Matthew Stenberg

I’ll search in my Zotero today and email you what I hit

When do Local Governments Discriminate? Lessons from the Diffusion of “LGBT Free Zones” in Poland — Urban Affairs Review There is a long history of municipal governments worldwide passing resolutions, laws, and regulations governing discrimination and anti-discrimination. These cities are increasingly stylized as “human...

Or alternatively a blog-scoped version here (9/9):

www.urbanaffairsreview.com/uar-archive/...

When Do Local Governments Discriminate? Lessons from the Diffusion of “LGBT Free Zones” in Poland - Matthew Stenberg, Conor O’Dwyer, 2025 Between 2019 and 2020, amidst national-level democratic backsliding under the conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party, a wave of Polish municipal governments a...

Check out the full length, open access article here (8/9) journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

We don’t think this is limited to a Poland specific story, and understanding the mechanisms by which discriminatory policies spread subnationally is unfortunately critical in contemporary politics more broadly (7/n)

Conversely, they are less likely to implement if a neighboring municipality has done so, suggesting local understandings of backlash effects as negative media and EU attention increased (6/n)

We also find that vertical and horizontal diffusion matters. Municipalities are more likely to implement if their county or region has done so (even if this would render them functionally redundant). (5/n)

Conversely, the policy is less likely to be implemented if an independent mayor is in office. This suggests that explicit partisan channels are critical as opposed to it simply being a conservative municipality (4/n)

These policies are more likely implemented in municipalities where PiS specifically holds local government positions (mayors / council majorities) in a country where local politics are largely nonpartisan (3/n)

We find that diffusion of these policies can be best explained by direct channels rather than “demand side” factors (general support for the conservative PiS party, religiosity, age profile, unemployment, etc).

In our new piece at @urbanaffairsreview.bsky.social, @aloysiusod.bsky.social and I try to understand what factors led some municipalities in Poland to implement openly discriminatory policies against LGBTQ+ residents while other, similar municipalities did not. (1/n)

When do Local Governments Discriminate? Lessons from the Diffusion of “LGBT Free Zones” in Poland — Urban Affairs Review There is a long history of municipal governments worldwide passing resolutions, laws, and regulations governing discrimination and anti-discrimination. These cities are increasingly stylized as “human...

ONLINE FIRST! “When do local governments discriminate?” by @matthewstenberg.bsky.social @aloysiusod.bsky.social

www.urbanaffairsreview.com/uar-archive/...

Our paper (@jusimon.bsky.social and Mario Kukec) conceptualizes the role of party cohesion in facilitating or inhibiting backsliding across different regime types (parliamentary, presidential, and semi presidential). (1/3)

We do this through case studies of six cases of both “successful” and unsuccessful backsliding, including very up to date revisions on the US, where we see how intraparty dimensions affect intragovernmental relations and are shaped by the structure of electoral institutions

We specifically focus on the ways that cohesion affects different types of intergovernmental relations: executive-legislative, intra-executive, and vertical (2/3)

Our paper (@jusimon.bsky.social and Mario Kukec) conceptualizes the role of party cohesion in facilitating or inhibiting backsliding across different regime types (parliamentary, presidential, and semi presidential). (1/3)

There was an episode of Chuck once where they showed stock footage of the castle and the Danube in Budapest to establish setting for an episode set in Belgrade, everyone in Hollywood is personally trolling me. Belgrade has a castle! Just use the right one!!

I’ve said it to you privately but I’ll say it publicly: stop trying to pass off the Calgary skyline as any Minnesota city and just pay some videographer to do some exteriors of various Minnesota cities this winter and bank them for future use.

As the Polish election fast approaches, I just wanted to repost our new preprint about how PiS has been differentially using local governments to pursue its agenda

Some of you may have seen us present an earlier version at MPSA or EUSA, and thanks to everyone for comments there. If you have further comments on this draft, please let us know! (8/8)

It’s also critical we understand where they zones emerge, as hopefully it will enable us to better understand how to respond to increasing discriminatory policies against LGBTQ+ people worldwide (7/8).

Local governments pursuing discriminatory policies is a major challenge to liberal democracy worldwide. The partisan effect shows how PiS has tried to bring local governments into their broader backsliding even with limited electoral success there (see O’Dwyer/Stenberg 2022) (6/8)

We also find that, although the threat of removal of EU funding has motivated some local governments to roll back zones after implementation, the amount of EU funding that local governments received did not impact whether a zone was implemented in the first place (5/8)

We find horizontal diffusion has a negative impact – if a neighboring local government implements a zone, you are actually less likely to do so. This may potentially be due to backlash effects. (4/8)

We find that vertical diffusion is important for agenda-setting; if a local government is in a county that also implemented a zone, it’s much more likely to come up for discussion or a vote locally. (3/8)

We find that local partisan networks, and specifically the presence of PiS partisans in key local government positions, leads to a greater likelihood of implementation. Meanwhile, independent non-partisan mayors lead to less likelihood of implementation (2/8)

NEW PREPRINT. Conor O’Dwyer @aloysiusod.bsky.social and I try to understand what led some local governments in Poland to implement discriminatory “LGBT Free Zones”, while in other municipalities such measures either weren’t implemented or even proposed (1/8) #polisky osf.io/preprints/so...

Can the governor in New Jersey appoint a replacement until the next election? If so, there’s little cost to expulsion

@profmusgrave.bsky.social , could I also be added to the polisky list? Thanks!

Wes Anderson does The Awakening