The project "How to Make the Case for Democracy" has been funded by @dfg_public! 🎉
This grant supports two positions for exploring innovative strategies to bolster citizen support for democracy in established democracies. (1/6) Why this matters:
Democratic backsliding today often happens subtly—through democratic elections and ordinary citizens' choices. Protecting democracy thus requires understanding and strengthening citizens' commitment to democracy. (2/6)

Do ordinary citizens matter for the persistence of democracy?
This fundamental and seemingly simple question is not settled in empirical democracy research.

A pair of recent studies give new insights. And show how to advance research by respectful scholarly controversy. Democracy is about self-rule of the citizens.
So, it seems obvious that citizens who want to govern themselves are a necessary condition for a thriving democracy.Much of empirical democracy research is based on this assumption, going back to classical studies on the civic culture

Last year, Schwarzenegger had published a similar video message on the insurrection at the Capitol that was also widely considered highly persuasive.

We tested it in a survey experiment. Complete 0 effects on the democratic attitudes of Republican voters.

https://twitter.com/jayvanbavel/status/1504957511606099968

Pre-print not yet ready, unfortunately.
But here is our measurement/data and PAP.
osf.io/m4wqa?view_onl…

A prestigious journal in political science, @apsrjournal, has published a disturbing piece of l political theory.

In my reading, it explicitly argues that we must put climate action over democracy and adopt authoritarian governance if democracies fail to act on climate change. A longer thread to explain why I disagree with the study’s conclusion and arguments.

The author of the study is @RossMittiga.
I've been in touch with Ross before publishing this thread but let's focus on the study itself.
doi.org/10.1017/S00030…

Why do many populist movements manage to assemble coalitions of societal groups that cut across ideological&socio-economic divides?

In a Registered Report we argue:
All groups share a feeling of lacking societal recognition but for very different reasons
osf.io/preprints/soca… It is a curious aspect of today's populism that its ideological core considers society as a homogenous entity but at the same time populist movements are particularly successful in uniting segments of the population that are very different from each other.

Dass #OpenScience einmal im Koalitionsvertrag einer deutschen Bundesregierung stehen würde, hätte ich nicht gedacht.
Ein Vorschlag zur Umsetzung: Wir WissenschaftlerInnen evaluieren den Erfolg all der neuen Ampel-Gesetze mit pre-registered adversarial collaborations. Das heißt... die Vielfalt und Gegensätzlichkeit an Grundüberzeugungen, die es auch Wissenschaft gibt, produktiv zu nutzen.

Jetzt ist es doch oft so, dass wirtschaftsnahe, gewerkschaftsnahe, verbrauchernahe Institute in ihren Studien oft das herausfinden, was sie schon immer richtig hielten.

Is freedom of speech under threat on university campuses?
Excited to announce this project:
➡️Preregistered adversarial collaboration
➡️Skeptics & proponents with diverging perspectives come together to devise a joint research design
Please participate&RT.
doi.org/10.31219/osf.i… This project takes up a study by Revers / Traunmüller based on a survey among students at a German university.
The study claims to have found evidence for widespread support for restricting free speech on campus
link.springer.com/article/10.100…

What can you do when an experiment yields null results?

I developed a theory to explain why (some) people derive pleasure from political engagement
14 out of 15 predictions failed

▶️A step-wise process to maximize the informational value of null results
doi.org/10.1017/pls.20… The need-based theory of political motivation in a nutshell:

Building on the ‘Pleasure Principle’, I suspect that people will seek behaviors that made them feel good in the past.
Citizens will therefore seek political engagement when it previously made them feel good.

Fantastic work (@The_JOP) focusing on political representation with value for the entire discipline.
Exemplary of good science, I think.

▶️Multiverse analyses to assess robustness of earlier findings to model specifications
▶️Collaboration between replicator & original authors

https://twitter.com/JoeySaraceno/status/1317215137648975872

After Hansen&Treul reported evidence for a substantive finding in a JOP article, Saraceno reproduced the analysis and found inconsistent evidence for different model specifications.
The journal then invited all three authors to team up and work together to check the robustness.

WOW 😍
Boba appears a huge leap towards transparent sensitivity analyses in empirical research
▶️easy multiverse analyses
▶️generates code for all reasonable analytical paths
▶️software-independent (R, Python...)
▶️amazing #dataviz
arxiv.org/abs/2007.05551 You will write your syntax and specify where two or more analytical choices are reasonable.
Boba will generate the code for all combinations of reasonable choices for you.

Regression analysis with observational data remains the primary analytical method in political science.

However, we will never know whether we controlled for all unobserved confounders.

New sensitivity tools help to assess how likely results are robust to missing controls. The robustness value (@analisereal,@chadhazlett) applies to multivar. regressions: It is the minimum strength of association that unobserved confounding would need to have, both with the treatment and with the outcome, to change the research conclusions.

https://twitter.com/Kunkakom/status/1220270880355487746

V-DEM, potentially the most comprehensive measure on the state of democracy, has published a new report, and the results are staggering.
▶️Hungary is no longer considered a democracy
▶️India is close, too
▶️Now, the majority of people worldwide live in autocracies
(thread) The report (v-dem.net/media/filer_pu…) is worth reading.

It is a prime example of how to communicate complex data on important questions:
Accessible language combined with intuitive graphs that help to convey clear messages.

I'll copy key graphs and phrases while reading along.

People again discuss that certain countries can no longer be considered democracies (Hungary? US?)
Under which conditions do countries qualify as a 'democracy' and what's the alternative category called?
This thread links to a seminal piece on 'electoral authoritarianism'

https://twitter.com/JayUlfelder/status/1226195274772688906

One line of disagreement is whether to distinguish countries by the *degree* of democratic quality.
While these fine-grained distinctions have value, in his piece Schedler makes the point that "[some] regimes are not less democratic than democracies, but plainly undemocratic."

In a new study at #APSR, we show how established operationalization strategies of multi-dimensional concepts can systematically lead to wrong conclusions.
Focusing on populist attitudes, we demonstrate simple methods to align theory and measurement.
👇Summary+Preprint+Shiny App Our (H. Schoen+@ChristianSchim) argument refers to a specific but common type of multi-dimensional concepts which are sometimes called ‘non-compensatory’. Multi-dimensional concepts are non-compensatory when higher values on one component cannot offset lower values on another.

Finally ready to share what I started working on 4 years ago:
Why do some people grow into liking politics?

I propose that the seemingly non-political concept of basic psychological needs helps to explain the origins of valuing & enjoying pol. engagement link.springer.com/article/10.100… Maybe you are one of those people who like talking and reading about politics. However, many other citizens couldn't care less about what's currently going on in D.C., Brussels, Berlin.
Why? Where do dispositional differences in wanting to engage with politics come from?