Simon Brause

2024 was a turbulent year in German politics: four elections, a surging far right, and the coalition's collapse. Our new Political Data Yearbook piece (with @lucykinski.bsky.social) traces the events leading to the 2025 snap elections.

@hhu.de @sceus.bsky.social

Danke für den Ohrwurm.

Our book is out and available to read open access online: academic.oup.com/book/60532. It is dedicated to Niko.

What kind of opposition do citizens want? Abstract Opposition parties play a crucial role in democracies. While scholars have extensively studied opposition behaviour and institutional powers, little is known about what citizens expect from opposition parties and how they evaluate these expectations being met. This study addresses this gap by examining citizens’ views on three key opposition roles - oversight, cooperation, and offering alternatives - and their perceived fulfilment across four countries: Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. Based on a citizen survey, this study assesses how individual characteristics (democratic satisfaction, political interest, education) and institutional context are related to these views. Citizens across all four countries value cooperation. Preferences for the ‘alternative’ role vary between institutional settings. On the individual level, conflict-oriented and dissatisfied citizens value cooperation less, while those with higher education and political interest find oversight and cooperation more important.

🧵 New research on what citizens expect from opposition parties in democracy published in @wepsocial.bsky.social. @elinazorina.bsky.social and I surveyed people in Canada, Denmark, Netherlands & UK to understand their views on opposition roles. doi.org/10.1080/0140...

Abstract Social group appeals are a crucial but often overlooked aspect of party competition. Challenger parties differ from dominant parties not only in their issue entrepreneurship and anti-establishment rhetoric, but also in how they approach social groups. Whereas dominant parties can and must use their policy record when appealing to groups rhetorically, challenger parties compensate for their lack of policy influence and long-lasting group ties by using more symbolic groupbased appeals, creating affective affiliations with voters while avoiding accountability or dividing their potential base. Similarly, they are more inclined to use negative group-based appeals. Using a most-similar-systems design and a new dataset of 15,460 tweets from German subnational parties, our main finding is that dominant parties, particularly those having held the prime minister’s office, favour policy-based group appeals, while challengers rely more on symbolic appeals. However, differences in appeal strategies diminish during campaign times. Our findings underline the importance of groupbased appeals for mainstream-challenger competition.

Thrilled to see my 1st PhD paper out in #PartyPolitics! Based on ~15000 posts by 86 German subnat. parties (2015-2019), Simon Franzmann & I show that dominant & challenger parties differ in the use of policy-based vs symbolic & positive vs negative appeals.

🔓:
doi.org/10.1177/1354...

5/ We thank the anonymous reviewers and Camila Montero for their excellent feedback and Paul Sax for his great help with the manuscript.
#ComparativePolitics #PoliticalParties #IntraPartyDemocracy #PPDB #PoliticalScience #polsky

4/ 📍 Access the article here:
doi.org/10.1177/1354...

📊 Access the data here:
doi.org/10.7910/DVN/...

3/ This new release enables:
• Comparative analysis across political systems
• To study changes of intra-party democracy
• Research into democratization, party competition, and organizational dynamics

2/ The dataset builds on the second round of the Political Party Database Project (PPDB) and covers 274 parties across 51 countries, including new regions in Africa, Latin America, and Central & Eastern Europe.

🧵 New comparative data on intra-party democracy is now available. Thomas Poguntke and I present our recent research note ow two indices—assembly-based and plebiscitary IPD—applied globally for the first time. A resource for research on political parties, democracy, and representation. @hhu.de

⭐I am looking for 2 PhD candidates w/ focus on qualitative representation research in my ERC project INCONEX at University of Salzburg!

On the project: sites.google.com/view/inconex...

Applications due: 2 May 2025

Full ad: sites.google.com/view/inconex...

#EUsky #poliscijobs #qualitativemethods

📢I am looking for a student research assistant in my ERC project INCONEX to join the team as soon as possible!

⭐More information below and here: sites.google.com/view/inconex...

@sceus.bsky.social

⭐I am looking for a Postdoc in Computational Social Science in my ERC project INCONEX at University of Salzburg!
More on the project: sites.google.com/view/inconex...

Applications due by 8 January 2025.

Full ad: sites.google.com/view/inconex...

#EUsky #poliscijobs #computationalsocialscience

Happy to have contributed with an article on populist party responsiveness & populist party voter satisfaction with democracy in Europe with @simonbrause.bsky.social

Thanks to our colleagues @hhu.bsky.social @sceus.bsky.social , the editors, reviewers for helpful comments. Thanks to @koljaknodel.bsky.social & Paul Sax for the support with the data collection. Thanks to ULB Düsseldorf for the open access funding (5/5)

Challenging Democracy: How Do Ideas of Populists and Disenchanted Citizens Align? Thematic Issue, Vol 12 (2024)

This article is part of the issue “Challenging Democracy: How Do Ideas of Populists and Disenchanted Citizens Align?” edited by Reinhard Heinisch & Oscar Mazzoleni, #openaccess doi.org/10.17645/pag... (4/5)

We find that populist parties in Europe are NOT generally more responsive to populist party voters than mainstream parties. Populist parties’ agenda‐responsiveness boosts voters’ SWD, yet being in government does not enhance this positive effect (3/5)

We investigate (1) how well populist parties represent populist party voters (issue-based responsiveness) & (2) link this responsiveness to their voters’ satisfaction with democracy (SWD) in 21 countries for the 2019 EP elections (2/5)

Pleased to share our recent article with @lucykinski.bsky.social in Politics and Governance on Populist Party Responsiveness and Populist Party Voter Satisfaction With Democracy in Europe #populism #responsiveness #democracy #EU doi.org/10.17645/pag... (1/5)