Matthias Dilling

@dpzollinger.bsky.social and I are thrilled "Cleavage Politics in Western Democracies" is out as an SI at @wepsocial.bsky.social!

Its papers explore the foundations of the cleavage pitting new left against radical right parties, and how it compares to the classic cleavages of Lipset & Rokkan:

🧵⬇️

Enjoying the implosion of the Tories? That’s understandable – but completely wrong | Zoe Williams The world’s most successful democratic party is in a death spiral of its own making – leaving no moderate bulwark between the moderate and truly far right, writes Zoe Williams

"When the mainstream right loses its confidence, when it starts to chase the buzzwords and symbolic politics of the far right, it hands them the steering wheel." Top piece from @zoesqwilliams.bsky.social, referencing @dziblatt.bsky.social's excellent book.

Abstract

New paper out with @dasalgon.bsky.social: “Far-Right Agenda Setting: How the Far Right influences the Political Mainstream” doi.org/10.1017/S1475676525100066 #openaccess in @ejprjournal.bsky.social🧵

⚠️ Virtual Workshop in HPE info ⚠️

@adajkanu.bsky.social is presenting a project on "Colonization and the Politics of Belonging in Nigeria" on Thursday! Martha Wilfahrt (UC Berkeley) will discuss. Let me know if you're not on our email list already and would like to be!

Bereits über 5.500 User:innen habe ihre Daten in meinem Populismus-Selbsttest für die Forschung gespendet - danke! 🙏

Zudem habe ich wertvolle Anregungen erhalten und einige Ergänzungen zum Einschätzung des Ergebnisses und zur Anzahl der zugestimmten Statement aufgenommen.

👉 politiktest.de

And Farage will always retort whenever he is out-Reformed: "you are the parties of government. Why didn't you do this when you could?"

So established parties end up validating his policies, while still lacking credibility.

Lose-lose.

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

Just had time to properly read this brilliant piece by @benansell.bsky.social. It left me even more convinced than I already was that what he calls Labour's (and indeed the Conservative's) "prole-whisperers" are horribly mistaken if they genuinely think chasing after Reform voters is the way to go.

Anton Pelinka : Niemand hat Österreich besser erklärt Mit Anton Pelinka verliert das Land seinen bekanntesten Politikwissenschaftler. Der ORF-Moderator Armin Wolf erinnert sich an seinen Lehrer – und an sein Vorbild.

Die ZEIT hat mich gebeten, etwas über den großen Anton Pelinka zu schreiben - dessen Nachfolger ich werden wollte, als ich vor genau 40 Jahren seinetwegen begann, Politikwissenschaft zu studieren:

Happy to share my first published article based on my PhD in Party Politics with @journals.sagepub.com in open access!

doi.org/10.1177/1354...

I'm so pleased to see our new article out in Perspectives on Politics.

Since I moved to Australia, I've heard many people say "you'll never publish in a top US journal with Australia as your only case" (and they weren't wrong to think that).

But yesterday, we did.

Thread by Josh about it below:

Vacancy — Postdoctoral researcher Communication Science at AI, Media & Democracy Lab Do you want to be part of the AI, Media & Democracy Lab? We are looking for a postdoctoral researcher with a profile in communication science.

Come work with us 🚨

We are looking for a #postdoc in our @aimediademlab.bsky.social lab.

Profile: Comm sci / poli sci/ computational social science.

Great team, timely topocs, fabulous city, good conditions.

DL 🗓️ November 1

werkenbij.uva.nl/en/vacancies...

Thanks @migcitizenapsa.bsky.social! @isabel-ruiz.bsky.social, @cvar-sil.bsky.social and I received an honorable mention for the section's Best Paper Award this year, for our study showing which types of migration policies towards Venezuelans that Colombians prefer. Free here: doi.org/10.1016/j.wo...

🚨 New article out in @wepsocial.bsky.social !
📄 From nations to regions: electoral volatility in European multi-level politics
Open access👉 doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2025.2557768

National politics in Europe is growing more electorally unstable - does this volatility also reach the regions? Thread 🧵

Anti-immigratie-demonstratie Den Haag escaleert, confrontatie met politie De actievoerders steken vuurwerk af en zwaaien met Nederlandse vlaggen maar ook met prinsenvlaggen.

Anti-immigration demonstration in the Netherlands escalates. This is exactly what happens when far-right ideas are tolerated and normalised over an extended period of time. The far right gains confidence and grows, both at the ballot box and in the streets.
nos.nl/artikel/2583...

As a practicing Catholic (and a lay minister each Sunday!) this is outrageous.

Charlie Kirk preached exclusion, division, and actively endangered groups in society; the complete OPPOSITE of what we actually hear at mass each week (which is love and help thy neighbor)

Social media bots: often annoying, sometimes useful. In this open access research note in @prxjournal.bsky.social, I tell the origin story of @rrresrobot.bsky.social (which you absolutely want to follow) 👀. The 🤖 exists to showcase research on the #farright by posting six times per day, every day.

Assistant Professor at London School of Economics and Political Science An opportunity for an academic position as a Assistant Professor is available, as advertised on jobs.ac.uk. Apply now and explore other academic job openings.

A real, honest to goodness, entry-level, permanent, academic job in Economic History! #Economic #history #ecr #academic

www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DOT480/a...

Are you interested in how parties' parliamentary behavior (e.g., passing bills, calling for elections, forming coalitions, cooperating/conflicting) affects voters (e.g., electoral behavior, perceptions, affective polarization)? Please let me know. I am putting together an MPSA panel proposal.

This year at APSA, several mentors and friends reminded me of something worth sharing: some work just takes longer.

It doesn't matter how much you work. The discipline doesn't always reward it, but it doesn't mean it's not important. In a career with so much randomness, ask the questions you want.

In Nordrhein-Westfalen wählen ziemlich gleich viele Leute AfD und Grüne. Medial und politisch geht es heute allerdings fast nur um die AfD und ihre Themen. Die "besorgten Bürger" die Aufmerksamkeit bekommen, sind die Anhänger der AfD. Wir sagen ihnen klar: es lohnt sich rechtsextrem zu wählen

Germany updates: NRW holds election in key test for Merz – DW – 09/14/2025 Germany's most populous state, North Rhine-Westphalia, is holding local elections on Sunday. The vote is seen as an early test for Chancellor Merz's fragile coalition. Follow DW for the latest.

The German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, whose population is roughly equal to that of the Netherlands, is holding local elections today. Expect lots of bellwether this and 'test' that 👇

Wir suchen Verstärkung auf einer halben Qualifikationsstelle am Institut für Politikwissenschaft der TU Chemnitz. Schwerpunkt: #Parteienforschung. Lehre: 2 SWS. Beginn: Mitte Oktober zum neuen Wintersemester.

www.tu-chemnitz.de/verwaltung/p...

🚨📢 We’re hiring a Postdoc in Computational Political Science at the University of Antwerp!

💻 Focus: NLP + ML + political text analysis
🗳️ Project: ERC DEMO-LIES (disinformation in democracies)
🌍 Location: Antwerp, 🇧🇪
📅 Deadline: 16 Oct 2025

www.uantwerpen.be/en/jobs/vaca...

Three weeks left to apply 👇

The expansion of voting rights beyond territory and citizenship marks a major democratic development of the last fifty years. Migrant suffrage has been mostly studied from a state-centric perspective. But the rights that migrants hold emerge from specific combinations of the country of residence and the country of citizenship. From this migrant-centric perspective, what is the diagnosis of the spread and status of global migrant suffrage? We present franchise constellations as a migrant-centric framework for studying voting rights. Drawing on the most comprehensive dataset on migrant electoral rights, combined with novel data on nationality-specific restrictions, we compute almost 1.3 million dyad-year observations based on 172 countries between 1960 and 2020. Using migrant stock data, we find that at least 74 million migrants remained completely disenfranchised in 2020. Bilateral and multilateral efforts emerge as a fruitful path for addressing global migrant disenfranchisement.

➡️📍📑 New Working Paper
with @sumpierrez.bsky.social and Rainer Bauböck

Work on migrant voting rights often has a state-centric perspective. We propose *migrant franchise constellations* as a migrant-centric approach.

A 🧵 with our argument and new data! 🗳️

preprints.apsanet.org/engage/apsa/...

Populism An Introduction

New post for POP 📢

𝗣𝗼𝗽𝘂𝗹𝗶𝘀𝗺: 𝗔𝗻 𝗜𝗻𝘁𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 is a great resource for teaching and learning 🔥

It was a pleasure to publish this article written by the editors of this amazing project @robert-a-huber.bsky.social & @cerpintaxt.bsky.social  

us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/po...

✈️ #ecprjs26 is heading to @polsciuibk.bsky.social (7–10 April 2026)!
💡 Got a workshop idea?
As @ecprsgpp.bsky.social , we can endorse one proposal.
🤝 If you’d like our support, please email @kweissenbach.bsky.social or @pcorreavila.bsky.social by 23 September

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) ⤵️

Polisci newest clean test against far right accommodation theory just dropped!

As evidence piles on lets also discuss what generates this consistent mindset among center parties? I really want to know if there might be specific selection biases in the comms consultants hired to advise these parties

Jacob Nyrup awarded EU funds to research political elites - Department of Political Science Jacob Nyrup from the Department of Political Science has been granted a substantial 18 million Norwegian kroner by the EU's research council to examine political elites in countries before and after d...

I am honored to have been awarded an ERC Starting Grant towards my project "Governing elites since the dawn of modern democracy" (GETGOV).

It allows me to continue to advance this research agenda; the goal is to build a database on governing elites from 1789 and up to today + much more.

#ERCStG