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Carl Müller-Crepon @carlmc.bsky.social · 22/05/2026

In the bigger picture, this paper contributes further evidence on how political units and ethnic groups shape each other, a process that I have documented at the subnational levels in Africa South of the Sahara and at the national level in Europe.

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Carl Müller-Crepon @carlmc.bsky.social · 22/05/2026

I present new data on colonial ethnic and administrative geography. Results from a spatial partition model suggest that indirect British rule more strongly aligned administrative units with ethnic geography while direct French led to substantively more administrative dismemberment of ethnic groups.

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Carl Müller-Crepon @carlmc.bsky.social · 22/05/2026

I argue that ruler who want to centralize power will design units that disrupt ethnic groups and their institutions through "dismemberment" (cut by borders) or "suffocation" (diverse units). In turn, indirect rule through preexisting institutitions requires ethnically aligned administrative units.

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Carl Müller-Crepon @carlmc.bsky.social · 14/04/2026

Digging into heterogeneity in coethnic covoting, we find that it is driven by covoting for ethnic parties among members of politically relevant groups. In turn, measures of individual biases & perceptions or macro institutions correlate only weakly if at all with differential coethnic covoting.

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Carl Müller-Crepon @carlmc.bsky.social · 14/04/2026

Empirically, we find that, across 28 African states, coethnics covote at a rate of around 58%, 16ppts higher than non-coethnics (42%). This estimate does not change when accounting for geographic distance, wealth differentials, and other cleavages, and remains substantial even within locations.

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Carl Müller-Crepon @carlmc.bsky.social · 14/04/2026

This formulation allows us to model the association between coethnicity (shared mother tongue) and covoting (shared party ID) while controlling for other cleavages and general country- (or group and individual-level) characteristics across survey data from different countries and/or rounds.

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Carl Müller-Crepon @carlmc.bsky.social · 20/03/2026

I'm very excited that you all can now read about Itinerant Rule in the Holy Roman Empire from 919-1519 in the @ajpseditor.bsky.social! Thank you @claranw.bsky.social, @andrejkokkonen.bsky.social and Jørgen Møller for a great collaboration! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

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Carl Müller-Crepon @carlmc.bsky.social · 09/12/2025

The book was the result of great teamwork. It would not have been possible without the fantastic team at the International Conflict Research Group at ETH Zurich, the support of the @erc.europa.eu, the participants of two book workshops, and many discussants and audiences! Thank you all so, so much!

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Carl Müller-Crepon @carlmc.bsky.social · 09/12/2025

Lastly, we show that potential border change due to alien rule and/or ethnic division increases the risk for minorities to be targeted by state-led campaigns of ethnic cleansing. Driving both, nationalism significantly reshaped the geography of state borders and ethnic groups in Europe and beyond.

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Carl Müller-Crepon @carlmc.bsky.social · 09/12/2025

Border changes is often preceded by wars within or between states. Digging into their drivers, we present strong evidence for the lasting impact of nationalist “Golden Ages”, past episodes of (perceived) unification and home rule, and minority backlash against modernization through railroads.

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Carl Müller-Crepon @carlmc.bsky.social · 09/12/2025

We use historical data on state borders, ethnic geography, and conflicts to test the argument for Europe post-1815 and globally since 1945. We find that nationalism powered changes in state size by redrawing state borders along ethnic lines, thus explaining the deviation from Tilly’s model.

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Carl Müller-Crepon @carlmc.bsky.social · 09/12/2025

In particular: political division of ethnic groups➡️unification nationalism; alien rule of ethnic minorities➡️separatism; division & alien rule➡️irredentism

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Carl Müller-Crepon @carlmc.bsky.social · 09/12/2025

Answer: Nationalism and its state-transforming effects. Ethnic nationalism demands the congruence of the state and the ethnic nation, which leads to a clear expectation: State-nation incongruence increases the risk of conflict and border change.

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Carl Müller-Crepon @carlmc.bsky.social · 09/12/2025

We start with Tilly’s classical model of bellicist state formation which would expect there to be fewer and fewer states that grow ever larger. Yet, empirically, we observe an increase in the number of states and a decline in their size since the 19th century in Europe and Globally – why?

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Carl Müller-Crepon @carlmc.bsky.social · 09/12/2025

🚨 📖 “Nationalism and the Transformation of the State” is out with CUP! I’m so happy to conclude 6 years of research with Lars-Erik Cederman, Luc Girardin, Yannick Pengl and many others like that! It’s open access @cambup-polsci.cambridge.org here: tinyurl.com/nastac What’s the book all about? A 🧵

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Carl Müller-Crepon @carlmc.bsky.social · 09/12/2025

The book is the result of great teamwork. It would not have been possible without the fantastic team at the International Conflict Research Group at ETH Zurich, the support of the @erc.europa.eu, the participants of two book workshops, and many discussants and audiences! Thank you all so, so much!

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Carl Müller-Crepon @carlmc.bsky.social · 06/12/2025

Here is a short project description for those interested:

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Carl Müller-Crepon @carlmc.bsky.social · 28/11/2025

🚨 The Ethnic Politics of Nature Protection in Africa: New paper with Stephen Dawson, @felixhaass.bsky.social and Aksel Sundström! We find that politically included groups get shielded from the local costs of establishing natural parks. Out now at @thejop.bsky.social shorturl.at/tm78R

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Carl Müller-Crepon @carlmc.bsky.social · 04/09/2025

🎉 I am so very happy that I was awarded an ERC Starting Grant for my project BORDERS: Border Change and Local Development in Europe and Beyond. My (future) team and I will investigate the mechanisms underlying the effects of border change on development in historical Europe and worldwide. #ERCStG 🎉

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Carl Müller-Crepon @carlmc.bsky.social · 27/07/2025

Though to be clear, given the number of allegations against Kreissler it seems quite likely to me that he plagiarised Tom Lehrer…

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Carl Müller-Crepon @carlmc.bsky.social · 30/04/2025

Also note that the paper pays most attention the sharp change in strategies of itinerant rule across the Great Interregnum 1250-73 in order to avoid drawing inferences from sweeping comparisons between the 10th and 15th centuries.

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Carl Müller-Crepon @carlmc.bsky.social · 30/04/2025

We totally agree -- the visualization of the all itineraries is only to give a general overview over the data. We will make the data interactively available such that one can plot individual emperors or even just years similar to the below examples from the paper.

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Carl Müller-Crepon @carlmc.bsky.social · 30/04/2025

3. While the impact of techn. change and the growth of centralized institutions would be fascinating to study, they cannot explain the stark discontinuity in rulers' destinations across the interregnum. Stopping in 1400 does not alter the gist of this finding.

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Carl Müller-Crepon @carlmc.bsky.social · 29/04/2025

Thank you Hein, also for your comments in Zurich! In case this is interesting, our Appendix now includes a long list of historical polities in Europe and beyond, coding whether their rulers were itinerant or sedentary (excerpt w/ France below):

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Carl Müller-Crepon @carlmc.bsky.social · 29/04/2025

🚨 Very excited that our paper on *Rulers on the Road* has been cond. accepted at the AJPS @ajpseditor.bsky.social. We analyze emperors' strategies of itinerant rule in the Holy Roman Empire 919-1519. Fun working with @claranw.bsky.social, @andrejkokkonen.bsky.social & Jørgen Møller shorturl.at/Spm7z

Itineraries of 25 Emperors of the Holy Roman Empire, 919 to 1519

Itinerant rule, rule exercised through traveling, was a common, yet insufficiently researched pre-modern form of governance. Studying the determinants of ruler itineraries in the Holy Roman Empire AD 919-1519, we argue that rulers focused on monitoring `marginal' elites. Powerful rulers could count on family members and thus targeted unrelated local elites. Weak emperors had to monitor their less loyal relatives and left unrelated nobles unvisited. We reconstruct emperors' itineraries from 72'665 dated and geolocated documents and measure territorial control by their relatives. Exploiting the weakening of imperial power through the Great Interregnum (1250-1273), we find that strong, pre-1250 emperors frequented areas controlled by their relatives relatively less. In contrast, family control increased visits post-1273. Causal identification rests on the discontinuous reduction of emperors' power through the Great Interregnum and differences in family relations between subsequent emperors. The results show strategic itinerant rule as an important but understudied form of governance.

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Carl Müller-Crepon @carlmc.bsky.social · 18/02/2025

Isnt Anti-woke only the entry-drug here? Trump, Musk & co should be taken as straight-up white supremacists at this point. … see eg www.thehandbasket.co/p/nazis-musk...

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Carl Müller-Crepon @carlmc.bsky.social · 03/12/2024

Overleaf seems to be down -- anyone knows what is happening? Seems to be not only me...

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Carl Müller-Crepon @carlmc.bsky.social · 03/12/2024

good thing I regularly checkout my overleaf projects!!

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Carl Müller-Crepon @carlmc.bsky.social · 19/11/2024

🚨 UCL Conflict and Change PhD Workshop 2025 Call for Papers, deadline 8 Dec. Apply, it’s a fantastic workshop and crowd! t.co/rMWGimGtlw

Screenshot of twitter post with workshop ad

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Carl Müller-Crepon @carlmc.bsky.social · 29/04/2024

🚨 New research paper: *Rulers on the Road*. We map emperors’ itinerant rule in the Holy Roman Empire from 719 to 1519 and shed light on how they projected power without centralized bureaucracies. Very fun project with @claranw.bsky.social @andrejkokkonen.bsky.social & Jørgen Møller shorturl.at/npKQ4

Imperial itineraries over 600 years as a map.

Plot of main results: negtive effect of local family control on ruler presence before the Great Interregnum which weakened emperors. Positive effect thereafter.

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Carl Müller-Crepon @carlmc.bsky.social · 04/03/2024

🚨 How do states and ethnic groups shape each other? Two new articles of mine in the AJPS explore this issue – I’m very happy that they were both published online over the weekend! Thread 🧵 doi.org/10.1111/ajps... and doi.org/10.1111/ajps...

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Carl Müller-Crepon @carlmc.bsky.social · 20/10/2023

We didn't run the survey experiment again, so we don't know exactly. But to the extent that our results mirror survey data on Ukrainians' support for government & military, opinions seem to be rather stable. See, e.g., Gallup survey from Jul and Aug 2023 news.gallup.com/poll/512621/...

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Carl Müller-Crepon @carlmc.bsky.social · 20/10/2023

How do Ukrainians think about self-defense against Russia? In a new paper out in the AJPS, @janinadill.bsky.social, Marnie Howlett and I find through a conjoint experiment that they are categorically against major concessions, even at very high costs of self-defense doi.org/10.1111/ajps... (1/6)

At Any Cost: How Ukrainians Think about Self-Defense Against Russia

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