Steven Klein

Call for Nominations: Onora O’Neill Political Theory Prize European Consortium for Political Research

Pls share/re-post! New Onora O'Neill Prize! Here's a brand new @ecpr.bsky.social book prize in pol-theory, regardless of whether it's your 1st/10th book! Had honour of asking Onora myself if she would lend us her good name: ecpr.eu/news/news/de... @biapt.bsky.social @psapolthought.bsky.social

So CBA is basically in a strict sense impossible since it is taking a metric for present decisions and transferring it to the future.

So ok maybe someone has dealt with this. CBA is premised on willingness to pay. But it's willingness to pay in the future when the policy has taken effect. By then all sorts of things in the rest of society may have changed that affect the opportunity costs and so changed willingness to pay.

We got a new paper out on Ukrainian #refugee entrepreneurs in Poland, with Cevat Giray Aksoy and Piotr Lewandowski. Check it out here: cevatgirayaksoy.com/wp-content/u... and see below for a THREAD!!! 👇 #EconTwitter

We're recruiting!

Please do spread the news far and wide. We're excited by the prospect of being joined by another great new colleague!

Philosophers! When is an inaction that knowingly causes some people to pay higher taxes the same as "raising their taxes"? I feel like this is your moment.

Politics and the Economy Cambridge Core - Ancient Philosophy - Politics and the Economy

Update: free copy available within the next 14 days, CUP tells me! www.cambridge.org/core/element...

Oh sacred budget! May the market anoint you and the OBR grant you favour. Amen.

Why the right wing media keeps screaming ‘tax raid’ This isn’t journalism, it’s propaganda that reframes tax policy as assault and a democratically elected Labour government as thieves

Since Labour won power, an insidious little phrase has been popping up constantly in the media: "tax raid".

So I looked into this for @thenewworldmag.bsky.social

And it turns out it once meant something completely different.

www.thenewworld.co.uk/phil-tinline...

Excited to see my JMP cited in the Economist—it highlights the tradeoffs workers could face with a higher minimum wage and suggests more worker protections like Fair Workweek laws could be important alongside minimum wage increases

www.economist.com/finance-and-...

@robertreamer.bsky.social

@virginiadebiasio.bsky.social

excited to have a research note for DERISK, co-authored with my two amazing post-docs Virginia De Biasio and Robert Reamer. In the note, we outline some of the threats posed by systemic risks to democracy and discuss a potential pathway forward. Check it out here: www.derisk.org.uk/working-papers

I wish I didn’t have to share this. But the BBC has decided to censor my first Reith Lecture.

They deleted the line in which I describe Donald Trump as “the most openly corrupt president in American history.” /1

2026 KCL Political Theory Conference We invite submissions from graduate students in political theory and adjacent disciplines, including but not limited to political philosophy, social and critical theory, history of political thought, ...

If you're a PhD student in political theory, definitely submit an abstract.

This was a terrific conference last year, and the organising committee is an amazing group.

philevents.org/event/show/1...

BJPolS abstract discussing the challenges and proposal of a new typology for assessing citizen competence in sustaining democracy. The text addresses empirical data and suggests a solutions-oriented, systemic approach rather than individual-level interventions.

From September 2025 -

Rethinking Citizen Competence: A New Theoretical and Empirical Framework - cup.org/3I85Zlp

- @stevenklein.bsky.social & @ethanvporter.bsky.social

#OpenAccess

Mmm is that a critique of them then?

LMU as a place of pluralistic discourse Statement on the Planned Event “The Targeting of the Palestinian Academia” at LMU Munich

The LMU announces the cancellation of a seminar on the topic "the targeting of Palestinian academia". The cancellation announcement is titled "LMU as a place of pluralistic discourse". Couldn't make this up.
www.lmu.de/en/about-lmu...

Rewatching the Simpsons with kids and the episode with this joke about republicans and democrats just came on... evergreen

Labour had a window for big tax raises or fiscal change - right after the election, when they could have used the "Tory's left us with a bigger mess than we realized, we need to save the NHS." Their innate caution has led them to a dead end.

Misinformation *is* central to democratic problems today, but the solution is *not* to correct such epistemic failures directly. Instead, we must address them at their roots, in social identity.

Or so I argue in a new post for @apaphilosophy.bsky.social.

blog.apaonline.org/2025/11/12/t...

after the fall of the european empire, europeans forgot how to make concrete and domes. also agree that the contrarian take has gone too far.

It's a plague

KCL PPE for Public Policy Graduate
Conference

📅Date: 26 Nov 2025
🏟️Place: KCL Waterloo Campus
🎤Keynote: Prof. Jonathan Wolff
📊Sessions: Interdisciplinary & Policy-oriented (see ⤵︎for details)
📝Register here:
kclppe4pp.github.io

Please come join us!!

#PPE #Econsky #Philsky
#Polisky #Policysky

The central argument in this excellent paper & thread is that the open-access turn has neglected profit; indeed, it turbo-charged publishers’ margins. As political economists who know a thing or two about profit and power we should speak up a lot more. As it says below: What we’re doing is crazy.

Even starmers own loyalists have seemed to settle on "getting rid of him will roil the markets and make us look chaotic" rather than "he's a good leader"

Orwellian levels of political interference in academic affairs: Under pressure from right-wing press and the Minister of Education the prestigious Collège de France cancels the conference ‘Palestine and Europe’ - in the name of academic freedom and neutrality … read this statement by the organizers:

If Labour want a fairer society, they must argue for it Labour must make the political argument: taxes are the critical downpayment we all pay to live in a fairer society.  It now seems all but certain that direct taxes will rise in the forthcoming Budget...

Breaking the tax pledge is the right call...and politically sulphurous. Reeves must argue, far more forcefully, that taxes are *the* essential downpayment we all pay for a fairer society.

Patrick Diamond and I wrote for @renewaljournal.bsky.social. Key points in 🧵 👇

renewal.org.uk/blog/if-labo...

Wolf wrote a massive book arguing that the relationship between democracy and capitalism has broken down and needs a rebalancing, but when faced with the concrete policies that would enable that he balks