Max Heermann

I detect confusion between a Trumpian trade “deal” and a real trade agreement. A Trumpian deal is based on the assumption that governments can simply tell companies what transactions they will do, whether in trade or investment. Most governments cannot do that. 1/

Important takeaway for the next round of this: by itself, COM isn’t equipped to manage the domestic politics of this, it needs stronger backing from capitals. Convenient for member states to hide behind it and then blame it for the outcome (sometimes more than they blame the US I feel).

Joseph Nye and the End of the American Century A Conversation With Robert Keohane

Even in his last days Joe Nye worked to make the world a safer place. Powerful podcast w/Bob Keohane on their work, friendship and the risks of the Trump presidency for US national interest.
www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/jos...

🚨 New piece for @ecpr.bsky.social's @ecprtheloop.bsky.social — @maxheermann.bsky.social & I map trips of world leaders using @josefkorbelschool.bsky.social's COLT of over 78K+ foreign trips by heads of state and gov from 1990-2023.
Reference: bsky.app/profile/jose...

(2) Remember the rapid early trips of "Außenkanzler" Friedrich Merz? In a blog post for @ecprtheloop.bsky.social, @meraymaddah.bsky.social and I explore a rich new dataset on diplomatic travels to analyse where state leaders go for their inaugural foreign visits.
bsky.app/profile/ecpr...

Co-authored with @giadapasquettaz.bsky.social, @sharonbaute.bsky.social & @leuffen.bsky.social

(1) In the new In_equality magazine by @excinequality.bsky.social, we draw on original survey data from 9 countries to argue that public support for mutlilateral health policy is more robust than populists want to make you believe.
bsky.app/profile/exci...

Despite being a self-declared purist, at #IPSA2025 I learned to appreciate iced coffee more than ever.

If you're summer is also too hot (to immerse yourself in academic papers), I'm happy to offer two new short pieces perfectly timed for consuming with a cool coffee variant of your choice.

World leaders use their first foreign trips to signal political priorities World leaders' first foreign trips reveal more than diplomatic protocol. They are carefully crafted political stories. Meray Maddah and Max Heermann analyse inaugural diplomatic journeys to uncover st...

🌐 World leaders' first foreign trips reveal more than diplomatic protocol - they are carefully crafted political stories.
✈️ @meraymaddah.bsky.social and @maxheermann.bsky.social analyse inaugural diplomatic journeys to uncover stability and change in global networks
👇 bit.ly/4lY2FHQ

Swiss universities to release multilingual AI programme This summer researchers at Swiss universities will make available a large language model (LLM), an AI programme trained on vast amounts of data, developed on public infrastructure.

This sounds promising (👋🇪🇺...)
www.swissinfo.ch/eng/swiss-ai...

There is a pdf if you log into the website and the guidebook app works reasonably well.

Evaluating the impact of two decades of USAID interventions and projecting the effects of defunding on mortality up to 2030: a retrospective impact evaluation and forecasting analysis USAID funding has significantly contributed to the reduction in adult and child mortality across low-income and middle-income countries over the past two decades. Our estimates show that, unless the a...

A new paper in The Lancet, one of the world’s foremost peer reviewed medical journals, estimates that USAID prevented 91 million deaths across 133 countries over 20 years.

The paper estimates that Elon Musk’s DOGE funding cuts to USAID will lead to 14 million deaths by 2030 (4.5 million children).

Introducing #EPSS - the European Political Science Society and non-Profit alternative to #EPSA!

Out now🎉 - Evidence (from distribution analyses and machine learning models on EES 2014-2024 data) of strong similarities and growing convergence in EU public opinion, particularly on economic issues. Common right-ward shifts on immigration, yes - but underlying drivers still vary. shorturl.at/KCx0S

Another case of gradual integration of Ukraine into the EU sphere - and quite an interesting framing by the EU Commission here, using the language of "EU citizenship" being granted to Ukrainian telco signals:

Trawling is currently prohibited within EU offshore wind farms. Result? They may become a refugium for marine life. A win-win.

Democracy Versus Diplomacy? The Involvement of External Actors in Trilogue Negotiations This article examines the role of external actors in shaping trilogue practices, using the Copyright in the Digital Single Market (DSM) directive adopted in 2019 as a case study. Building on Roederer...

📄New paper in @jcms-eu.bsky.social!

I’m excited to share my latest publication: "Democracy versus Diplomacy? The involvement of external actors in trilogue negotiations."

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Screenshot of the draft's title page

📄 Whose expert knowledge informs policymaking around the world?

@rsenninger.bsky.social and I analyze data from 1.2 million government policy documents from 185 countries—and find a prominent pattern:

🌍 Policy evidence is overwhelmingly sourced from the Global North.

Preprint: osf.io/w8q3y

🧪🧵👇

CDU: Es fehlt die intellektuelle Brandmauer Die CDU hat offenbar nicht nur von NGOs eine geringe Meinung, sondern vom Kampf der Ideen überhaupt. Dabei käme es jetzt vor allem auf sie an, zu zeigen, was die demokratischen Parteien grundsätzlich ...

"Solange die Brandmauer kein intellektuelles, in Ideen gegründetes Fundament hat, besteht die Gefahr, dass die rechte Propaganda sie als bloßes Disziplinierungsinstrument denunzieren und sich so noch zunutze machen kann."

this is a really fun conversation!

Abstract of "Offshore Outlaws: Brexit and Oil Spills in the North Sea" by Anthony Calacino, Federica Genovese, Hayley Pring (University of Oxford)

🚨 WP w/ @acalacino.bsky.social & @hayleypring.bsky.social

It’s been a turbulent decade of globalization backlash. Populist projects wanna take back control everywhere.

Focusing on the case of oil and Brexit, we offer a story of the danger of this narrative and concrete merits of multilateralism: 🧵

Great to see our study picked by @euractiv.com & mentioned along the great @onethuthree.bsky.social

https://www.euractiv.com/section/economy-jobs/news/europes-citizens-wont-accept-democratic-backsliding-says-news-study/

Polish election reminds us that democracies remains under pressure.

Nature ran a piece finding that 25 million people could die as a result of ending USAID. This puts Trump and Musk in the category of the most brutal leaders of the 20th century in terms of unnecessary lives lost.
www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Why people follow rules

Image description Figure 1: People tend to conform to an arbitrary rule against their self-interest, even a stylized, asocial, and unforced rule stated by the experimenter.

Image description Figure 2 rules generate social expectations and conditional conformity with them, even in a minimalist setup.

Image description Figure 3: Rule violations are contagious, but rule-following remains high.

A majority of people follow "costly" rules, even in settings in which they are anonymous, alone, and violations are harmless because of respect for rules and social expectations, even though rule violation is moderately contagious, finds Gächter et al., www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The Need for Civilizational Allies in Europe Author: Samuel Samson

🚨You should read this official State Dept post bc it foreshadows a major fight: Zuckerberg & Musk want 🇪🇺 regulators off their backs. Trump & Vance want to help AfD, Le Pen, and the global populist right. So they are reframing tech regulation as tyranny & censorship.
open.substack.com/pub/statedep...

Pressure on Hungary is increasing amidst increasing domestic repression and continued foreign policy blockages.

The EU can count on robust public support for stringent norm enforcement, as we show in our new @jeppjournal.bsky.social article.

https://doi.org/10.1080/13501763.2025.2503973

Does Priming Democratic Vulnerability Make Citizens Punish Undemocratic Behavior? - Political Behavior Recent instances of public support for democracy-violating political leaders have sparked an important stream of research suggesting that such leaders may gain support by representing citizens’ politi...

Emphasizing that democracy itself is at risk is quite ineffective in reducing support for undemocratic behavior - experimental evidence from 10 countries now open access in @polbehavior.bsky.social

AND this adds a satisfying *The End* to my dissertation.

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Deutsche Abundance Agenda wann?

Die absurde Bürokratie an der Hermann-Hesse-Bahn
https://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/inland/fledermaus-statt-bahnstrecke-absurde-buerokratie-im-schwarzwald-110459408.html?GEPC=s9&premium=0x53da282162406c9954a65e9c589218d3182dc76d7730eb70f4e7054c0cd23b3e

By Default, Signal Doesn't Recall Signal Desktop now includes support for a new “Screen security” setting that is designed to help prevent your own computer from capturing screenshots of your Signal chats on Windows. This setting is a...

📣 The rush to add AI into everything is a big threat to privacy, as we've been saying.

MS Recall's screenshotting everything is a (not) great example of exactly why.

So, Signal took steps to protect everyone using Signal on Windows 11 from Recall's privacy invasion.👇

signal.org/blog/signal-...

It’s done: EU countries have reached a deal on SAFE, the new programme to raise up to €150 billion for rearmament. The money will be distributed as low-interest loans to those member states that request them.

SAFE only requires approval by the Council, which is expected next week.