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Jonas W. Schmid

@jonaswschmid.bsky.social
1.3K followers 1.5K following 64 posts

Researching autocratic politics, ministers & international cooperation at the University of Oslo.

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Jonas W. Schmid @jonaswschmid.bsky.social · 05/05/2026
And indeed: In democracies, finance ministers are 4–5pp less likely to be removed in normal years than in crises, and 10–11pp less likely in booms, which is considerable given a 23.6% baseline risk in crisis years (without leader change). In autocracies we find no link between growth and survival.
Coefficient plot showing the main results from the paper.  Models show the marginal increase in the probability of being removed from cabinet during years with economic booms and normal economy relative to years of economic crises. The bars indicate 95 percent (thin) and 90 percent (bold) confidence intervals.
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Jonas W. Schmid @jonaswschmid.bsky.social · 05/05/2026
We use WhoGov to identify (2,800+) finance ministers and if they lost office, and combine it with growth data to identify economic booms and crises. Importantly, we focus on years where the leader stays in power to isolate effects on the minister from those on the survival of the whole government.
Bar chart from the paper comparing the average removal rates of finance ministers in autocracies and democracies during economic booms, crises, and normal economies, including and excluding years of leader changes.
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Jonas W. Schmid @jonaswschmid.bsky.social · 05/05/2026
We argue that democratic leaders, dependent on winning elections, have strong reasons to retain ministers that deliver growth and fire those that don't. Successful ministers boost public support and signal competence to voters, while firing failing ministers shows accountability and can shift blame.
Abstract
Are the highest-ranking public officials rewarded for good performance? Using the case of finance ministers, we argue
that this depends on the type of regime. Democratic leaders have incentives to retain high-performing finance ministers
because they are accountable to the population through free and fair elections. In the absence of free and fair elections,
autocrats face opposing incentives. While growth stabilizes the regime, a high-performing minister of finance can also be
a potential rival. Moreover, autocratic finance ministers will, to a higher degree than democratic, be judged on their
ability to enrich the leader rather than creating growth. As a result, autocrats reward finance ministers less for
economic growth than democrats. Using data on over 2,800 finance ministers in the period 1966–2021, we dem-
onstrate a close link between economic growth and the retention of finance ministers in democracies but not in
autocracies. The findings indicate that democracies are better at fostering and rewarding competence at the highest
level of political office, speaking to the merits of democracy relative to autocracy.
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Jonas W. Schmid @jonaswschmid.bsky.social · 11/01/2026
Same thing.
Logo of the Michael Scott Paper Company from the TV show the office.
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Jonas W. Schmid @jonaswschmid.bsky.social · 09/01/2026
And if you need more convincing, here is live footage from the organization committee's planning meeting.
Zoom screenshot of the orga committee's meeting with various filters on the members' faces.
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Jonas W. Schmid @jonaswschmid.bsky.social · 11/11/2025
Next step is a giant statue of himself on the White House lawn. After that the Washington Monument will be replaced by a giant, rotating statue of "The Art of the Deal".
AI generated image of a giant Donald Trump Bronze statue on the White House Lawn.
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Jonas W. Schmid @jonaswschmid.bsky.social · 02/09/2025
More excellent research at the WhoGov workshop with a keynote by @szakonyi.bsky.social, and presentations by @miguelpereira.bsky.social @rsenninger.bsky.social @jbvalgermo.bsky.social @fiva.no @martesaga.bsky.social @haakongjerlw.bsky.social @mnagawa.bsky.social @antonkronborg.bsky.social and more
Picture of a presenter in an auditorium
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Jonas W. Schmid @jonaswschmid.bsky.social · 01/09/2025
Great start to the WhoGov elite workshop with @seibertlukas.bsky.social discussing how transparency affects MPs' side jobs and @siggi-econ.bsky.social showing that Norwegian parties and voters do a good job at filtering out candidates with criminal backgrounds.
Picture of presentation at workshopPicture of presentation at workshop
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Jonas W. Schmid @jonaswschmid.bsky.social · 22/07/2025
England's Finest finally reunited😥. Batshit crazy that he made it that long though.
Ozzy Osbourne and Lemmy Kilmister together some time in the 80s.
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Jonas W. Schmid @jonaswschmid.bsky.social · 29/06/2025
The IQ bell curve meme with average iq people preferring beamer and the dumb and intelligent people preferring Power Point.
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Jonas W. Schmid @jonaswschmid.bsky.social · 11/06/2025
In our focus groups, we find that, across partisan lines, citizens expected Erdoğan to take responsibility and focus on relief efforts. Attempts to shift blame clashed with these expectations, and were perceived as lacking credibility, opportunist and polarizing, and thus sparked a backlash.⬇️
A graphical illustration of the mechanism described in the post.
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Jonas W. Schmid @jonaswschmid.bsky.social · 11/06/2025
The experiment (n=3,839) shows that blaming the opposition or force majeure led to backlash against Erdoğan, especially among the educated and affluent. ⬇️
A coefficient plot showing the main results of the experiment. The force majeure and opposition treatments reduced approval of Erdogan relative to the control, there is no effect for the minister and private companies treatments.
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Jonas W. Schmid @jonaswschmid.bsky.social · 11/06/2025
After the devastating earthquakes Erdoğan engaged in blame-shifting in a bid to secure his popularity. We use a survey experiment to identify the effect of blaming the opposition, force majeure, construction companies, and a minister, as well as focus groups to explore the underlying mechanisms. ⬇️
An example for one of the treatment articles in the experiment. It first describes the earthquake and its consequences, followed by a statement by president Erdogan that blames the earthquake on nature and states that it is simply impossible to prepare for a disaster like this.
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Jonas W. Schmid @jonaswschmid.bsky.social · 11/06/2025
After large-scale disasters autocrats often shift the blame on others to save their popularity. Our 🚨new paper🚨, just accepted at Perspectives on Politics, shows that this tactic is prone to backfire. With @edwardgoldring.bsky.social & @fapaydin.bsky.social . shorturl.at/v6wIV%E2%AC%...
The title page of a paper listing the title: "Blame Shifting in Autocracies Following Large-scale Disasters: Evidence from Turkey"; the authors: Edward Goldring, Jonas Willibald Schmid, and Fulya Apaydin; and the abstract: "Large-scale disasters, particularly when handled poorly, often spark popular outrage and threaten
an autocrat’s hold on power. Autocrats frequently employ blame shifting strategies to redirect
public anger and weather these storms. We examine whether blame shifting after a large-scale
disaster helps or hurts an autocrat’s popularity through a mixed-methods research design in the
electoral autocracy of Turkey in April-July 2023, following the February 2023 earthquakes.
An online survey experiment (n=3,839) identifies the effects of blaming the aftermath of the
earthquake on the opposition, a force majeure, private construction companies, or a govern-
ment minister, while focus groups explore the mechanisms behind these effects. We find that
blaming the opposition or a force majeure leads to a backlash, especially among those more
able to critically evaluate information. Focus groups reveal that these backlash effects are
driven by voters’ dismay at electoral opportunism and the incumbent’s polarizing language
following a large-scale disaster."; and the note that the paper is forthcoming in Perspectives on Politics.
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Jonas W. Schmid @jonaswschmid.bsky.social · 20/04/2025
One consequence of this is that empirical results are often highly inconsistent across different concepts & measures, even though they are often used interchangeably across studies.
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Jonas W. Schmid @jonaswschmid.bsky.social · 20/04/2025
Accordingly, there is little empirical agreement between different measures. Their correlations are weaker than those of the democracy measures in the same typologies, and there are almost no cases where all typologies agree on whether or not an observation is a PDA.
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Jonas W. Schmid @jonaswschmid.bsky.social · 20/04/2025
Worse, even conceptually similar measures can be quite different in the details. E.g., be careful when using Regimes of the World "electoral autocracy" measure! RoW's standard for "multi-party" elections is extremely low, and it classifies many single- and no party regimes as electoral autocracies.
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Jonas W. Schmid @jonaswschmid.bsky.social · 20/04/2025
While all the measures are conceptually related, since they all capture autocracies that incorporates (pseudo-democratic) institutions, the details of what they look at are quite distinct, and they often capture meaningfully different regime types.
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Jonas W. Schmid @jonaswschmid.bsky.social · 20/04/2025
To find out, I look at 7 measures of what I label "pseudo-democratic autocracies" (PDA). Spoiler: All the measures I look at are quite distinct, both conceptually and empirically. And that has important consequences for what our ability to aggregate knowledge on such autocracies.
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Jonas W. Schmid @jonaswschmid.bsky.social · 20/04/2025
Autocracies increasingly mimic democracies — with parties, elections, even opposition. We have many of concepts & measures for autocracies that do this, e.g., "hybrid regimes", "electoral autocracies", or "multiparty autocracies", and often use them interchangeably but how similar are they really?
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Jonas W. Schmid @jonaswschmid.bsky.social · 28/03/2025
Or Saparmurat Niyazov, who decided that Turkmenistan only really needed hospitals in the capital in 2004/5, fired thousands of healthcare workers and decided that hospitals outside Ashgabat should close. DOGE before it was cool.
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Jonas W. Schmid @jonaswschmid.bsky.social · 28/02/2025
Putin sits in front of a portrait of Donald Trump with "Employee of the month" written underneath.
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