❗Among their electoral potential, social democratic parties face very few strategic dilemmas. Left-progressive appeals resonate most strongly.

New study in @worldpolitics.bsky.social
with @tabouchadi.bsky.social , @indubioproreto.bsky.social, Nadja Mosimann, and @markuswagner.bsky.social

Thread👇

I’m sure everybody needed yet another ‘Labour One Year In’ piece ;) But how many others draw on Jon Elster and the problem of ‘byproducts’?

I grew up in rural South Carolina with a single mom who worked multiple jobs. At times, we relied on Medicaid and SNAP—like so many others. My heart breaks for those now wondering if that help will still be there.

Imagine having all that power and choosing to make people’s lives worse.

Shameful.

I am excited to see my ARPS article reviewing the return of industrial policy with @dbreznitz.bsky.social is now published! www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

Have written up some of my thoughts about the increasingly sinister use of 'non-UK born' and 'white British' in the British press. The obsession with 'white British' citizens over other British citizens harms all of us and needs to be called out.

benansell.substack.com/p/who-counts

Poland's Polarised Election Signals a Wider Crisis for Liberal Democracy A razor-thin victory for the national-conservative Law and Justice Party reveals deep societal divisions and a broader erosion of centrist coalitions across the West.

📌 What Poland’s razor-thin presidential election result tells about crisis for liberal democracy across the West,

where centrist coalitions are eroding, and populist forces are gaining ground.

My piece in Social Europe: www.socialeurope.eu/polands-pola...

The far right and the conquest of education Archives - Foundation for European Progressive Studies While education is commonly understood as a force that can create equal opportunities, the way education systems are designed impacts how they can promote and propagate diverse values and can even rei...

#FarRight forces in Europe & beyond are trying to redesign education systems to promote their illiberal & authoritarian principles🧑‍🎓

This ProgPost dossier discusses this w/ articles by @anjagiudici.bsky.social @neszter.bsky.social & @jovanakaraulic.bsky.social

🗞️ feps-europe.eu/dossier/the-...

Remarks by Director Kratsios at the National Academy of Sciences Remarks by Director Kratsios at the National Academy of Sciences REINVIGORATING AMERICA’S SCIENTIFIC ENTERPRISE AS PREPARED FOR DELIVERY Washington, D.C.

I'm increasingly concerned by the elision of the science lobby and the tech lobby in the US and elsewhere. Michael Kratsios, a Thiel acolyte, was formerly chief technology officer. Now chief science advisor. Scientists need to unhitch their wagons from tech www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-st...

I get personal about the Trump administration's latest visa moves in FT Opinion.

Shock at Harvard After Government Says International Students Must Go

1/A government that is willing to do this is the same government that would nationalize a company. It is the same mentality of state-market relations. This is not an issue of Universities need to stand up. The whole free market system needs to stand up.
www.nytimes.com/2025/05/22/u...

🚨 NEW REPORT: Progressive parties are losing the battle of ideas – and votes – to the populist right. The centre-left must reinvent or die. Today, we launch a new project to forge a bold new identity for progressives in the 21st century.

Read here: www.ippr.org/articles/fac...

What do tax cuts for the rich do?

They increase inequality.

They have no effect on economic growth or unemployment.

"Our results provide strong evidence against the influential political–economic idea that tax cuts for the rich ‘trickle down’ to boost the wider economy."

At some level, the SC majority is clearly aware that they are risking the full faith and credit of the United States. They are trying to go right up to the line but no further. It won’t work.

The entire nation should protesting this utterly unwarranted, unprecedented, & probably illegal on-going attack on a university. It's right out of the authoritarian playbook. It's an assault on possibility free speech, free thought, & dissent.
Fascism is coming small step by small step, not at once.

Three things made the US a rich and powerful nation: the rule of law, its science & innovation system, and openness to foreign talent. Remarkable how Trump has taken a sledgehammer to all three. No enemy of this country could do more.

'Adoption' is entirely the wrong word for this. AI systems are incomplete. They are not plug-and-play. Their 'adoption' is actually a process of continued innovation, which requires additional work.

Under Texas’ Abortion Ban, Where a Woman Lives Can Determine Her Risk of Developing Sepsis While the rates of dangerous infections spiked across the state after it banned abortion in 2021, women in Houston fared far worse than those in Dallas, according to ProPublica’s first-of-its-kind ana...

NEW: The rate of sepsis in Houston surged 63% after Texas banned abortion.

In the Dallas-Fort Worth area, where hospital leaders empowered doctors to intervene before patients’ conditions worsened, it rose just 29%.

What The 'Lentil King of Saskatchewan' Knows About World Trade Podcast Episode · Odd Lots · 05/02/2025 · 52m

WHAT THE LENTIL KING OF SASKATCHEWAN KNOWS ABOUT WORLD TRADE

@tracyalloway.bsky.social and I talked about the global ag trade with the one and only Murad Al-Katib, the man who turned the province into a pulses-exporting powerhouse.

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/w...

What Would “Good” AI Look Like? - Anil Dash A blog about making culture. Since 1999.

A big feature of AI's irresponsibility is its lack of purpose. @anildash.com has proposed an excellent set of innovation targets here. He wants LLMs to be hallucination-free, green, actually open source, community-led and built on data consent www.anildash.com/2025/05/01/w...

Governance can't be automated. My latest comment piece in @science.org www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Herbert P. Kitschelt is the winner of the 2025 Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science. 🏆

He is awarded the prize for " having increased knowledge of the functioning of democratic party systems with exquisite theoretical acuity and impressive empirical breadth and depth."

What DEI threatens isn’t merit. It’s monopoly. Political science professor Hakeem Jefferson argues for DEI's importance to de-monopolizing universities.

A colleague at Stanford’s business school used The Stanford Daily to argue—poorly—against DEI. The piece was riddled with historical errors and left one searching for fact, so I broke my public writing hiatus to respond.

I hope you’ll read and share the piece.

stanforddaily.com/2025/04/22/w...

If the IRS deprives Harvard of its tax-exempt status, that's very bad for Harvard but it's also a catastrophe for the IRS. Instead of a neutral agency that enforces tax law, it will become a tool of partisan warfare. It may never recover.

Photo of an author’s hand holding a paperback book. The book is Getting Better: The Policy and Politics of Reducing Health Inequalities, by Clare Bambra, Julia Lynch and Katherine E. Smith. The cover image is of a rising sun and sunlit uplands, in colors of yellow, orange and green.

It’s here, in my hot little hands! Official pub date (w open access on the website below) is 5/27. Launch event at Strathclyde Univ. on 5/28. Mark your calendars!

@profbambra.bsky.social @profkatsmith.bsky.social

policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/getting-better

At a time when international students and scholars are turning away from America, instead of seizing this opportunity, Number 10 have a steely focus on winning the Runcorn by-election to help defend their wafer-thin majority of 174 seats.

Those trying to understand the tariffs as economic policy are dangerously naive.

No, the tariffs are a tool to collapse our democracy. A means to compel loyalty from every business that will need to petition Trump for relief.

1/ A 🧵 to explain his plan and how we fight back.

The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans U.S. national-security leaders included me in a group chat about upcoming military strikes in Yemen. I didn’t think it could be real. Then the bombs started falling.

This would - and should be - a clearance-pulling, career-ending scandal in any other administration. At minimum, Waltz has to resign. 🎁

www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...

FADFO A lot of people have a 'need for chaos', as long as there's no chaos

🌭🐆📈NEW POST ON FADFO 📈🐆🌭

Wait, what's FADFO? A sneaky attempt to coin a neologism & a response to the memes you see in the emojis: hotdog suit guy, leopards eating faces party, and the FAFO graph. What happens when you F#$% Around but you Don't Find Out? 1/n

benansell.substack.com/p/fadfo

The contrast between a society that realises democracy is at stake and one that doesn’t.