Alba Alonso

@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:

🧵⬇️

Sexism and the Gender Gap in Support for the Radical Right Using survey data from Spain we show that the gender gap in the probability of voting for the radical-right party Vox is mainly due to men having higher levels of modern sexism than women. We find ...

We have a new paper out with @gricoc.bsky.social in @jwpp.bsky.social (this time I swear I am going to post the right link): www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Google’s emissions up 51% as AI electricity demand derails efforts to go green Increase influenced by datacentre growth, with estimated power required by 2026 equalling that of Japan’s

Apropos of universities jumping on the AI bandwagon. Are we not supposed to be, you know, trying to come back from the brink of extinction? Rather than increasing emissions by 50%? FIFTY per cent? Delusional.
www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Voltamos á facultade! 🎓 Terei o pracer de debater xunto a Natalia Álvarez Bermúdez sobre unha pregunta crucial: "Para que serve un politólogx?".

O próximo luns temos dous ponentes de luxo para falar de 'Para qué serve un politólog@?' na nosa @politicasusc.bsky.social

Title: 20th Anniversary Editors's Choice Collection Text: In celebration of the 20th anniversary of Politics & Gender(opens in a new tab), past and current journal editors were asked to identify some of their favorite articles published during their editorial terms. Criteria for selecting these articles reflected a mix of considerations, including the impact and originality of the articles – as well as their relevance to understanding the current political climate. Collectively, they reflect the broad reach of the journal, representing different subfields and methodological approaches, as well as the work of junior and more established scholars. Please enjoy free access to all articles below until the end of December 2025. For the latest articles from Politics & Gender, follow us on X and Bluesky.

In celebration of the 20th anniversary of P&G, we've compiled a list of favorite articles from the tenure of our former and current editors as part of a new Virtual Special Issue.

The selected articles will be ✨ #OpenAccess ✨ until December 2025.

buff.ly/x3lLmuq

Un ano despois do informe que analizou 7 fusións de concellos Rueda volve prometer unha nova Lei local - Praza Pública O debate xerado polo estudo de hai un ano levou o presidente a asegurar que só impulsaría unións "voluntarias", das que non volveu saberse

📃 Un ano despois do informe que analizou 7 fusións de concellos Rueda volve prometer unha nova Lei local
praza.gal/politica/un-...

Abstract: Under the banner of progress, products have been uncritically adopted or even imposed on users — in past centuries with tobacco and combustion engines, and in the 21st with social media. For these collective blunders, we now regret our involvement or apathy as scientists, and society struggles to put the genie back in the bottle. Currently, we are similarly entangled with artificial intelligence (AI) technology. For example, software updates are rolled out seamlessly and non-consensually, Microsoft Office is bundled with chatbots, and we, our students, and our employers have had no say, as it is not considered a valid position to reject AI technologies in our teaching and research. This is why in June 2025, we co-authored an Open Letter calling on our employers to reverse and rethink their stance on uncritically adopting AI technologies. In this position piece, we expound on why universities must take their role seriously toa) counter the technology industry’s marketing, hype, and harm; and to b) safeguard higher education, critical thinking, expertise, academic freedom, and scientific integrity. We include pointers to relevant work to further inform our colleagues.

Figure 1. A cartoon set theoretic view on various terms (see Table 1) used when discussing the superset AI (black outline, hatched background): LLMs are in orange; ANNs are in magenta; generative models are in blue; and finally, chatbots are in green. Where these intersect, the colours reflect that, e.g. generative adversarial network (GAN) and Boltzmann machine (BM) models are in the purple subset because they are both generative and ANNs. In the case of proprietary closed source models, e.g. OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Apple’s Siri, we cannot verify their implementation and so academics can only make educated guesses (cf. Dingemanse 2025). Undefined terms used above: BERT (Devlin et al. 2019); AlexNet (Krizhevsky et al. 2017); A.L.I.C.E. (Wallace 2009); ELIZA (Weizenbaum 1966); Jabberwacky (Twist 2003); linear discriminant analysis (LDA); quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA).

Table 1. Below some of the typical terminological disarray is untangled. Importantly, none of these terms are orthogonal nor do they exclusively pick out the types of products we may wish to critique or proscribe.

Protecting the Ecosystem of Human Knowledge: Five Principles

Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia:
doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical
thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity.
1/n

The political consequences of the mental load Abstract. How do levels of cognitive household labour—the ‘mental load’ involved in anticipating, fulfilling, and monitoring household needs—affect politic

🎉 Delighted to share new research out today: The Political Consequences of the Mental Load

📄 European Sociological Review
doi.org/10.1093/esr/jcaf019
@europeansocreview.bsky.social

What happens to political engagement when the “mental load” of running a household gets too heavy? 🧵

The pretence of the cordon sanitaire: non-collaboration as a distraction from discursive congruence Much has been written about how mainstream parties respond to far-right challengers in liberal democracies. Whereas some mainstream parties have become more open to forming coalitions with far-righ...

New article out!

@luke-shuttleworth.bsky.social,
@k8ebrown.bsky.social & I teamed up to explore whether the concept of 'cordon sanitaire' remains useful in the current stage of mainstreaming of far right politics

Read the full article, open access, here

1/

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

Radical right accommodation really does not work.

New paper out with this exceptionally talented team
@katharinalawall.bsky.social @robjohns75.bsky.social @drjennings.bsky.social @sarahobolt.bsky.social @zachdickson.bsky.social @danjdevine.bsky.social & @jack-bailey.co.uk

doi.org/10.31235/osf...

I’ve done this for 2 weeks now and it *absolutely rules*. Best class discussions I’ve ever had. Best engagement with readings. They write in this worksheet for 15 minutes, then talk about their responses in groups of 3-4, then groups share with the whole class, and *then* we talk about the readings

Beyond anger and fear: the demobilizing role of sadness in far-right voting in Spain This study investigates emotional dynamics behind support for Vox in Spain, offering a case study of far-right support. It addresses prior research’s narrow focus on anger and fear, and its tendenc...

🚨My first published article together with @galais.bsky.social is out:

“Beyond fear and anger: the demobilizing role of sadness in far right voting in Spain”

In this article we address the emotional dynamics behind support for Vox in Spain.

🧵What do we find?

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

BJPolS abstract discussing the dynamics of mainstream and radical political rhetoric regarding anti-immigrant policies, highlighting differences in societal responses and enforcement norms based on the source of the rhetoric.

NEW -

How Mainstream Politicians Erode Norms - cup.org/4lfeHvD

"we find that statements by mainstream politicians lead to more norm erosion than similar statements by radical-right politicians"

- @valentimvicente.bsky.social, Elias Dinas & @dziblatt.bsky.social

#OpenAccess

ANTI-GENDER REGIMES, FEMINIST POLITICS, AND THE CHALLENGE OF SOCIETAL DEMOCRATIZATION* Democracy is an ongoing process that involves society as a whole, not merely politics. Anti-gender politics challenges democratization in all areas of society. Therefore, a gendered theory of society ...

💫 Anti-gender regimes, feminist politics and the challenge of societal democratization is out! In Mobilization: An International Quarterly 29(4): 469-486 doi.org/10.17813/108... A preprint is available on Researchgate

Què passa amb els homes joves? El lector una mica informat deu haver sentit a parlar del gir reaccionari dels homes joves, que ja són, de mitjana, el grup que se situa més a la dreta de la nostra societat. Tenen més tendència a vot...

Escric a l’Ara sobre homes joves i backlash www.ara.cat/opinio/passa...

🚨New Publication🚨

Using the entire #Canadian Election Study (1965–2021), I examine voter turnout by class, education, & income over time & test whether the offerings of political parties impact these relationships.

Available #OpenAccess in @cjps-rcsp.bsky.social
#polisky

doi.org/10.1017/S000...

Arrestado el cineasta británico Paul Laverty, esposo de Icíar Bollaín, por llevar una camiseta contra el “genocidio” de Israel en Gaza social.elpais.com/ok1f17

Pathways to politics: a sequence analysis of political apathy and involvement Understanding inequality in political involvement is a core goal of political science. Previous research has examined specific life-course influences, but there is limited knowledge about the diver...

‘Why do some citizens develop a cognitive and affective engagement with politics, while others remain apatethic? … a large share of young citizens has its political future decided already at age 17 - or in many cases even at age 11’
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

The European Political Science Society is now accepting paper & panel proposals for its annual conference!

📢 Call for Papers: EPSS 2026 – Belfast

🗓️ June 18–20, 2026

📍 ICC Belfast

📬 Deadline: Nov 7, 2025

🧵

Aquellas palabras: "Los coches son el último resto de barbarie consentida (...) Personas extremadamente serviles en su trabajo realizan peligrosísimas maniobras al volante para demostrar su superioridad. El automóvil se ha convertido en la versión contemporánea del “vivir peligrosamente” fascista".

This is the kind of article APSR used to be famous for. The ones that make your brain explode, that challenge you, confuse you, test your patience, and make you smarter by making you realize your limitations. Well done Erica Simmons and @nickrushsmith.bsky.social‬ 👏

Colomina. C.; Innerarity, D. y Cantero, M. (Coords). (2024). Desigualdad Algorítmica Gobernanza, representación y derechos en la IA. 𝑅𝑒𝑣𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑎 𝐶𝐼𝐷𝑂𝐵 𝑑’𝑎𝑓𝑒𝑟𝑠 𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑛𝑎𝑐𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑎𝑙𝑠 (138). www.cidob.org/sites/defaul...
‪@ccolomina.bsky.social‬ @daniel-innerarity.bsky.social‬ @cidobbarcelona.bsky.social‬

📰What are the 𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗿𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝘀𝘀𝘂𝗲𝘀 in federalism, regionalism and territorial governance?
📌Don’t miss our editorial note 👉https://doi.org/10.1080/13597566.2025.2518752
@davidevampa.bsky.social @filippoboni.bsky.social @assefafy.bsky.social @merylkenny.bsky.social @marielylopezs.bsky.social & M.Zulianello

Cleavage Formation in the 21st Century Cambridge Core - European Government, Politics and Policy - Cleavage Formation in the 21st Century

Should be read together with this excellent new political sociological account of the rise of far-right parties in light of the transformation of the cleavage structure in Western Europe.

These pictures will be remembered for centuries.

Future generations will ask:

"Who did what, and when?

Who made this abomination possible?

Who spoke out - and who remained silent?"

Make sure you have good answers.

🧪How did COVID-19 affect citizens’ democratic preferences?

➡️ @cescamat.bsky.social A.Arenas A.Falcó & @jordimunoz.bsky.social find a lasting rise in technocratic preferences and a temporary bump in the willingness to sacrifice civil rights and freedoms www.cambridge.org/core/journal... #FirstView

Buscador | Estas son las profesiones del Estado en las que cambiarán las oposiciones si prospera la reforma del Gobierno Función Pública quiere modificar el acceso para abogados del Estado, la carrera diplomática, conservadores de museos o ingenieros geógrafos, entre otros

🔎 Buscador | Estas son las profesiones del Estado en las que cambiarán las oposiciones si prospera la reforma del Gobierno

Seminario de investigadoras visitantes de Rede Armela en @politicasusc.bsky.social . Un placer coñecer as investigacións de Maisa, Emma, Juliana e nosa Susana.