Carl Henrik Knutsen

Step 1: Cut funding for food stamps
Step 2: Stop measuring hunger
Step 3: There's no evidence cuts to food stamps led to a rise in hunger
www.wsj.com/economy/trum...

Critical part of the President's new $100,000 charge for H1-B visas: The Administration can also offer a $100,000 discount to any person, company, or industry that it wants. Replacing rules with arbitrary discretion.

Want visas? You know who to call and who to flatter.

How am I meant to code this for WhoGov and Paths to Power?

Selling out democracy when they could easily win the fight

Portrettbilde av paneldeltakerne Anine Kierulf, Carl Henrik Knutsen, Cathrine Thorleifsson, John Erik Fossum. Tekst: Forskerrollen i en polarisert verden. Hvordan kan forskere bidra til å motvirke autoritære tendenser? 19. september 2025 08.30, Scene Domus Bibliotheca

Velkommen til frokostdebatt fredag 19. september!

Meld deg på her👉 www.uio.no/om/aktuelt/u...

@unioslo-jus.bsky.social @statsvitenskap.bsky.social @unioslo-svfak.bsky.social @uio.no

Let’s go with the idea that these drones over Poland mistakenly ended up there. All the more reason for NATO to announce a no-fly-zone over Western Ukraine in order to prevent such unfortunate mistakes in the future. Simple. Close the skies.

🚨 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.

For the love of democracy, STOP using "colour revolution" as a slur!! The colour revolutions were real, enthusiastic, domestic social mobilizations against corruption and electoral fraud. The claim that they were malign outside interference is literal russian propaganda.

Big congratulations, Amalie!!

From the streets to the ballots: protests, polls and polarization in Hong Kong Social movement research indicates that protests can influence voting behaviour through several informational and psychological mechanisms. Yet, we know little about the individual variation in how...

I’m very happy to share that the first paper of my PhD, «From the streets to the ballots: Protests, polls and Polarization in Hong Kong» has been published online in @democratization.bsky.social

It is open access, and you can read it here:
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Opinion | Stop Acting Like This Is Normal

Ezra Klein is right and it matters he's saying this. The question is not "funding the government" or "shutting down the government."

It's funding *this* government versus shutting down *this* government. It's not the definite article existing independent of who's in power. It is who's in power.

One of the most remarkable things of the last 9 months is how many Americans seem to believe the President is all powerful and Congress has no say.
Actually Congress has been ineffective by choice. It has immense power if it had the courage to use it.

🥳🍾🥂

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

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this year's WhoGov workshop on Political Elites! It is amazing to see so much great research presented on political elites and meet so many great people.

And thank you to @inalkristiansen.bsky.social and @jonaswschmid.bsky.social for co-organizing the event

Looking much forward to seeing @matthiasdilling.bsky.social present his new book at @statsvitenskap.bsky.social tomorrow at the Comparative Institutions and Regime-seminar series.

YouTube video by Mint 'Thank You President': Cabinet Meeting Turns Reality TV | The One Where They ALL Just Praised Trump

Trump er ved at forandre USA til det vi i diktaturforskningen kalder for et personalistisk regime. Det er et regime, hvor lederen siger "hop", så er der kun ét svar: "Hvor højt?". Eller hvis lederen siger, at 2+2 = 5, ja, så er den officielle version, at 2+2 altså er lig fem.

1/4

Er Trump i ferd med å knekke det amerikanske demokratiet? – Jeg gir det 50/50 sjanse til å overleve Donald Trump, sier ekspert.

Intervjuet i Aftenposten: Det ser dessverre bare verre og verre ut i USA. Mellomvalget blir nøkkelen for om det amerikanske demokratiet overlever Trump, tror jeg. (Og det kommer ikke til å bli et vanlig mellomvalg)

www.aftenposten.no/verden/i/93R...

Introducing the Opposition Movements and Groups Dataset 1789–2019 in @cpsjournal.bsky.social together with @mariannedahl.bsky.social @chknutsen.bsky.social @sirianned.bsky.social @hannefjelde.bsky.social @torewig.bsky.social

Read about the paper👇

Or dive right into the data👉 www.prio.org/data/39

I sincerely second this point! Thank you so much, everyone!!

Mass Mobilization in the Modern Era: Introducing the Opposition Movements and Groups (OMG) Dataset, 1789–2019 - Marianne Dahl, Sirianne Dahlum, Hanne Fjelde, Haakon Gjerløw, Carl Henrik Knutsen, Carina Strøm-Sedgwick, Tore Wig, 2025 The nature and consequences of mass mobilization are core topics in the social sciences. How have mass mobilization movements evolved over time? How do key char...

Read the full article in Comparative Political Studies: doi.org/10.1177/0010...

🔑 Key findings:
• Nonviolent campaigns are more likely to foster democratization after 1900— but outcomes depend on who participates and what they want.
• Students, workers & intellectuals drive democratic change.
• Peasants, middle classes & militaries usually don’t.

We show:
• OMG covers pro-democracy, anti-liberal & pro-regime campaigns.
• Social bases are diverse—no group dominates > 1/8 of movements.
• Ideologies shifted: nationalism, conservatism, liberalism → socialism → democracy & human rights, with nationalism constant.

📊 New dataset and paper alert!
We’re proud to launch the Opposition Movements and Groups (OMG) Dataset, 1789–2019: a global dataset covering 1,452 mass mobilization movements. It was just published in Comparative Political Studies. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Below follows a 🧵

Washington, DC under military occupation in last August 2025, with banners proclaiming the absolute power of the primus inter pares

This is a real photograph of Washington, DC this week, where the United States president has ordered military occupation in peacetime, and ordered the display of colossal portraits of himself.

www.wsj.com/politics/pol...

Download “Global Trends and Expert Perceptions: Pessimism and the Assessment of Democratic Backsliding”: v-dem.net/media/public...
By @kailmarkvart.bsky.social, @danpemstein.com , Brigitte Seim, John Gerring, @chknutsen.bsky.social, and Yunus Orhan
#Democracy #ExpertCodedData #DemocracyData
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tl;dr Although there is a relationship between perceptions of global democracy trends and perceptions of local democracy, there is little evidence that this relationship is causal or that it meaningfully drives expert coding behavior. 17/17

These analyses yielded three important findings. First, global pessimism < local knowledge:
perceptions of local democracy trends correlate to a much greater extent with V-Dem coding of specific countries than do perceptions of global democracy trends. 14/17

Abstract: During the past decade, analyses drawing on several democracy measures have shown a global trend of democratic retrenchment. While these democracy measures use radically different methodologies, most partially or fully rely on subjective judgments to produce estimates of the level of democracy within states. Such projects continuously grapple with balancing conceptual coverage with the potential for bias (Munck and Verkuilen 2002; Przeworski et al. 2000). Little and Meng (L&M) (2023) reintroduce this debate, arguing that “objective” measures of democracy show little evidence of recent global democratic backsliding. By extension, they posit that time-varying expert bias drives the appearance of democratic retrenchment in measures that incorporate expert judgments. In this article, we engage with (1) broader debates on democracy measurement and democratic backsliding, and (2) L&M’s specific data and conclusions.

Sidenote: Elsewhere colleagues (incl @acrowinghen.bsky.social , @medzihorsky.bsky.social, @danpemstein.com, @chknutsen.bsky.social, @silindberg.bsky.social) and I find little evidence that bad-vibes among V-Dem’s country experts drive the recent global democratic decline.
doi.org/10.1017/S104...