citizens abandon democracy. It is also that democracy remains a shared word while its institutional and normative content becomes selectively narrowed.

📄 And another working paper: **Pretty much all citizens say they support democracy.** But what do they mean by that? We ask whether voters from different partisan camps mean the same thing when they talk about "democracy." Paper: osf.io/preprints/so...

🪞 Even shared terms do not always mean shared meanings. Among respondents who mention rights, left voters connect rights to equality, people, and citizenship. Right voters emphasize freedom of speech and expression.

📄 And another working paper: **Pretty much all citizens say they support democracy.** But what do they mean by that? We ask whether voters from different partisan camps mean the same thing when they talk about "democracy." Paper: osf.io/preprints/so...

🗳️ This does not mean citizens reject elections. It means elections are much less salient than rights and freedoms when people formulate democracy openly. Still, few link democracy with elections when asked in their own words.

📄 And another working paper: **Pretty much all citizens say they support democracy.** But what do they mean by that? We ask whether voters from different partisan camps mean the same thing when they talk about "democracy." Paper: osf.io/preprints/so...

🤖 We classify the answers with a fine-tuned language model. Then we use sentence embeddings to study not only which principles people mention, but also how they describe shared terms like rights, freedom, and elections.

📄 And another working paper: **Pretty much all citizens say they support democracy.** But what do they mean by that? We ask whether voters from different partisan camps mean the same thing when they talk about "democracy." Paper: osf.io/preprints/so...

🧲 Our worry: democracy itself can become absorbed into the left-right cleavage. Citizens may then disagree not only about policies, but about which version of democracy they believe is being defended.

📄 And another working paper: **Pretty much all citizens say they support democracy.** But what do they mean by that? We ask whether voters from different partisan camps mean the same thing when they talk about "democracy." Paper: osf.io/preprints/so...