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Danbischof @danbischof.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Postdoc position within my group 3 years (100% TVl-13): stellen.uni-muenster.de/jobposting/2... ⏱️ 06.11.2026 If you have questions: get in touch!

stellen.uni-muenster.de

Postdoctoral Research Associate (Wissenschaftliche*r Mitarbeiter*in, salary level E 13 TV-L)

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Danbischof @danbischof.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

There is much to learn from this how strange Germans are imo...

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Danbischof @danbischof.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Ein Strandkorb, wirklich? Der er selbst bezahlt. Das ist dekadent? Soll er den Balkon leer lassen? Darf er mit seinem Gehalt keinen Strandkorb kaufen? Welche Form der Dekadenz signalisiert ein selbst erworbener Strandkorb?

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Thomas Stadler @rastadler.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Wollen wir vielleicht auch mal über antisemitische Tendenzen bei der CDU sprechen? Wo wir jetzt schon mal dabei sind.

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Felix Haass @felixhaass.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

🚨 New working paper! 🚨

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Any comments/feedback are welcome!

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📌 The dilemma is grim. Exclusion can fuel disillusionment and violence. But inclusion may provide legitimacy, immunity, and even more violence down the road. Paper: osf.io/preprints/so...

osf.io

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🧨 Bottom line: Far right representation does not automatically pacify anti-democratic movements. When a violent party wins mandates but remains excluded from power, representation itself can intensify violence.

📈 Membership records tell a similar story. Where mandates had been won, SA membership kept growing. We do not see the same pattern for the formal party organization.

🪖 The mechanism evidence points in that direction. The additional violence was initiated by the SA. SA mood reports describe disappointment and bitterness after electoral success failed to produce power.

⚠️ The mechanism is not simple loser grievance. Violence increased where Nazi candidates won mandates, not where they narrowly lost. Representation without power seems to have redirected frustration toward the movement's violent wing.

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⏪ This was not just pre-existing violence. The discontinuity appears after the election, but not before it. That matters because it speaks against a story where already violent towns simply happened to elect Nazi candidates.

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🔎 Main finding: post-election Nazi-communist violence was substantially higher in towns represented by elected Nazi MPs. A town with an elected Nazi MP was more than twice as likely to experience a post-election SA-KPD riot.

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📏 To address the obvious endogeneity between elections and violence we compare towns whose Nazi candidates narrowly entered parliament with towns whose candidates narrowly missed.

🗂️ to be able to understand the link between elections and violence we digitize Nazi candidate lists and Prussian police records on street violence. Then we link riots to Nazi candidates' home towns.

🇩🇪 We study this in Weimar Germany after the July 1932 Reichstag election. The Nazi Party became the largest parliamentary force, but it remained outside government and Hitler was not appointed chancellor.

💡 Elections are supposed to reduce violence: representation gives actors a stake in institutions and a peaceful route to influence. But what if a violent far right movement wins seats and is still excluded from power?

Heike Klüver @heikekluever.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

📄 New working paper w. Alex De Juan, @felixhaass.bsky.social & Henry Thomson: We study Weimar Germany in 1932 to ask whether far right electoral success pacifies extremist movements - or can fuel violence when mandates do not translate into power. osf.io/preprints/so...

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📣 We're hiring! Looking for a PhD position? Join our team in Berlin! Work with @heikekluever.bsky.social and @markuskollberg.bsky.social in #STATEWORK at Humboldt University and join our @dynamics.bsky.social PhD programme Great people, great project, great city! 🗓️ Deadline: 13 October 2026

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British Journal of Political Science @bjpols.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

From July 2026 - When Legislators Do Not Differentiate: A Field Experiment on British MPs’ Responses to Constituent Policy Queries - cup.org/4hormhs - @danbischof.bsky.social, @vchengm.bsky.social, @gidoncohen.bsky.social, Sarah Cohen, @florianfoos.bsky.social, et al #OpenAccess

BJPolS abstract of a study on how UK Members of Parliament (MPs) respond to constituent policy queries. The research indicates that MPs' responsiveness varies with the level of agreement with constituents.

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Danbischof @danbischof.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Zu den Thesen des Steckers, sehr gute Zerlegung:

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The Upshot @upshot.nytimes.com · 06/08/2026

Under Hegseth, Women’s Share of Top Military Promotions Plunged This Year The percentage of high-ranking officer nominations going to women is currently at its lowest level in over two decades. Via @cj-robinson.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2026/08/06/u...

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Danbischof @danbischof.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

Thx! I wasnt sure about the presentation, 12 minutes really kills me...Oh, you were there? You should have said hello, we never met in person, did we?

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Thilo N. H. Albers @thiloalbers.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

New working paper out, aiming to provide an explanation why populism is so widespread across the income ladder. @danbischof.bsky.social describes our results in the thread below!

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Nils Steiner @nilssteiner.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

We are hiring a postdoc in Comparative Politics at JGU Mainz! Join our friendly and productive team, led by Armin Schäfer (@arminschaefer.bsky.social). • Full-time position • Five-year contract (!) • Start: from 1 October Apply by 22 August: stellenboerse.uni-mainz.de/jgu/job/56328 Please share!

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Coauthored work with @mwegemann.bsky.social @elenaleuschner.bsky.social @timallinger.bsky.social @kristianvsf.bsky.social @morganlcj.bsky.social [Sorry, the list is too long and it didn't fit into the first post without destroying what the paper is all about 🧑‍🎄]

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📌 Bottom line: The danger is not only that citizens abandon democracy. It is also that democracy remains a shared word while its institutional and normative content becomes selectively narrowed.

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🧨 This matters for backsliding. Contested actions can be presented as democratic by appealing selectively to free speech, the people, popular sovereignty, or majority rule. Elections, accountability, and minority protection can be downplayed.

🪞 Even shared terms do not always mean shared meanings. Among respondents who mention rights, left voters connect rights to equality, people, and citizenship. Right voters emphasize freedom of speech and expression.

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🧭 Second finding: democratic meaning is politically structured. Far-right voters and non-voters are less likely to mention civil rights, elections, and horizontal accountability. Far-right voters more often invoke majority rule.

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🗳️ This does not mean citizens reject elections. It means elections are much less salient than rights and freedoms when people formulate democracy openly. Still, few link democracy with elections when asked in their own words.

🔎 First finding: citizens most often define democracy through individual and civil rights. Multidimensional definitions are rare. Only 17% mention elections when asked in their own words.

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🤖 We classify the answers with a fine-tuned language model. Then we use sentence embeddings to study not only which principles people mention, but also how they describe shared terms like rights, freedom, and elections.

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💬 We fielded representative surveys in 14 countries and asked: "Using your own words, what are the essential elements of democracy in your view?" This gives us 25,509 open-ended responses.

🧲 Our worry: democracy itself can become absorbed into the left-right cleavage. Citizens may then disagree not only about policies, but about which version of democracy they believe is being defended.

🧩 Why does this matter? Democratic backsliding rarely works by openly rejecting democracy. It often works inside democratic language: freedom, the people, popular sovereignty, majority rule.

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📄 And another working paper: **Pretty much all citizens say they support democracy.** But what do they mean by that? We ask whether voters from different partisan camps mean the same thing when they talk about "democracy." Paper: osf.io/preprints/so...

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🚫 This likely travels beyond our design: it is not enough for political elites/scientists to tell people how good their lives are. It most likely won't work.

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📌 Bottom line: As the far right becomes normalized, we need to understand why materially secure citizens can still feel left behind. Income misperception is one route into that grievance. But correcting beliefs does not undo populist attitudes.

⚠️ That null result is the point. Information can change how people see their own economic position. But once economic dissatisfaction has been organized into a broader political story about unfairness, elites, and betrayal, it is much harder to undo with one factual correction.