WZB Democracy

US-Senator Merkley liest derzeit bereits 20 Stunden lang „Wie Demokratien sterben“ im Senat – von @dziblatt.bsky.social. Am 8.11. bei uns im GORKI Theater!

We are excited that our first annual interdisciplinary WZB conference "The Future of #Democracy?" starts this evening with a public dialogue on "Democracy at Stake", featuring U.S. Democrat @betoorourke.bsky.social and @annaluehrmann.bsky.social at Akademie der Künste, Berlin.

The panel with Anna Lühmann, Anna Sauerbrey and Beto O’Rourke.

View at the audience and the panel.

What a moving evening at the Academy of Arts: @betoorourke.bsky.social, U.S. Democrat from Texas, and @annaluehrmann.bsky.social (Die Grünen) offered convincing analyses about the state of democracy on both sides of the Atlantic, providing critical yet hopeful perspectives.
📸Bernhard Ludewig

So thrilled that @wzbdemocracy.bsky.social postdoctoral fellow @boesevanessa.bsky.social has received this prestigious and important grant for important work on the global evolution of democracy.

Warnings From Weimar Why bargaining with authoritarians fails.

New article by @dziblatt.bsky.social in @foreignaffairs.com
www.foreignaffairs.com/germany/hitl...

Vicente Valentim, Elias Dinas, & I came together to do this paper because we have all long shared an intution: mainstream center-right rhetoric shapes democratic norms. The hard part? Showing it empirically. We make some headway in this new paper. Grateful to @bjpols.bsky.social for publishing.

Events such as these are what motivates me to pursue an academic career.

Thanks to @fabioellger.bsky.social @hannohilbig.bsky.social @wzbdemocracy.bsky.social for hosting us & to all participants for constructive feedback on @antonkoenneke.de & my paper, and the great vibes. C u ➡ summer!

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..

The WZB Transformations of Democracy unit hosted a great workshop on how ideas of Democracy evolve over time . A great group & lots of scholarly progress.

Need a measure of #democraticstock for your analyses?

@acrowinghen.bsky.social Matthew Wilson & I just published the demstock R package & @vdeminstitute.bsky.social working paper
It lets you create stock measures of most of the variables included in the V-Dem dataset 😃 🥳

Try it out!🙃

Opinion | How Will We Know When We Have Lost Our Democracy?

New op ed by @dziblatt.bsky.social and co authors
How Will We Know When We Have Lost Our Democracy? www.nytimes.com/2025/05/08/o...

Great new paper by our own @fabioellger.bsky.social and co authors @jeyalizade.bsky.social , @mgruenewald.bsky.social and @ttichelbaecker.bsky.social

Our IPI-TD speakers series continues next week May 6 with Professor Dan Slater (University of Michigan), presenting

“Battles for Pluralism: Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Great Democratic Unknown”.
@dnsltr.bsky.social

Digitale Erinnerung an die NS-Verfolgung: Erkenntnisse aus dem Crowd-Sourcing-Projekt #everynam <p>Wie kann die Erinnerung an die NS-Verfolgung wach gehalten werden? Wie können gerade junge Menschen dazu motiviert werden, sich durch ein Befassen mit der Geschichte für eine offene Gesellschaft ei...

/2..a paper launch event where our postdoc @blfirestone.bsky.social along with her collaborators will present the new study on the impact of a digital memory project recently published in @psychscience.bsky.social. Berlin, May 5th, 6pm: www.hertie-school.org/en/events/ev...

Participating in a Digital-History Project Mobilizes People for Symbolic Justice and Better Intergroup Relations Today - Ruth Ditlmann, Berenike Firestone, Oguzhan Turkoglu, 2025 Awareness of past atrocities is widely seen as critical for restoring justice and building resilient democracies. Going beyond information provision, an increas...

/1 Some news from our unit. A new and exciting paper from @blfirestone.bsky.social
journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

...with an accompanying and innovative public event

A call for papers!!!

3/ In short, at least by 2024, the firewall hadn't collapsed "from below."

2/ in the first comprehensive analysis of all Council meetings of Germany's 401 local districts between 2019 and 2014 (over 11,000 meetings), they find the differences in cooperation between east and west were lower than often portrayed; and overall lowe than popular portrayal suggests.

1/ Our unit's new working paper by Daniel Ziblatt, Florian Bochert, Wolfgang Schroeder, on the surprising * endurance * of the firewall in Germany against the Radical right-- has been written up in the national weekly DER SPIEGEL...

Pleased to announce our semester speaker series!

In a democracy, when and where should majorities rule? And when should their powers be limited? Steve Levitsky and I propose a framework to think through these questions in a new piece in the January 2025 issue of 'Journal of Democracy'
muse.jhu.edu/article/947880

Daniel Ziblatt: "Trump wird so weit gehen wie möglich" Harvard-Professor Daniel Ziblatt erforscht, wie Demokratien sterben. Donald Trump werde viel Schaden anrichten, sagt er. So schlimm wie in Ungarn werde es aber nicht.

www.zeit.de/politik/ausl...

Bedrohte Demokratie: Wenn Minderheiten den Diskurs bestimmen Der Politologe Daniel Ziblatt beschreibt in "Die Tyrannei der Minderheit", wie wenige über viele herrschen, zeigt aber auch Lösungen auf.

📻 Radio interview mit @dziblatt.bsky.social im Deutschlandfunk

▶️ www.deutschlandfunk.de/wenn-minderh...

(S+) Demokratie in den USA: »Unser System ist einfach nicht fair« Das amerikanische Wahlsystem repräsentiert nicht den Willen des einzelnen Bürgers, sagen die Harvard-Professoren Steven Levitsky und Daniel Ziblatt. Davon profitieren ausgerechnet die Republikaner um ...

📰 Interview mit @dziblatt.bsky.social und Steven Levitsky in @spiegelmagazin.bsky.social [paywall]
▶️ www.spiegel.de/ausland/demo...

"Die Vereinigten Staaten laufen Gefahr, in eine Minderheitsherrschaft abzugleiten." Gastbeitrag von @dziblatt.bsky.social und Steven Levitsky in @zeit.de
➡️ www.zeit.de/2024/21/radi...

"Die Tyrannei der Minderheit" – Ist Amerikas Demokratie noch zu retten? | ttt – titel, thesen, temperamente Donald Trumps alter und neuer Wahlspruch "Make America great again" wird in Europa weithin als Aufruf verstanden, dass die USA ihre Rolle als globale Supermacht erneuern wollen. Aber diese Losung muss...

Ist Amerikas Demokratie noch zu retten? @dziblatt.bsky.social war zu Gast bei ttt - titel thesen temperamente ARD

Hier geht's zum Clip: www.daserste.de/information/...

Demokratie unter Druck: Was sie schwächt, was sie stärkt Wahlen in Deutschland und Amerika: Daniel Ziblatt und Annika Brockschmidt im Gespräch

🗓️ Event Empfehlung: "Demokratie unter Druck: Was sie schwächt, was sie stärkt" mit @dziblatt.bsky.social und @ardenthistorian.bsky.social am 23. Mai um 18 Uhr im @wzb.bsky.social

Mehr Infos und Anmeldung ➡️ www.wzb.eu/de/veranstal...

🚩 Wir haben Neuigkeiten: Am 15. Mai erscheint "Die Tyrannei der Minderheit" von @dziblatt.bsky.social und Steven Levitsky auf deutsch!
Alle Infos ➡️ www.penguin.de/Buch/Die-Tyr...

Further special treatsfor researchers:
- theoretical model of individual vaccine uptake
- empirical estimation of relationship between autocratic past & citizen compliance in 33 European countries, summer 2021.

Interested? Check out our paper: bibliothek.wzb.eu/pdf/2023/v23...

Polisky

This lack of trust does not only concern the government or its policies in general but also appears as a specific form of distrust in healthcare services provided by the state.