Category: Political Science

Review: Alexander Häusler (Ed.): Die Alternative für Deutschland. Programmatik, Entwicklung und politische Verortung

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For obvious reasons, books on the AfD are thin on the ground. It took me an unduly long time to review this one, not because there was anything wrong with the book but rather because something was wrong with my timekeeping and project mismanagement. Hopefully, the review should appear in one of the next issues of German Politics, but for the time being, I’m posting the author’s version here.

47 (potential) reasons for voting for the Radical Right

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Why is there support for the Radical Right? I’ve just submitted the final (hopefully) draft of a chapter that I’m preparing for Jens Rydgren’s forthcoming Oxford Handbook of the Radical Right. The job description was to Explain Electoral Support for the Radical Right (read the pre-print here). In 8000 words or less. Sure thing. No…

The Rise of Illiberal Democracy – in 1997

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Googling around for a citation Doing serious scholarly work, I stumbled upon this article that was published in Foreign Affairs back in 1997. It would seem that these guys were rather prescient here. Before you get too excited: On the next page, the article claims that liberal values and democracy are “interwoven in the Western political fabric,…

Political Science’s Not Dead. Nor is forecasting

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With the vote mostly counted in the US, PS have posted a useful summary of the Political Science Forecasting Models for that infamous election. [contentcards url="http://www.politicalsciencenow.com/how-accurate-were-the-political-science-forecasts-of-the-2016-presidential-election/"] By and large, and in neat contrast to the current fad for self-flagellation, the augurs of the discipline have done well. Eight of the ten predictions that were published in…

Deliberation does not reduce the gap between citizens’ and legislators’ ethical preferences

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Deliberation does not reduce the gap between citizens’ and legislators’ ethical preferences 1

This week, I had the opportunity to talk on the Nuffield Politics Seminar about my current project on citizens’s preferences on Pre-implantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD) and how they differ from what lawmakers decided. The feedback I got was amazing, though not always practical (“If you could go back in time and vary about 10 experimental conditions…

All the Political Science wisdom on the Trump victory /presidency in one single blog post. Or two, perhaps 

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The one and only Philip Schrodt has written what I think is the perfect seven-take-home-messages rant on that election and it’s likely outcomes. Skip all the self-flagellation/yes-but posts and read this instead: [contentcards url="https://asecondmouse.wordpress.com/2016/11/12/seven-observations-on-the-2016-election/"] Then again, there is one thing that does not get enough coverage in there, and that is the whole polling/prediction disaster.…

Does deliberation reduce the gap between citizens’ and legislators’ ethical preferences? (Or: Mr A goes to Oxford)

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Does deliberation reduce the gap between citizens' and legislators' ethical preferences? (Or: Mr A goes to Oxford) 2

I’m enormously flattered that the good people over at Nuffield College have invited me to their Political Science Seminar Series. I’m talking about a current project of mine that looks into the extent of the gap between citizens’ and legislators’ preferences on bioethical issues in general and Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD) in particular. Here is the…

In March 2016, Helmut Norpoth predicted a Trump victory

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Ballot - Vote

[contentcards url="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/ps-political-science-and-politics/article/primary-model-predicts-trump-victory/F374BCB3C2A291B21A8A39CD3ECD6BE3" target="_blank"] I’m not a huge fan of predictive Social Science. People are not the weather; they are bound to react to our predictions, which may become self-defeating or self-fulfilling in the process. Either scenario is unpleasant for obvious reasons. Predictive models are often subject to herd behaviour. They rarely rely on first principles,…

The Populist Radical Right Reader

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Cas Mudde’s excellent Populist Radical Right Reader is finally out. The book brings together 32 texts that have previously been published as chapters or articles over the course of the last three decades. The reader covers topics such as right-wing ideology, organisations including parties, leaders and members, or right-wing voters. Perhaps most importantly, there is also one section on…

What are the most important journals for Radical Right research?

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Which publishers are the most relevant for Radical Right research? Good question. https://twitter.com/FFRBookSeries/status/789509504576651269 Radical Right research by type of publication Currently, most of the items in the The Eclectic, Erratic Bibliography on the Extreme Right in Western Europe (TM) are journal articles. The books/chapters/articles ratios have shifted somewhat over the years, reflecting both general trends…