Chitralekha Basu

If you liked this thread / Substack please read @profjanegreen.bsky.social’s brilliant recent piece on Labour and Reform.

politicscentre.nuffield.ox.ac.uk/news-and-eve...

British Politics' Midlife Crisis Why British Parties Can't Make Peace with Their Actual Voters

On the morning of Keir Starmer's conference speech here's a new post on an odd psychopathology in British politics - our main parties don't like the people who vote for them - the dreaded Professional Managerial Class. And so they are acting out like a divorced dad seeking cooler voters. 1/n

🚨 New paper in @thejop.bsky.social

Why do politicians often misperceive what citizens' policy positions are?

@simonotjes.bsky.social and I study ~10,000 estimates of public opinion by politicians in Denmark & the Netherlands to uncover the sources of these (mis)perceptions

Thread 🧵1/10

Our research makes it clear: by capitulating to the right, Labour is driving voters to Reform UK | Tarik Abou-Chadi and Stuart Turnbull-Dugarte Mimicking Farage on immigration is senseless. Labour voters feel betrayed; anti-immigration voters see through the ruse, say academics Tarik Abou-Chadi and Stuart Turnbull-Dugarte

For the Guardian, @turnbulldugarte.com and I discuss our research that clearly shows one thing: Labour's anti-immigration strategy will only strengthen Reform and weaken its own electoral prospects. It won't win voters back but ultimately normalizes the far right

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Promotional banner for "Perspectives on Politics" featuring a cityscape background. The banner includes a quote: "First they came for the journalists and I did not speak out, because they said it was all 'fake news'." The hashtag "#OpenAccess" is also displayed.

'On the Decline of Elite-Educated Republicans in Congress' by Craig Volden, Jonathan Wai & Alan E. Wiseman was the most-downloaded @poppublicsphere.bsky.social paper in August 2025.

You can read it #OpenAccess here - cup.org/47ZVCe3

Keir Starmer’s spokesperson asked for the PM's response to Nigel Farage’s plan to deport hundreds of thousands of people living and working completely legally in the UK, replies that he thinks it is “unworkable” and “unfunded”.

So his objection is that they’ve got their sums wrong

I'll have more to say on Reform's proposals to scrap ILR at some point but for now I'll just note this - anyone telling you this is a popular idea doesn't know the polling. Overwhelming majority of public back giving people who work and pay taxes most or all rights after 5 years or less

Incredible parallels in this Berinsky &
@gabelenz.bsky.social paper. Politicians didn't stand up to Joe McCarthy in large part because they incorrectly inferred McCarthy/ism was extremely popular. Not standing up to McCarthy was a kind of 1950s Popularism

gated academic.oup.com/poq/article/...

*** NEW RESEARCH ALERT ***

How do firms respond in the face of increased restrictions to hiring skilled immigrant workers?

[THREAD]

Shot, chaser

Young men more likely to vote Green than Reform. Young men second most progressive group of any demographic. Combined right-wing vote barely bigger than Green vote alone for young men

Blog post: github.com/sophieehill/...

TL;DR: There are a LOT of errors/inconsistencies in the results reported in this paper (estimates outside CIs, sign errors, duplicates, asymmetric CIs). Even in the abstract itself!

This suggests manual editing of results tables.

Which is not good...

🧵

Abysmal idea:In times of increasing extremism in Germany & abroad, we need to strengthen the study of politics, not weaken it beyond recognition. Cologne is one of the best departments in Germany with colleagues doing world-class research on relevant topics. Hope the NRW government will think again!

Radical right accommodation really does not work.

New paper out with this exceptionally talented team
@katharinalawall.bsky.social @robjohns75.bsky.social @drjennings.bsky.social @sarahobolt.bsky.social @zachdickson.bsky.social @danjdevine.bsky.social & @jack-bailey.co.uk

doi.org/10.31235/osf...

Some of the very best and most internationally renowned political scientists in Germany are at Cologne. This is a very real threat to a globally strong group.

Petition unterschreiben Keine WiSo ohne PoWi! Für eine starke Politikwissenschaft im Bachelor & Master

The University of Cologne plans drastic cuts to its Political Science department, potentially abolishing the MSc in Political Science and eliminating the professorships in IR and Comparative Politics. This would severely weaken the social sciences at @unicologne.bsky.social.
Petition (de/en) ⤵️

Noah Smith blog today is about the moderation stuff www.noahpinion.blog/p/moderation...

It's pretty reasonable (he's an econ phd so he knows correlation ≠ causation).

Prompted me to more formally write the plausible mechanisms that explain null effects of candidate ideology in the Trump era

Call for Papers Call for Papers: Political Economy of Development (PED) Section – EPSS 2026, Belfast We invite submissions of high-quality work on any topic in the political economy of development or comparative pol...

Please share:

@pavisuri.bsky.social and I are delighted to share details for the political economy of development section of @epssnet.bsky.social Belfast 2026

We welcome great work and fresh ideas! Please spread the word among interested colleagues not on here

docs.google.com/document/d/1...

A bit behind schedule, but how voters moved in the year since the 2024 election.

Labour facing same splintering of the last govt: a significant bloc crossing floor to primary electoral opposition, with a numerically larger chunk moving to opponents on same side of spectrum, plus many 'don't knows'.

The European Political Science Society is now accepting paper & panel proposals for its annual conference!

📢 Call for Papers: EPSS 2026 – Belfast

🗓️ June 18–20, 2026

📍 ICC Belfast

📬 Deadline: Nov 7, 2025

🧵

Will anyone review this paper? Screening, sorting, and the feedback cycles that imperil peer review Scholarly publishing relies on peer review to identify the best science. Yet finding willing and qualified reviewers to evaluate manuscripts has become an increasingly challenging task, possibly even ...

1. Kevin Gross and I just posted a new science-of-science preprint.

This one explores the looming peer review crisis. As many of you know, it's becoming significantly more difficult for journal editors to find scholars willing to serve as peer reviewers for submitted manuscripts.

Comparisons Between Life in the UK and the USA For most of my life I have lived in the UK, but for six years I lived in the United States of America. Somewhat erratic and unpleasant polit...

I decided to make a long blog post combining general sociological things I am aware of with personal observations of cultural and lifestyle differences between the UK and USA.

sootyempiric.blogspot.com/2025/07/comp...

Which Republicans support restrictive abortion laws?

The most extreme abortion policies aren't popular with GOP donors, voters, or rich individuals – but are pushed by a small and influential group within the party.

Read more from Barber et al. in POQ now: doi.org/10.1093/poq/...

Plot with the evolution of vote share for CH: 1.3% to 7.28 % to 18.06% to 22.08%

The Portuguese far right party CH has been growing spectacularly, shattering views of the country as immune to this phenomenon.

This has prompted a discussion about where their votes come from.

Some thoughts on this, prompted by newly released survey data:

🚨 We're hiring!
Join our CSES Team @gesis.org Cologne as a Senior Researcher. If you’re into comparative electoral research and love diving into data, this is your moment.
Come shape global democracy with us! 🌍📊
www.gesis.org/en/institute...

📣 Postdoc (75 %, 3 yrs) at @unigreifswald.bsky.social — start autumn 2025 on perhaps Germany’s most beautiful campus. Know someone with a PhD (or nearly done) in Political Science? ⬇️ #PolSci #Postdoc

Great piece by @jburnmurdoch.ft.com on why Europe needs to get serious about air-con www.ft.com/content/50f6...

New paper alert! 📣

@chrisblattman.bsky.social, Arthur Yu, and I reexamine the autocratic growth penalty—the finding that autocracies systematically underperform democracies in economic growth.

TL;DR, the penalty is concentrated in personalist, not institutionalized autocracies.

Details👇 1/X

Abstract of the article "School subject choices in adolescence affect political party support" by Nicole S. Martin, Ralph Scott and Roland Kappe. Published online first in West European Politics. Part of the forthcoming Special Issue "Cleavage Politics in Western Democracies", edited by Delia Zollinger and David Attewell.

Figure 1, displaying the effects of choosing a school subject for the General Certificate of Secondary Education on vote intention in adolescence.

Figure 2, displaying the effects of choosing a school subject for A-Levels on vote intention in adolescence.

Figure 5, displaying the effects of choosing a school subject for the General Certificate of Secondary Education on vote intention in adulthood. This time displayed for specific parties in the UK.

Online first: "School subject choices in adolescence affect political party support" by @nspmartin.bsky.social @ralphscott.bsky.social & @rolandkappe.bsky.social

doi.org/10.1080/0140...

Part of the Special Issue "Cleavage Politics in Western Democracies"

Can banning political ideologies protect democracy? 🛡️🆚🗣️

Our (w. @valentimvicente.bsky.social) paper finds: punishing individuals might backfire. We study a West German policy banning "extreme left" individuals from working for the state.

#Democracy #PoliticalScience

🧵

url: osf.io/usqdb_v2

#jobs #stellenangebote #GESISjobs #jobfairy #PhDJobs #SurveyResearch #SocialSciences #AcademicJobs #DataPreparation

GESIS is hiring a PhD candidate in Data Preparation to join the #FReDA family panel team in Cologne or Mannheim!

👉 Start: Sept 2025
👉 Apply by July 24
🔗 gesis.org/en/institu...