Kristian Frederiksen

I mean, this is an execution

Not my field, but the narrative is that S, M and V are being punished for forming a govt crossing the center, not due to accommodation of the far right (or lack thereof). The latter is not really part of the public debate here.

C is not losing currently and did very well at the munici elections

Experimental evidence that *randomly varying the severity of democratic norm violations* is 1) as good as incrementally increasing severity (re subversion by stealth), and 2) better than incrementally decreasing severity (re reference point theory) for would-be authoritarians

Does ethnopolitical exclusion cause civil war onset via grievances? In a new article, @lleipziger.bsky.social, Lasse Lykke Rørbæk, and I reassess this relationship based on 15 case studies. Six of the cases followed the grievance/mobilization/rejection pathway proposed by the general theory.

An expert survey I was contacted by exposed its recipient list and now I'm in a "remove me too please" snowball. Don't people ever learn not to "reply all"?

Fascinating paper by @grattonecon.bsky.social, @bartonelee2.bsky.social, and Hasin Yousaf!
The paper addresses a fundamental question: Why do some democracies chronically avoid ambitious, long-term reforms even when they have decent institutions?
They argue that what matters is not only

@skaaning.bsky.social

🚨 EPSS Belfast 2026 Call for Papers - One week to go! 🚨

Don't forget to submit your paper or panel proposal to the European Political Science Society @epssnet.bsky.social 2026 conference - just one week to go before the deadline: epssnet.org/belfast-2026...

"the increase in appeal of an undemocratic presidential candidate during interstate conflict is strongest among Republicans. Republicans’ preferences for a democratically compliant candidate are completely eroded during threats of interstate conflict."

How do contemporary challenges of backsliding and war interact? We show that interstate conflict boosts support for undemocratic candidates, especially among Republicans who *do not prefer democratic Rs over undemocratic Rs* during interstate conflict.

Out in @bjpols.bsky.social with Lasse Laustsen

Thank you! I think subtle but important difference, if I understand your project correctly, is that while you explore whether people make trade-offs, we will look into whether they perceive these trade-offs to exist. The projects should complement each other nicely and it would be great to chat.

Thanks a lot Elena!

Super excited to get started with this research!

When authoritarians tell you they like authoritarianism, over and over and over and over and over again, believe them

Arrived and all set for #APSA2025 with two papers:

Public Opinion and the Restoration of Democracy with @robbwiller.bsky.social and @m-b-petersen.bsky.social (Thur at 12)

What Elites Believe About Opposing Trump with @aarslew.bsky.social and Martin Bisgaard (Sun at 8)

See you at the conference!

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

Can banning political ideologies protect democracy? 🛡️🆚🗣️

Our (w. @valentimvicente.bsky.social) paper finds: punishing individuals might backfire. We study a West German policy banning "extreme left" individuals from working for the state.

#Democracy #PoliticalScience

🧵

url: osf.io/usqdb_v2

Do campaigns make voters less vulnerable to framing?

Our study of Denmark’s 2022 EU referendum suggests they can. Framing effects declined as voters became more informed and drew on their own EU attitudes.

Happy to share it's now accepted in the EJPR!

Pre-print: osf.io/preprints/os...

Does Priming Democratic Vulnerability Make Citizens Punish Undemocratic Behavior? - Political Behavior Recent instances of public support for democracy-violating political leaders have sparked an important stream of research suggesting that such leaders may gain support by representing citizens’ politi...

Emphasizing that democracy itself is at risk is quite ineffective in reducing support for undemocratic behavior - experimental evidence from 10 countries now open access in @polbehavior.bsky.social

AND this adds a satisfying *The End* to my dissertation.

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Stort tillykke! Meget velfortjent.

🚨 working paper (w. @morganlcj.bsky.social @markuswagner.bsky.social): Protesters are not judged equally - even if tactics of groups are similar.

We ran an experiment in 🇩🇪 testing how people react to farmers vs. climate activists blocking roads.

What we find is disturbing:

osf.io/preprints/os...

Our new paper with team DEMNORM! We show that while using hypothetical scenarios helps us isolate causal effects, this may have led us to underestimate real world support for democratic transgressions, but also the efficiency of interventions against it! ▶️Check out Kristian's summary thread 👇👇

In sum, we suggest that:

• To measure real support for transgressions and building interventions, embed violations in reality (for external validity).
• To isolate causal effects of undemocratic acts themselves, abstract hypotheticals remain useful due to information equivalence concerns.

Why? Hypothetical scenarios might suffer from a “ceiling effect”—most people already oppose abstract violations, so there’s little room to move them further. This is pretty crucial as many interventions have failed in prior studies.

In Wave 2, we nudge respondents with an intervention showing data on how many co‐citizens disapprove of democratic transgressions (plus their reasons). Against real‐world transgressions, disapproval jumped by +5 pp. But against hypotheticals, it barely moved—and even showed a tiny backlash.

Descriptive findings (Wave 1): Disapproval of real‐world violations was much lower (47.5%) than for hypothetical ones (63.7%). Familiarity, concreteness, and context really amplify partisan biases, which are heavily underestimated with hypothetical scenarios, *even when keeping party constant*.

We ran a two‐wave survey: In Wave 1, respondents saw either (a) vignettes of actual transgressions by well‐known leaders—think Trump’s election denial or Orbán’s electoral tweaks—or (b) parallel, but purely hypothetical, scenarios by hypothetical actors with assigned party.

The reason is that information equivalence concerns shift once the main goal is not isolating effects *of* democratic violations (for interventions, for example, we are estimating effects *on* support for democratic violations - such that only intervention treatments should be equivalent).