Links Archives - kai arzheimer

Four links on the Great German Refugee/Immigration Crisis Carnival

Jun 182018

I know that definitions are so 1996, but here are some that bear repeating:

Migrant: “A person who is to be engaged, is engaged or has been engaged in a remunerated activity in a State of which he or she is not a national” (UN Convention on the rights of Migrants)
Refugee: “someone who has been forced to flee his or her country because of persecution, war, or violence” (UNHCR)
Asylum seeker: someone who applies “to be recognized as a refugee and receive legal protection and material assistance (UNHCR)

In short, asylum seekers are refugees who apply for formal recognition. If this status is granted, they may or may not become migrants. Words matter. Having said that, here are some links:

German Hard-Liners Want to Close Borders, Threatening Merkel Coalition. Some decent reporting on the CDU/CSU spat in Germany from the New York Times
If your attention span is short, here is an excellent explainer thread on the issue
Politico reports on the Monday morning ceasefire
And He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named proves once more that transatlantic relationships have reached a new low

Italy, the UK, Sweden, and Russia paying for AfD flights: four European crisis links I liked

Links, Politics 1 Response »

May 302018

Why did the Italian President use a half-forgotten constitutional power to veto Paolo Savona’s appointment as finance minister? Here is why.
FAZ: Russia paid 25,000 Euro charter for a private plane for former leader Petry & two other AfD politicians’ visit
An unnamed EU official said that the UK’s Brexit negotiators are chasing a fantasy. Not exactly an Official Secret, eh?
Three months before the September elections, the Radical Right Sweden Democrats are polling in the 20 per cent range, while the Social Democrat’s new hard line on immigration proves to be a hard sell. Will they ever learn?

Bonus track: Here is another demotivational quote from the Stata handbook:

British Eurocrats, the Five Stars, Conference Posters, Dutch Twitter, and a surprise: five links I liked

Links, Politics 1 Response »

May 152018

Brexit-hit British EU staff ditch UK passports. As it turns out, the others still see them as Brits.
The POP blog published an interesting article in 2017: “The 5 Star Movement is Neither Left-Wing nor Antifascist”, which is currently trending on Twitter (you wonder why). Still worth reading.
Good advice on the LSE Impact Blog: if you ever need to design a conference poster, look no further. If you want the aesthetically best results, ignore what they say about PowerPoint (shudder!) and indulge your inner nerd and do your conference poster with LaTeX/beamer. It’s easier than you think.
Is Dutch Twitter a populist paradise? The answer may surprise you (or probably not if you know anything about the way Wilders runs the PVV)
But this will surprise you: What is the modal, median, and mean number of studies you need to run to get a significant finding when in reality, there is no effect whatsoever?

Crooked right-wingers, Nazi Grandmas, pesky exam questions, and multiple party identification: four German links I liked

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May 072018

German media report that about 10 per cent of all MPs for the Radical Right AfD (state and federal level) are currently investigated by the police. Allegations range from incitement to fraud and tax evasion. In dubio pro and all that, but it’s not exactly what you normally mean by a law & order party, eh?
A 89-year old “Nazi Grandma” has failed to show up for the start of her prison sentence.
German school-leaving exam has students discuss the differences between the hopes connected to the British referendum, and the reality of Brexit since. The usual suspects in the UK are predictably outraged.
Political involvement, cross-pressures, and multi-party identification in Germany – JEPOP journal publishes very cool article by my erstwhile PhD student @sabrinamayer

Pooling Polish polls, British parties and the EU, white nationalists, and the Radical Right’s gendered policy agendas: four links I liked

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Apr 192018

Once more, Ben Stanley has pooled the poles’ polls (TM). The result? Some movement, but no crisis.
Neat: Alexandre Afonso tracks British parties’ positions on European integration from 1999 to 2017 using Chapel Hill data
Feeling paranoid? Here is an article about “white nationalists infiltrating our workplaces as secret agents”. Actually, it’s mostly about a single agent, but still an interesting article.
Almost by definition, my Radical Right Research Robot posts oodles of interesting links (if you are into that stuff), but here is a favourite that I read with my students just a few weeks ago:

the effect of immigration and the #RadicalRight T. Akkerman. “Gender and the Radical Right in Western Europe. A Comparative Analysis of Policy Agendas”. In: Patterns of Prejudice 49.1-2 (2015), pp. 37-60. https://t.co/fhatSkdV48. pic.twitter.com/Ay1mFUMBIe
— Radical Right Research Robot (@RRResRobot) April 5, 2018

Brexit, Italy, twitter bots, Germany, blogs: five links I liked

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Apr 032018

From the Monkey Cage: Italy just voted for two very different kinds of populism
The botrnot package for the R language: Which world leaders are actually bots? (Use your own judgment)
Science community blogs: recognising value and measuring reach
Germany being Germany (or Bavaria?): German minister under fire for no women in leadership team
11 Brexit promises the government quietly dropped. Well, “promise” was probably too strong a word. More like intentions. Out-of-the-box thinking etc.

Brexit, Twitter, the AfD, Trump, and Brexit: Five links I liked

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Feb 122018

Spoiler: no spoiler: “What the 2015 Greek debt negotiations tell us about Germany’s negotiating stance on Brexit” (Luuk Molthof on the LSE blog)
48% of scientists on Twitter are social scientists? Only 48%?
Interesting piece in the Atlantic about the AfD parliamentary party in the Bundestag and the Bundestag’s interaction with them.
If you really, really want to read it, here is a list of racist remarks Donald Trump has made over the last decades.
Support for Brexit has been slipping at 3/5ths of a percentage point per month

Gary King, the SPD, the (alt-)right, and declining support for Brexit: five links I liked

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Jan 172018

Gary King came here and gave a very cool talk. He experimentally varied the content of small-ish news outlets (!), and the national conversation on Social Media changed massively. In other news, ethics is overrated 😉
Germany’s SPD really dislikes the idea of being in power (or at least in a coalition)
The New Statesman has a rather depressing piece on the alt-right’s internet
If that is not enought, the New York Times has a long list of Trump’s racist statements and deeds going back to the 1980s
Chris Hanretty says that public support for Brexit is declining

Trump, R, and the French right: five links I liked

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Dec 172017

One of the best (and most depressing) articles on Trump I’ve read so far: “Inside Trump’s Hour-by-Hour Battle for Self-Preservation”
If you learnt R as a grad student and if that was some time ago (cough), here is help to get you started on the new ways of doing things in R
To further drive this home, here is a quick and only slightly dirty analysis of the Weinstein effect in newspaper reporting using tidytext
What remains of the traditional French centre-right after Macron is poaching on the Front National. Art Goldhammer nails it.
Meanwhile, the Front National is once more in hot water over the misuse of EU funds.

Bitcoin, Brexit, Beauty: Four links I liked

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Dec 062017

#Bitcoin an even bigger waste of energy than previously thought. Some people claim that running the currency (if it is one) right now use up as much energy as running Denmark. After careful consideration, I prefer Denmark.
A long, thoughtful essay on Brexit, written from a semi-Canadian perspective. Well worth your time.
Another little Brexit gem: “did the SNP’s mixed signals encourage those for independence to vote for #Brexit”? I’m not convinced (have a look at the confidence intervals), but it is an interesting piece.
An act of sheer (political) beauty: German artists build “Holocaust memorial” outside far-right politician’s house

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