Elias Koch

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🧵

LSE Collaborative Studentship with Campaign Lab LSE Collaborative Studentship with Campaign Lab

🚨 We have a cool new ESRC PhD studentship opportunity on the topic of political persuasion for someone interested in campaigning, field experiments and/or computational methods @lsegovernment.bsky.social, in collaboration with
@campaign-lab.bsky.social. All info 👇
www.lse.ac.uk/study-at-lse...

Are universities perceived as left-wing bastions? Are police officers seen as right-wing? And are judges considered impartial?

In a new publication in @ejprjournal.bsky.social, Erika van Elsas, @mauritsmeijers.bsky.social, and I answer these questions ... (1/3)
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

🚨 New publication out @jeppjournal.bsky.social w/ Katrin Praprotnik @luanarusso.bsky.social @markuswagner.bsky.social

We show that coalition signals from the mainstream right to the radical right shift, rather than reduce, existing political divisions.

Open-access article: doi.org/10.1080/1350...

New publication with @kgattermann.bsky.social :
“Does media framing of election results affect whether voters perceive parties as election winners or losers?”
@polstudies.bsky.social
doi.org/10.1177/0032...

A short 🧵:

Wahlsystem und Wahlrecht – Barrieren und Lösungsansätze für die Wahl von Frauen - Nomos eLibrary

📢 Neue Publikation

Mit @sarahdingler.bsky.social und @corinnakroeber.bsky.social habe ich für die Zeitschrift des @juristinnenbund.bsky.social den Beitrag „Wahlsystem und Wahlrecht – Barrieren und Lösungsansätze für die Wahl von Frauen“ verfasst. Hier gehts zum Heft: www.djb.de/zeitschrift/...

New 📝 out in @reggovjournal.bsky.social

1. Governments are taking a more active role in education and training

2. Linking technical issues to politically salient debates, such as climate change and digitalization, helps open the door to new public policies

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

Great to see this published 🎉

🚨 New paper: “Does Rent Control Turn Tenants Into NIMBYs?” in the Journal of Politics (JOP)

(joint work with @anselmhager.bsky.social and @hannohilbig.bsky.social)

👉 Have a look over here: www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

Most important findings in this thread:

1/11

Thank you so much to the three of you for putting together this great conference 🙏

Great feedback from fantastic colleagues at @hertiedatascience.bsky.social & @hertieschool.bsky.social 🙏 Looking forward to presenting this paper tomorrow @dvpw.bsky.social-AK Wahlen (10:30-12:00; @freieuniversitaet.bsky.social) alongside more findings from the @zweitstimme.bsky.social project!

💥 Update! 💥

This paper is now officially published in Volume 30, Issue 4 of The International Journal of Press/Politics! 🗳️

Experimental evidence that voters prefer moderately tailored messages - highly tailored ones can backfire & targeting can be too much: doi.org/10.1177/1940... #IJPP

Such a neat paper by @ankuepfer.bsky.social, @pluggedchris.bsky.social & @jocmuel.bsky.social in @wepsocial.bsky.social – really glad to see this published! 🎉

Exciting news, ganz herzlichen Glückwunsch 🎉

Returning from vacation and looking for a late summer read? @ivobantel.bsky.social and I got you covered!

In our new @wepsocial.bsky.social paper, we assess how mainstream parties rhetorically create an affect-based "common front" against the radical right.

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Looking forward to presenting recent findings on the attitudinal effects of election polls later this term in Mannheim, in part based on joint work w/ @simonsaysnothin.bsky.social, @linushagemann.de, @hannahrajski.bsky.social, Thomas Gschwend, @lstoetze.bsky.social & @cornelius-erfort.bsky.social.

🚨 New publication alert! 🚨
Why do some people keep voting throughout their lives while others drop out? And how do authoritarian elections - even uncompetitive ones- shape citizens’ habits?
Ksenia Northmore-Ball and I tackle these questions in my new paper, now out in @electoralstudies.bsky.social.

Sage Journals: Discover world-class research Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

Have you ever wondered if young politicians perceive their roles as representatives differently than their older colleagues? Then, my new research note in Party Politics may interest you. I investigate age differences in the representation styles of politicians.
journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

PhD Research Fellowship in Political Science (4 years) (282479) | University of Oslo Job title: PhD Research Fellowship in Political Science (4 years) (282479), Employer: University of Oslo, Deadline: Monday, September 1, 2025

📣1 PhD fellow position open at Department of Political Science, University of Oslo.
👉We invite applications from excellent candidates in all sub-fields of political science.
📅Deadline: September 1st, 2025
www.jobbnorge.no/en/available...

Thank you so much for hosting us 🙏🙌

Excited to host the 4th iteration of the Transformations of Democracy Junior Scholars Workshop at WZB Berlin together with Hanno Hilbig!
Amazing talks & exchanges with colleagues from Princeton, Harvard, UC Davis, Toulouse School of Economics, Copenhagen, Humboldt, Chemnitz, EUI, and beyond..

When do politicians engage in discourse – and when do they avoid it? estimated reading time: 4 min When do politicians debate each other? Drawing on a study of debates in the German Bundestag, Elias Koch and Andreas Küpfer show how ideological polarisation shapes who debates whom – and why substantive discourse may become less common in the years ahead. In recent years, concern has grown over the increasing polarisation of democratic politics. Legislatures across Europe and beyond have witnessed rising tensions, sharper rhetoric, and a decline in cross-party engagement. In a new study, we take a closer look at the conditions under which elected representatives engage in discourse and shed light on the implications of rising levels of polarisation among legislators in this context. Several studies have convincingly shown that parliamentary debates are characterised by their dialogical nature and that MPs unilaterally make use of this potential to signal affiliation or contestation vis-à-vis other actors in the chamber. This includes using interjections, applause, parliamentary questions or various forms of address. But under what conditions do actual discursive interactions unfold, rather than these types of parallel performance?We propose a novel analytical framework to make sense of the circumstances facilitating discursive interactions between politicians in parliament. In this framework, we distinguish between inviting MPs, who approach others by inviting them for discursive interaction, and invited MPs,who are being invited for discursive interactions (i.e. who are being approached by inviting MPs). Discursive interactions only unfold when both the inviting MP and the invited speaker are willing to engage. As we show further below, rising diverging ideological preferences and government-opposition dynamics have countervailing implications for invited and inviting MPs in the emergence of discourse in parliament. To explore how heterogeneous ideological preferences and government-opposition dynamics shape the strategic interest to seek and avoid discourse for inviting and invited MPs, we study parliamentary interventions in the German Bundestag between 1990 and 2020. During almost every speech in the German federal parliament, any MP in the chamber may signal their interest to intervene and engage in a voluntary discursive interaction, which makes them potential inviting MPs in our framework. It is, however, up to the speaking MPs receiving these invitations (the invited MPs) whether they wish to give way for the intervention and engage in discursive exchanges with their fellow legislators in the chamber, or if they wish to proceed with their speech (illustrated in Figure 1). Figure 1: Illustration of the life cycle of an intervention (attempt) and its actors using the empirical case of interventions in the German Bundestag Note: For more information, see the authors’ accompanying article published in the European Journal of Political Research (EJPR). Using a custom-built annotation pipeline to extract and classify these exchanges from parliamentary transcripts, we examined the conditions under which MPs either sought or avoided discursive contact with one another. Several notable patterns stand out. First, divergence in ideological preferences is associated with a higher interest in seeking discursive interaction among inviting MPs. A particularly illustrative example is the 19th legislative period, which saw the far-right AfD emerge as the most frequent initiator of intervention attempts. However, nearly half of their invitations were rejected by other parties, significantly raising the overall rejection rate for this period to 28%, well above the long-term average of 16%. Figure 2: Intervening (left column) and speaking MP (right column) by party, legislative term and speaker decision Note: The centre column indicates whether an intervention was allowed or rejected. For more information, see the authors’ accompanying article published in the European Journal of Political Research (EJPR). Opposition MPs consistently seek discourse more often than government MPs, though the latter receive the bulk of them. This dynamic is illustrated by the shift in power from the liberal-conservative coalition under Helmut Kohl to the Social Democratic-Green government led by Gerhard Schröder: intervention activity flipped accordingly, with former government parties becoming more active as opposition. Figure 3: Regression coefficients with 90% (wide) and 95% (narrow) confidence intervals for both framework stages Note: Stage 1 uses a Poisson regression; estimates for stage 2 are grounded on a generalised linear model. For more information, see the authors’ accompanying article published in the European Journal of Political Research (EJPR). Moving on to our main findings from the multivariate models, we find robust evidence supporting and extending these descriptive observations: As observed earlier, invitations for discursive interactions are more common among ideologically distant MPs. At the same time, invited MPs are increasingly inclined to decline invitations by these exact colleagues in the chamber. It is important to note that these effects by no means are dependent on the inclusion of the AfD in the sample. When turning towards government-opposition dynamics, invitations are indeed particularly common among opposition MPs facing government representatives. At the same time, we find tentative evidence suggesting that, again, these attempts tend to result in discursive exchanges less frequently. Taken together, these findings draw a nuanced picture of parliamentary discourse. They show that while politicians often seek interaction across lines of difference – be they ideological or institutional – they are frequently met with resistance in these attempts. Hence, the conditions most conducive to an interaction are simultaneously those that reduce the chances of it eventually unfolding. These insights have important implications for how we understand elite behaviour in public settings. Our findings suggest that in times of rising polarisation, the incentives to control the stage may outweigh willingness to engage with the arguments of other legislators. As concerns about polarisation and political polarisation continue to grow, it is crucial to understand how it affects parliamentary behaviour. Our study offers a new perspective on these dynamics, revealing the interplay between engagement and avoidance that characterises modern legislative discourse. For more information, see the authors’ accompanying article published in the European Journal of Political Research (EJPR). Note: This article gives the views of the author, not the position of EUROPP – European Politics and Policy or the London School of Economics. Featured image credit: Juergen Nowak / Shutterstock.com

Very interesting research into MPs' behaviour in 🇩🇪

Thank you so much for sharing, very much appreciated!
Here's the link to the full article with
@ankuepfer.bsky.social (@ejprjournal.bsky.social):
ejpr.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

I am looking for a PhD student in Comparative Politics @powimz.bsky.social. My research focuses on political (in-)equality, representation, and responsiveness. I would be grateful if you could help to spread the word.
stellenboerse.uni-mainz.de#/jgu/job/49637

This is such a great and important paper – especially when read alongside those two by
@kristinabsimonsen.bsky.social & @twidmann.bsky.social in @psrm.bsky.social & @bjpols.bsky.social:

📄 #1 (PSRM): www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

📄 #2 (BJPS): www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Title page of article "Electoral Hope" in journal Political Studies.

I have a new article out at @polstudies.bsky.social. In "Electoral Hope", I make the case that supposedly irrational "wishful thinking" is actually a crucial part of how voters make rational sense of their role in democracies.

OA link: doi.org/10.1177/0032...

I learned so much from @rdassonneville.bsky.social's Voters Under Pressure, Tillman's Authoritarianism and the Evolution and Bartels's Democracy Erodes from the Top. In @comppol.bsky.social, I review each book on its own terms and draw out implications for the view that elections confer mandates. 🧵

Abstract of the article "Opposition parties seek more conflict with the government when losing electoral support" by Elias Koch. Published online first in West European Politics.

Figure 1, displaying polling gains and losses relative to latest vote share by opposition party in the various German states.

Table 1, displaying the OLS models estimating conflict density.

Figure 2, displaying marginal effects for the interaction term describing the association between polling performance and conflict density among gaining and losing parties. Based on model 2 in Table 1.

🎊 Online first!

The research note "Opposition parties seek more conflict with the government when losing electoral support" by @eliaskoch.bsky.social

doi.org/10.1080/0140...

Zambian politics have been quite dramatic in the last 20 years (timeline below). With that kind of competition, you’d expect MPs to fight to gain an edge in every arena, especially MPs elected on a thin margin. However, I find the opposite in Zambia’s parliament: doi.org/10.1080/1357...

Opposition parties seek more conflict with the government when losing electoral support Opposition parties benefit electorally from engaging in conflict with the government. However, it remains unclear whether they adjust their rhetoric towards the executive in response to changes in ...

Opposition parties increasingly seek conflict with the government based on their current polling performances, particularly when they are predicted to suffer losses compared to their most recent election result www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....