Dominik Schraff

The University of Mannheim invites applications for an Assistant Professor in International Political Economy and Development (W1, non-tenure track). A research focus on European integration and/or European Union politics is welcome. More details here: www.sowi.uni-mannheim.de/en/about/job...

Voters may be reluctant to hold elites accountable for transgressions because they may, in fact, endorse those transgressions (low democratic support) or because they are unwilling to vote for a different party to do so (high partisan cost of switching).

📱 What do Europe's parties talk about on social media? @malojan.bsky.social & @luissattelmayer.bsky.social introduce PartySOME II, a dataset of party issue agendas built from over 4.6m posts by 219 parties in 18 European countries on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. 🔗 doi.org/10.1080/0140...

"The result is the worst possible compromise." Bruegel on the latest EU budget proposal. www.bruegel.org/first-glance...

Super excited to see this article in print in the APSR: 📚 “Public Service Decline and Support for the Populist Right: Evidence from England’s National Health Service” - with the brilliant @zachdickson.bsky.social @catherinedevries.bsky.social @simonecremaschi.bsky.social doi.org/10.1017/S000...

Inheritance taxation is unpopular, even amongst people who are unlikely to ever have to pay it. Why? In four different studies - experiment! panels! behaviour! - @cvalebeek.bsky.social and I show political trust is a strong predictor for support for the tax. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Something bugs me about Italian opinion polls. There's not enough variance: FdI has been at 27-and-a-bit in 12 of the last 13 polls. My suspicion was herding, so I went down a statistical rabbit hole, which involved inventing a new measure of herding (which may have picked up a different issue!). 🧵

Debates about the EU budget are intensifying. Using @chesdata.bsky.social data, @jlattmann.bsky.social and I examine how countries’ financial contributions to and receipts from the EU budget relate to parties’ positions on European integration journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... Party Politics (oa)

🚨New Paper in @polbehavior.bsky.social! Julia Leschke and I ask: What works against populist rhetoric? We find: Advocating for pluralist ideals can mitigate the negative effects of populist rhetoric. link.springer.com/article/10.1... More details below ⏬

From July 2026 - The Equality Positions and Policies of Governments, 1970–2020: How Egalitarian Parties Evoke Equality While Evading Real Redistribution - https://cup.org/3TLOKfb - @alexanderhorn.bsky.social & @leoahrens.bsky.social #OpenAccess

Happy to see our new paper on mainstream-to-challenger defection in print! w/ @denis-cohen.bsky.social & @aigneranna.bsky.social Check out Denis' summary below! Thanks to @nilssteiner.bsky.social, @conradziller.bsky.social & @ackermannk.bsky.social for organizing this SI! tinyurl.com/5aa9wrmb

Happy weekend! This Saturday brings you the rare joy of a 🙌job🙌 in: surveys! democratic attitudes! experiments! three years!! research only (if you want)!!!! with @rikkidean.bsky.social @sotonpolitics.bsky.social !!!!!! www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DTB393/r...

Our colleague and friend Philipp Köker has left us and i can't begin to order my thoughts. I hope I can express to his family the feeling of loss we can't beginn to understand, but attempt to share. rundblick-niedersachsen.de/politikwisse...

Having a job in a workplace with a considerable proportion of university-educated coworkers is associated with an increase in culturally liberal attitudes www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Die Landtagswahlen zeigen, dass die ehemaligen Volksparteien kein programmatisches Angebot mehr haben, das Wähler:innen anspricht. Sind sie nicht mehr im Rennen um das Amt der Ministerpräsident*in, erhalten sie kaum noch Stimmen. Übrig sind dann nur noch wenige eher ältere Stammwähler:innen.

Gern noch mal in einfachen Worten für Union und FDP: Wenn man fünf Jahre lang so tut, als habe die AfD im Grunde Recht (“Migration=größtes Problem”, “Grüne=sozialistische Deutschlandhasser”), dann hilft man damit der AfD und schadet sich selbst. Es ist wirklich nicht schwer.

Es gibt Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. Aber es gibt auch Mecklenburg und Vorpommern. Wie wir heute Abend voraussichtlich wieder sehen werden, unterscheiden sich beide Regionen deutlich in ihrem Wahlverhalten. Woher kommen diese Unterschiede? Ein Thread mit Daten aus dem Kaiserreich bis heute. 🧵

When we talk about the costs that LLMs impose on society we should not forget the fact that nothing works anymore because everyone is so scared of getting their shit scraped. I can't even use google scholar from my university or starlink because they send too much traffic.

🧵 Just accepted @thejop.bsky.social, with @tswalve.bsky.social "What's in a name? Name recognition, place-based identities, and candidate success" Voters prefer local candidates. But how do they know who's local? Often simply from the name on the ballot👇 www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

📣 Call for papers now open! The next Annual Conference of the European Political Science Society will take place in Copenhagen, 24–26 June 2027. Submission deadline: 13 November 2026 (23:59 CET) Looking forward to it! #EPSS2027 @epssnet.bsky.social

En lille forsmag på onsdagens udgave af Makropuls.

There are many factors, of course, but a big part in my opinion is the sense among voters that elections have gotten somewhat meaningless. You vote and vote and vote, but you won't ever actually get what you want because it has become almost impossible to form coherent coalitions

A few things (international) commentatoes should remember. Only 2 million people live in Sachsen-Anhalt. Half of Berlin, a tenth of NRW. Around 400k will vote AfD. Even with this strong result, 80% of people living in S-A will not have voted for the AfD. In a state that is a far-right stronghold.

Germany: Saxony-Anhalt regional elections 🇩🇪 🇪🇺 Notable facts • Lowest turnout of any German regional election: 44.4% (2006) • First German state government to rely on a LINKE (then PDS) majority (1994) • Far-right DVU's best-ever result in any German regional election: 12.9% (1998) #Sachsen-Anhalt

1/5: How does the development of Eastern Europe and Scandinavia compare to Western Europe? My new Cambridge Element, How Settlers Shaped Eastern Europe and Scandinavia, is out. Chapter 2 compares three transformations in the East with the West: doi.org/10.1017/9781...

Germany: Is Saxony-Anhalt's economy really struggling? Demographic challenges, relative deprivation, status threat… a lot of what the research says could be at play here www.dw.com/en/a-7886714...

New working paper. We propose a theory of dynamic identity-based linkages between voters and parties. We base this theory on models of expressive voting where voting signifies joining a community of social groups of voters. People have a sense of which parties are associated with which groups.

Iceland votes 53-47 to reject re-starting negotiations to join EU. Result driven by desire to maintain control over fishing, which makes up 40% of Iceland’s exports. Reflected in geographic results. Capital Reykjavik voted around 55-45 in favour, while rest of country clearly voted against.

How do individuals normatively assess changes to the social order and what does this tell us about electoral realignment? New publication with @dpzollinger.bsky.social and Tabea Palmtag out now in the Journal of European Public Policy 😊 doi.org/10.1080/1350...

Hvor polariseret er europæisk politik? Svaret afhænger af alder, køn og geografi #dkvid #dkforsk

What effect sizes can a design reliably detect, and how does that compare to the smallest effect size of interest? These questions are rarely pondered outside of experiments. I (with assistance from Claude) wrote an R package, "simpower", that helps with this: github.com/faranordk/si....

An American interviewer asked Count Binface where he stands on the political spectrum.

That many of our colleagues still post on X is one thing (mostly disappointing). But that our universities, professional associations, journals etc. still use a platform whose purpose it is to destroy the very basis of what science is and needs is really beyond my comprehension. Simply a disgrace.

And fiscally impossible www.tagesspiegel.de/politik/nich...

This is not a picture of a democratic election. It's a "free but unfair" election, on a playing field systematically tilted towards a wealthy ultraminority. This one campaign saw about as much spending as the entire '24 UK general election. Money in politics is an existential threat to democracy.

Europeans want fairer responsibility-sharing in refugee protection among member states, but disagree on which principles should guide such a fair distribution — partly due to national self-interest. New article out in @ejprjournal.bsky.social with @bencrum.nl doi.org/10.1017/S147...

𝑯𝒐𝒘 𝒄𝒐𝒎𝒎𝒊𝒕𝒕𝒆𝒅 𝒂𝒓𝒆 𝒄𝒊𝒕𝒊𝒛𝒆𝒏𝒔 𝒕𝒐 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒊𝒅𝒆𝒂𝒍 𝒐𝒇 𝒅𝒆𝒎𝒐𝒄𝒓𝒂𝒄𝒚? Our new (well…) study in @ejprjournal.bsky.social suggests that commitment to democratic rights and procedures does not look particularly robust once citizens face concrete crisis-related trade-offs. (1/6)

🤓 For anyone trying to get up to speed on the UK's relationship with the EU, check out our latest report 🇬🇧🇪🇺 It has analysis of the relationship since Brexit, as well as a handy staircase that outlines the viable options for the future (as well as the key tradeoffs) 🔗 ukandeu.ac.uk/reports/ten-...

Its now ten years since the UK voted narrowly to Leave the European Union. I have studied how the UK got there through my research for many years now. Evidence is growing that the UK is indeed leveling up, but, by leveling down. Let me introduce the Brexit Cost project:

We didn't see that coming 👀 😪 @miroslavnemcok.bsky.social, @jfdaoust.bsky.social & Piret Ehin look at the 2016 surprise Estonian government shift to better understand how changes in government, seperate to elections, alter #DemocraticSafisfaction when winner/loser status changes

Die Linke pulled off a surprise win in Germany’s most recent federal election and has suddenly become one of the most closely watched parties in Europe’s progressive politics. Behind the success lies a continuing structural transformation of its geographic support base. A short thread🧵

I have a new paper on the Gallagher index: the most common measure of electoral disproportionality. We often assume it runs from 0 (perfect 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘱𝘰𝘳𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘺) to 1 (perfect 𝘥𝘪𝘴𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘱𝘰𝘳𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘺). But I show that in most party systems, 1 is not a possible value. journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

Are preferences for authoritarian rule individual predispositions—or can they spread socially? Using field + survey experiments in the Norwegian Armed Forces, we show that openness to strongman rule can spread socially. American Journal of Political Science: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

81 % of eastern German municipalities have fewer residents today than in 1985. Losses cluster especially in Pommerania and rural Sachsen-Anhalt, where towns often shrank by a third or more. Growth is almost entirely confined to larger cities like Berlin & Leipzig and their commuter belts.

I am always struck by how much of the spatial inequality within East Germany is obscured when Germany is considered as a whole. The disparities between Mecklenburg and the Pomeranian parts of the same federal state are particularly revealing.

This paper is obviously relevant today, as we mark the 10th anniversary of Brexit, but I don't want to add to the plethora of takes on current events. Instead, let me zoom out and disucss the (fairly nuanced) implications of our analysis both for understanding British politics over the last decade