Carl Henrik Knutsen

This is what competitive authoritarianism looks like - regime ally trying to purchase media and remove critical voices

Especially when you are paying the president tens or hundreds of millions of dollars (in blatant violation of the Constitution) www.nytimes.com/2025/11/15/w...

Is it a threat to free speech when the President of the United States threatens to yank the broadcast license of a channel whose reporters are asking him challenging questions?

I ask because I feel like there used to be tons of pundits worried about free speech. Where'd they go?

A lot of people didn’t like the Washington Post journalist who was tortured and dismembered with a bone saw for writing critically about the man sitting next to me

Are People Willing to Trade Away Democracy for Desirable Outcomes? Experimental Evidence From Six Countries - Jonathan A. Chu, Scott Williamson, Eddy S. F. Yeung, 2025 To what extent do people prioritize living in a democracy over other indicators of good governance or personal well-being? This question has become contested as...

People value free and fair elections, and prefer living in a country with free and fair elections but with less desirable outcomes (e.g. low levels of wealth) to living in a country without free and fair elections but with better outcomes journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00104140251392539

The methodology business cycle

(Ok I'm trademarking that for a future paper 🤣)

Abstract for the article: How does right-wing terrorism affect electoral support for populist radical right parties (PRRPs)? Recent research has produced contrary answers to this question. We argue that only high-intensity attacks, whose motives and targets mirror PRRPs’ nativist agenda, are likely to generate a media backlash that dampens electoral support for PRRPs. We test this argument by combining high-frequency survey and social media data with a natural and survey experimental design. We find that right-wing terror reduced support for the radical right party Alternative für Deutschland after one of the most intense nativist attacks in recent German history. An analysis of all ninety-eight fatal right-wing attacks in Germany between 1990 and 2020 supports our argument. Our findings contribute to an understanding of how political violence triggers partisan detachment and have important implications for media responsibility in the aftermath of terrorist attacks.

🚨 New article out!

“Right-Wing Terror, Media Backlash, and Voting Preferences for the Far Right” in @bjpols.bsky.social

👉 doi.org/10.1017/S000...

We (Alex De Juan, @juvoss.bsky.social & I) examine how right-wing attacks shape support for the far-right in Germany.

Short summary thread below 👇

Demokratiets motstandskraft i møte med det ekstreme - C-REX – Senter for ekstremismeforskning Hvordan designe et robust demokrati og beskytte det mot voldelig ekstremisme? Innledninger ved professor og statsviter Carl Henrik Knutsen og professor og statsviter Jacob Aasland Ravndal. Kommentarer...

Join us tomorrow at @uio.no for the 3rd C-REX/CIR meeting on Democracy and Extremism. Presentations by @chknutsen.bsky.social & @jacravn.bsky.social, followed by comments from parliamentary leader T. Brenna (Labour Party) & H. Nordby Lunde (former Conservative MP). www.sv.uio.no/c-rex/aktuel...

Ser frem til å innlede til dette frokostmøtet sammem med @chknutsen.bsky.social om demokratiets motstandskraft i møte med det ekstreme i regi av @crexuio.bsky.social og CIR forskergruppen ved @statsvitenskap.bsky.social

www.sv.uio.no/c-rex/aktuel...

Haha, very un-Norwegian, but I would of course have liked that ;)

Hereby confirming that I’ve also been honored 😀 Thanks again for the great collaboration, @adridelrio.bsky.social and @plutscher.bsky.social !

Hereby confirming that I’ve also been honored 😀 Thanks again for the great collaboration, @adridelrio.bsky.social and @plutscher.bsky.social !

Now I also got it @adridelrio.bsky.social @chknutsen.bsky.social :-) Thanks @apsa.bsky.social
for mentioning our #education dataset:
Paper: journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....
Data: dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtm...

Check out or new article — published today in @poppublicsphere.bsky.social — where we discuss and provide guidelines for the construction and use of datasets.

We draw on our lessons from three major data collection efforts on education policies and systems 👇

Donald Trump’s Plan to Subvert the Midterms Is Already Under Way Our election system is reaching a breaking point.

Donald Trumps plan to subvert the midterms is underway
From David Graham, on the cover of the next edition of @theatlantic.com

www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...

Thanks @apsa.bsky.social for the mention to my coauthored #education dataset with @chknutsen.bsky.social and @plutscher.bsky.social in @cpsjournal.bsky.social.

Paper: journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....
Data: dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtm...

It just got 10% dumber.

Not a joke: Trump just imposed an additional 10 percent tariff on Canada because he still doesn't understand that Reagan was a vehement free trader. www.wsj.com/politics/pol...

the federal government is waging war on citizens living in areas that didnt vote for donald trump, its insane

New version (0.6.0) of my #rstats package {democracyData} xmarquez.github.io/democracyData/ with @freedomhouse.bsky.social data to 2024, as well as several other sources, plus minor improvements all around

The Inspector General system is basically broken now. Most IGs have been fired, most positions remain vacant. Those who remain or would take the job pose no risk to holding the regime accountable.
Congress added more barriers to Trump firing IGs after his first term. He just ignored them.

The self-censorship continues...

"I was the editor of Governing, a magazine and website covering state and local governments. But after facing increasing internal censorship pressures — largely to avoid critical coverage of President Donald Trump — I refused to go along, and I resigned."

Trump Said to Demand Justice Dept. Pay Him $230 Million for Past Cases

“Senior department officials who were defense lawyers for the president … are now in jobs that typically must approve any such payout, underscoring potential ethical conflicts.”

The language of “ethical conflicts” here is a comical insult to the reader. But saying “rancid corruption” would be rude.

48 chapters on various aspects of Norwegian politics. Including one by @sirianned.bsky.social and myself on the historical development and current state of Norwegian democracy:

global.oup.com/academic/pro...

Very proud to have been a part of this project and to see my first co-authored article out in the world! Read @jacobnyrup.bsky.social excellent thread for more info on the data! 🥳

Super excited to finally see this project out in the wild! What a journey it's been! Looking forward to see how people will use this awesome data. See thread below for more details from @jacobnyrup.bsky.social.

Check out the data paper (open access) and the publicly available data: We hope that many people will use it in their research and for other purposes.

Great project, great people, great department!

(From a completely unbiased member of the same department)

Paths to Power (PtP) - Department of Political Science Paths to Power (PtP) is a new global dataset on the background characteristics of 44,000+ cabinet members across 141 countries in the period 1966–2021. It documents their educational, occupational, an...

We are already thinking about the next steps. We are currently building a website presenting the data. Here, we will add interactive visualizations and useful information.

We also see where British cabinet members attended university. Unsurprisingly, Oxford and Cambridge
graduates dominate.