Steven White @notstevenwhite.bsky.social · 7hCuriously, I think one can read the new Levitsky and Way article as suggesting that the United States actually is something of an exceptional case even after 10 years of trying to think about Trumpism in comparative perspective. 000
Steven White @notstevenwhite.bsky.social · 25/09/2026Damn I can't believe people have different preferences about pop culture than me 250
Steven White @notstevenwhite.bsky.social · 21/09/2026My favorite part of the NFL is when they talk about the rules like it's a practice LSAT question. Great sport. 130
Steven White @notstevenwhite.bsky.social · 17/09/2026Some people seem to be criticizing Adam Jentleson because they think he's wrong and some because they think he's just regurgitating basic findings from political science in the 1960s (implying he's right). It can't be both though! 121
Steven White @notstevenwhite.bsky.social · 01/09/2026I was going to make a joke about how to dress for APSA, but then it occurred to me there probably aren't even that many grad students on Bluesky because that tends to involve being under 40 2100
Steven White @notstevenwhite.bsky.social · 31/08/2026I can only assume some Syracuse administrator not familiar with the monkey's paw story wished we'd get more media coverage 120
Steven White @notstevenwhite.bsky.social · 30/08/2026Social media surely makes things much worse, but the American people were always kind of like this 120
Steven White @notstevenwhite.bsky.social · 29/08/2026Language changes over time, The American Voter (1960) edition 130
Steven White @notstevenwhite.bsky.social · 23/08/2026I'm teaching our grad American politics field survey for the first time and am struggling over whether to stick to strict no AI or switch to "you can use AI if you declare it and also I expect you to be able to prove in our discussions that you understand what you wrote" for reading response papers 310
Steven White @notstevenwhite.bsky.social · 20/08/2026Tough break for econ, living out their worst nightmare of getting lumped in with the rest of the social sciences 061
Steven White @notstevenwhite.bsky.social · 20/08/2026Does democracy require bureaucratic agencies to be able to act independently of elected officials? If so, what's the line exactly? Like most people here, I think agency independence/capacity is largely a good thing for *other reasons*. But I'm not sure *democracy* is the best way to think about it. 110
Steven White @notstevenwhite.bsky.social · 20/08/2026 I've definitely seen a lot of people reticent to criticize entire academic disciplines like this, but (to use the example of my own discipline) political scientists IRL regularly criticize fields where the empirical standards are obviously...lax. We all know there's a lot of bad research out there. 120
Steven White @notstevenwhite.bsky.social · 19/08/2026We should let high schools assign students to read the Bible just to hear students refer to the Bible as a "novel" 130
Steven White @notstevenwhite.bsky.social · 07/08/2026I worry the implications of this are getting blown out of proportion. Do @adambonica.bsky.social and @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social really not think, for example, Hong is less likely to win WI-Gov than Crowley? Or that AES performs as well as Stevens in the general (margins, not win vs loss)? 441
Steven White @notstevenwhite.bsky.social · 05/08/2026Earlier I thought it might be smart to buy Stevens contracts when they were at 1 cent (not because I thought she'd win, but I thought things might at least fluctuate), but I talked myself out of it because gambling is bad, etc. I guess what I've learned here is gambling is good and has no downsides. 120
Steven White @notstevenwhite.bsky.social · 30/07/2026I find this genuinely confusing and would be open to hearing from people about why they think it's a good idea. Just empirically speaking, I can't imagine it helps El-Sayed and I don't understand how it's supposed to help professors either. 272
Steven White @notstevenwhite.bsky.social · 29/07/2026Too much social media focus on the contentious (but conventionally so) Michigan Senate primary, not enough focus on the utterly bizarre Wisconsin Gubernatorial primary 070
Steven White @notstevenwhite.bsky.social · 16/07/2026Genuinely funny local politics story here, made all the more well suited for poli sci discourse because the bill was about term limits 010
Steven White @notstevenwhite.bsky.social · 22/05/2026I think it's largely true that Harris's loss is mostly explained by macro-level things like the economy and anti-incumbent sentiment. But it's interesting that many political scientists on Bluesky have only convinced themselves of this now after spending 2024 thinking she was probably going to win. 120
Steven White @notstevenwhite.bsky.social · 20/05/2026Term limits are probably bad. But we don't really know what the effect of U.S. Senate term limits would be, because we've never observed a U.S. Senate with term limits. We're just extrapolating from research on less prestigious/professional state legislatures. Which, maybe? But it's at least unclear 220
Steven White @notstevenwhite.bsky.social · 14/05/2026I recently learned that 20 American universities actually do have their own mini nuclear reactors, including Idaho State and UMass Lowell neup.inl.gov/infrastructu... 230
Steven White @notstevenwhite.bsky.social · 12/05/2026Amazing in retrospect that there was once a poli sci debate about whether majority-minority districts hurt Black Democratic voters because they could break up 2 districts with a moderate White Dem into 1 Black Dem and 1 white GOP district. An example where polarization really has changed the context 042
Steven White @notstevenwhite.bsky.social · 11/05/2026There's a disconnect between how Maine Dems view Platner & how people on Bluesky (including many political scientists) view him. I think this raises a lot of academic questions (about national vs local perspectives, social media, etc) that are more interesting than trying to label him as bad or good 1100
Steven White @notstevenwhite.bsky.social · 28/04/2026The NYT isn't perfect, but I don't get why people are mad about the focus groups. Mass democracy with high voter turnout means people who barely understand what's going on in the government will sometimes determine major electoral outcomes. If you believe in democracy, it's worth understanding them. 020
Steven White @notstevenwhite.bsky.social · 22/04/2026They really did ask better survey questions in the 1940s 394
Steven White @notstevenwhite.bsky.social · 22/04/2026Looks like we missed the funniest possible outcome, the VA referendum losing by one vote because of Matt Glassman 010
Steven White @notstevenwhite.bsky.social · 22/04/2026I was actually thinking this would be an interesting way to dig into the data when people were talking about it a couple of days ago, but must have missed this at the time. 120
Steven White @notstevenwhite.bsky.social · 22/04/2026Interesting nuance: "emigrants came disproportionately from the NSDAP’s bourgeois-nationalist wing of merchants, professionals, and early joiners rather than its working-class populist base" 131
Steven White @notstevenwhite.bsky.social · 14/04/2026As a Hampshire graduate, this is sad to see. It's a weird place in a lot of ways, but in a world where universities are increasingly just converging towards being exactly the same it's a real loss to have fewer and fewer places actually trying new experiments in what's possible 2201
Steven White @notstevenwhite.bsky.social · 14/04/2026Caruana's not going to win the Candidates, but at least he's going out with some extremely weird (and, for this game at least, seemingly winning) chess: three pawns for his bishop and they're all on the g file 011
Reposted by Steven WhiteAmanda Weiss @amandaweiss.bsky.social · 13/04/2026I had a lot of fun the other day giving a workshop on the modern DID revolution at Syracuse University's Maxwell School — thank you @adam42smith.bsky.social for hosting! I have posted the slides to my website at amandakweiss.com/did if anyone is interested.amandakweiss.comDID Workshop Resources — Amanda Weiss 1217
Steven White @notstevenwhite.bsky.social · 13/04/2026This is a much better articulation of something I was trying (and perhaps failing) to express yesterday. More evidence, I suppose, that longer form writing will always be better for this sort of conversation than the quick emotional reactions incentivized by social media. 150
Steven White @notstevenwhite.bsky.social · 11/04/2026What exactly are people on the more populist/"dirtbag" left supposed to do? When leftists voted for Nader, liberals got mad at them. Now that they're trying to work within the Democratic Party, liberals also get mad at them. Is there some magical third option? 58231
Steven White @notstevenwhite.bsky.social · 08/04/2026What a nice move by Anish Giri to basically end any lingering hope Fabiano Caruana has of ever becoming world champion (giving up the bishop, but if fxg6 black can play e4 with checkmate soon to come) 021
Steven White @notstevenwhite.bsky.social · 25/03/2026Maybe this is part of why people like The Pitt so much 232
Steven White @notstevenwhite.bsky.social · 20/03/2026Finally read this article. More of a meta point, but it's kind of crazy the Atlantic gave a practicing Mormon $10,000 so that he could nearly destroy his life? (I also didn't realize how central of a role Chris Christie played in all this). www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...theatlantic.comMy Year as a Degenerate Sports GamblerPractically overnight, America made wagering on a game as frictionless as checking the weather. I was determined to understand the consequences—for my country, and for myself. 011
Steven White @notstevenwhite.bsky.social · 18/03/2026This is a tough issue. Banning a vice people are going to do anyway is arguably illiberal. It's also true that legalization is causing major social problems. But even if we banned it, people would still do it. How much enforcement are liberal skeptics of legalized sports betting comfortable with? 010
Steven White @notstevenwhite.bsky.social · 15/03/2026This is how I learned we have a softball team 021
Steven White @notstevenwhite.bsky.social · 06/03/2026The rare song where I love the bass, guitar, and drum parts equally and can't imagine it without any of them 031
Steven White @notstevenwhite.bsky.social · 05/03/2026I think this is the median position of social science academics. It's just that having a middleground/uncertain position on something doesn't lend itself to enthusiastic posting. IRL conversations about AI seem much more balanced than online conversations among self selected enthusiasts/critics. 0140
Steven White @notstevenwhite.bsky.social · 23/02/2026But how will I know if someone with an incredibly common name has been cited in a field I've never thought about before 010
Steven White @notstevenwhite.bsky.social · 19/02/2026Not sure this will exactly hurt her support among the Teamsters leadership 010
Steven White @notstevenwhite.bsky.social · 19/02/2026The historical political economy crowd is about to run one million difference in differences models, but not sure what it will mean, if anything, for more qualitative scholars. 020
Steven White @notstevenwhite.bsky.social · 19/02/2026The new Yoko Ono bot on chess.com is actually kind of a neat idea. Based on her 1966 art piece Play It By Trust, all the pieces are the same color. I guess that was meant to make an anti-war point, but in practical terms a lot of chess players can probably keep track of which is which. 070
Steven White @notstevenwhite.bsky.social · 13/02/2026I think the poli sci rediscovery of Reconstruction—in emphasizing the Radical Republicans/democratization of the South—has missed the role of finance & industry in the GOP coalition, which only became more influential as time went on. Federal occupation costs $$$ & they were the ones with the $$$. 071
Steven White @notstevenwhite.bsky.social · 09/02/2026So close to setting up a chess board correctly, but the black king is on the wrong square 45610
Steven White @notstevenwhite.bsky.social · 29/01/2026Having finally dabbled a bit with Claude, I'm curious what academic journal editors/etc. see as the line between AI use that needs to be reported (journals are increasingly requiring authors to report AI use) and what doesn't. 120