Causal inference is all the rage. But good descriptive research is vital. This new article lays out an argument for what makes good descriptive research.

New article with Daniel Encinas 🇵🇪: “Cleavages without Parties: Populism and its Voters in Peru.” Even without stable parties, Peruvian voting is quite predictable. Competition has long been structured by a core–periphery cleavage and a populist narrative of “people vs. elite.”

🚨New article with Rodrigo Barrenechea in the TJD: “Cleavages without Parties: Populism and its Voters in Peru.” 📣Open Access. Here is the link: tfd.org.tw/backend/upload…

Ancient Inca “whistling vessels” that could sing like animals, powered by nothing but air and water.

Democrats are likely to lose the redistricting war economist.com/united-states/… From The Economist

Paper alert. My friend & coauthor, CEU PhD student Bence Hamrák, has a cool new oa paper in Electoral Studies on how winning or losing an election shapes partisan identity & affective polarization. Political psych & polarization folks—check it out: sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

Bertolt Brecht wrote a film about unemployment, homelessness and left wing politics in the Weimar Republic in 1932. It was banned that same year. And now the whole thing's on youtube. You know what to do. youtube.com/watch?v=1uvSTa…

From June 2025 - Understanding Voter Fatigue: Election Frequency and Electoral Abstention Approval - cup.org/4nsnQDC "findings hold major implications for our understanding of voter turnout and democratic institutional engineering" - Filip Kostelka #OpenAccess

🚨 PhD Position at the University of Amsterdam 🚨 Join my team as a computer scientist / computational social scientist working on LLMs, social media, and politics. Freedom, impact, and an inspiring environment at one of Europe's leading universities 🔗 werkenbij.uva.nl/en/vacancies/p…

"Trump was Russia’s man, from the Kremlin perspective, from the beginning."-- Timothy Snyder

Republican Members of Congress are no longer coming from elite institutions of higher education. Elite-educated legislators are more liberal. Important manifestation of the education divide between the parties & context for the current higher ed wars cambridge.org/core/journals/…

After 3 or 4 desk rejects, my latest article written with my research collaborators, Christina Zuber and Edina Szoecsik, has been accepted pending minor revisions. Details to follow. Universität Konstanz Adrian College

🚨 The Virtual Workshop in Historical Political Economy is back! 🚨 This year we have an amazing line up of papers for you! In our inaugural session two HPE superstars will join us: A. Grzymała-Busse (Stanford) will present & Joachim Voth (Zurich) will discuss! I can't wait. 😀

Indiana Jones is a fantasy about there not being an IRB.

🗳️ What drives democratic renewal in U.S. states? ➡️ Using Coincidence Analysis, J. H. Rhodes finds three routes to stronger democracy, centered on the Democratic Party and unions, with roles for diverse populations and a liberal public mood cambridge.org/core/journals/… #FirstView

A year ago, I launched my book #OnFreedom in a war zone – in Kharkiv, Ukraine, 35 seconds from Russian artillery. Today, I'm launching the paperback in Portland, Oregon. Which is NOT a war zone. There is a difference in the real world between what's a war and what is not, and

Studying social sciences & humanities makes students more left-leaning, controlling for initial views & major preference, driven by cultural views. Implies that if all students majored in business, college–noncollege ideological gap would shrink by 1/3 papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…

Six months ago I wrote this post about “the next terrorist attack.” I republish it now (lightly updated) because my fear of this scenario has recently grown much greater. snyder.substack.com/p/the-next-ter…

at a conference where you don’t have to present