There is understandably a great deal of interest in fighting populism. I share the normative aspiration.
Yet the more I think about it, the more I find myself drawn to a more pessimistic interpretation. The latter may well be wrong. But articulating it helps clarify whether

https://twitter.com/edenhofer_jacob/status/1993084072290091381

there are strong grounds for greater optimism. Based on the above presentation, here is a thumbnail sketch for why fighting right-wing populism is so hard.
I. Powerful structural forces have reshaped political competition and made the job of mainstream politicians much harder

Delighted to see this paper out - working with @grattonecon was fantastic; I learned a lot! We develop the argument that technocracy can serve as an intertemporal insurance device for groups who fear their majority status is ephemeral. Because technocrats weigh minority concerns more than majority rule would, they protect today’s majority against losing power in the future. This protection is epsecially valuable when that majority cares intensely about the issue it delegates. But when majority status becomes more stable (e.g. via
tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…

This very interesting paper raises a broader questions: why do some scandals stay contained while others discredit an entire political class? Part of the answer, I think, lies in diffeences in the clarity of accountability across democratic political systems. A well-established

https://twitter.com/BJPolS/status/1987558361634644328

line of research in comparative politics points out that
democracies differ in how easily citizens can infer responsibility for policy decisions/outcomes. In systems with high clarity of responsibility—Westminster or presidential ones—power is
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.111…

Fascinating paper by @grattonecon, @bartonelee2, and Hasin Yousaf!
The paper addresses a fundamental question: Why do some democracies chronically avoid ambitious, long-term reforms even when they have decent institutions?
They argue that what matters is not only institutional quality (rules, transparency, electoral design), but also political culture: voters’ beliefs about whether politicians can be trusted and whether institutions really hold them accountable.
In their model, there are two types of politicians: ambitious
academic.oup.com/ej/advance-art…

Inspired by @CaioSeldon's selection of books, here is my summary of the conceptual chapter in Dahl's classic work on polyarchy and democratisation. The central question je seeks to answer is: “Given a regime in which opponents of the government cannot openly or legally organise into political parties to oppose the government in free and fair elections, what conditions favour or impede a transformation into a regime in which they can?” (p. 1) He is concerned with explaining the development of a system of public contestation, with the government and the

Inspired by this excellent Substack post, I want to share some thoughts on the limits of moderate accommodation and the logic of the second best. Specifically, here is what I think is the *strongest* argument for the anti-accommodation view looks like -- which doesn't necessarily mean that I fully subscribe to it.
Moderate accommodation on immigration would, in principle, be feasible if Labour enjoyed credibility—or at least a lower valence disadvantage —on the issue. In such a case, voters could interpret a moderate policy
dysfunctionalprogramming.substack.com/p/on-the-immig…

Fascinating paper, especially when read against the backdrop of these (👇) two related papers! All three study the political effects of right-wing violence in Germany, yet they find seemingly contradictory opposite results. Below my attempt to reconcile the findings.

https://twitter.com/BJPolS/status/1980285442852274672

First, though, let me briefly summarise the papers; see below for a more detailed summary.
1. De Juan et al.
- Analyses survey responses just before vs after the 2020 Hanau terror attack.
- Combines this with media content & a survey experiment.
-Finding: AfD support fell by 3

In combination with other recent work, this paper by Cipullo and @bartonelee2 teaches us a lot about the politics of the backlash against globalisation (and lack thereof) and embedded liberalism.
Here is my interpretation.
1. Trade shocks make voters more attentive to to economic performance and legislative effectiveness or competence (btw: see Volden & Wiseman 2014 for a cool book on this).
2. Compensation is "good" when the competence signal outweighs the endogenous salience effect. By getting compensation (e.g. TAA)
davidecipullo.com/wp-content/upl…

Some thoughts on the strategic logic behind Kemi Badenoch’s announcement that she’d scrap the Climate Change Act (CCA).
It serves two functions:
1️⃣ It appeals to lukewarm pivotal voters in marginal seats sceptical of costly green measures.
2️⃣ It is designed to placate or, even, boost the relative power of the climate sceptics in the Tory party, especially the Net Zero Scrutiny Group.
In a first-past-the-post system (FPTP), what matters electorally isn’t the national majority view, but where voters sit geographically. Winning
theguardian.com/environment/20…

Let me add this paper by Besley et al, which is forthcoming in the @QJEHarvard, which, I think, provides a nice micro-foundation for between-cohort variation in zero-sum attitudes. They define “growth experience” as the average GDP growth an individual has lived through since

https://twitter.com/edenhofer_jacob/status/1972270813077545083

birth, weighted by how recent those years are (recency gets more weight, based on @umalmend & @ProfStefanNagel's “memory decay” model). Their "identifying variation" comes from within-country differences in growth experiences from within-country diff.
cepr.org/publications/d…

German Reunification Day invites both gratitude and reflection.
Gratitude, because the peaceful revolution of 1989 was nothing short of a miracle — a bloodless dismantling of a repressive regime.
Reflection, because the wounds of the transition still mark the country —and because misleading narratives about the East persist when we don’t think carefully about what “persistence” actually means.
East–West differences in voting, trust, and economic outcomes are real. But they are too often construed as evidence of a either

https://x.com/edenhofer_jacob/status/1758084907597693402

It is simple: @JohnHCochrane believes the political externalities of a Zucman-style wealth tax would be negative. @ojblanchard1, by contrast, believes that they would be positive.
The Cochrane-type position follows from basic libertarian principles. By eroding the principle of

https://twitter.com/JohnHCochrane/status/1969177299556974697

private ownership, it risks discouraging productive activity and damaging institutional credibility, especially of property rights (also might fuel envy). The libertarian worry, as articulated by Friedman and Hayek, is that doing so will erode freedom and give rise to

When providing policy advice, to what extent -- if any -- should (academic) experts take public opinion into account? Here are some thoughts on the matter -- I'd be interested to hear critical feedback.
To my mind, giving policy advice presents advisors with two problems:
1. Missing preferences (ex ante)
2. Imperfect accountability (ex post)

Here is the sketch of my tentative conceptual answer to the questions below -- let me know what you think. I'd argue that higher wages have two countervailing effects. They raise competence (by reducing opportunity costs), but may lower morality (by crowding out intrinsicially

https://twitter.com/edenhofer_jacob/status/1744111390309171345

motivated types).
1. Opportunity Cost Channel (Competence Effect) If pay in office is low compared to private-sector outside options, highly skilled individuals self-select out of politics. Raising wages reduces this incentive, making office more attractive to people with better

That strikes me as too strong a claim. I think it's more accurate to say that accommodation *can* work when: (i) the party system (probably yes in Denmark, less clear in Germany) and internal party politics allows for electoral arbitrage (gains from programmatic accommodation),

https://twitter.com/mvinaes/status/1956958905327653343

(ii) the general equilibrium effects - notably thenormalisation of right-wing attitudes and its wider behavioural manifestations -- don't outweigh the electoral gains, and (iii) voters' distrust in mainstream parties is sufficiently low and the policies used for accommodation are

🧵Ein paar tentative Gedanken zur politischen Ökonomie eines möglichen AfD-Verbotsverfahrens.
Ich bin an Kritik sehr interessiert – denn ich bin mir selber unsicher.
Die strategische Lage lässt sich, denke ich, mit einem 5-stufigen "Spiel" ganz gut erfassen (als Approximation erster Ordnung)
1️⃣ Mainstream-Parteien entscheiden, ob sie ein Verbotsverfahren einleiten.
2️⃣ Die AfD entscheidet über Mobilisierungsstrategie.
3️⃣ Das BVerfG fällt ein Urteil.
4️⃣ Wähler:innen & Partei reagieren auf das Urteil.
5️⃣ Mainstream-Parteien reagieren programmatisch

🧵 @ChFlachsland and I posted the first draft of our Climate Politics Framework (CPF) paper—our attempt to provide a structured synthesis of the insights of modern social science into why ambitious climate mitigation is politically such a wicked problem, and under

https://twitter.com/socarxivpapers/status/1935712976192913626

what conditions it becomes feasible (see figure below). Critical feedback is warmly welcome.
The CPF’s central structure is: Fundamental problems → mass and elite politics → climate policy platforms → strategic challenges → mass/elite politics & GHG outcomes.

I disagree with this -- both because the empirical literature Caplan relies on is not particularly convincing and because most "voters' stupidity is to blame for Trump" takes don't contend seriously with alternative "rational" explanations. Note: Caplan might still be right; yet,

https://twitter.com/ATabarrok/status/1932115732948484444

the evidence he draws on doesn't support his very strong conclusions.
Tl;dr summary:
1. A fair amount of the "evidence" that is used to argue that voters are irrational is observationally equivalent with "rational" models. This of course doesn't nowpublishers.com/article/Detail…

Some thoughts on the strategic rationale behind the "Brandmauer” – the cordon sanitaire vis-à-vis the AfD – and the challenges associated with maintaining it. Seems pertinent, given that senior CDU/CSU figures regularly float the idea of ditching it and exploring avenues for closer cooperation.
As for the strategic rationale, let me make two points.
1. I am sceptical that “Entzauberung” is a good strategy – betting on the AfD revealing itself as incompetent once in power *and* voters punishing the AfD for such incompetence.
First, the welfare

🚨 New working paper! 🚨
@grattonecon and I just completed the first draft of "The Rise and Fall of Technocratic Democracies". Excited to present it in Munich this week—thanks to @LauraSeelkopf, @christoph_knill & others for hosting us! 🧵👇
▶️ Motivation
Many democracies have have witnessed a process of "technocratization", with unelected technocrats having gained greater discretion over important realms of public policy (e.g. monetary policy). Populists explicitly oppose this narrowing of the purview of majoritarian policymaking, instead vowing to

@KaiGehring1 Yes -- this argument depends on a number of assumptions, though, which are rarely spelt out:
1. Voters have a clear objective they want to see achieved (is -10% immigration enough? -50%?). If this is a moving target, then parties' will be pulled away ever more from the centre. @KaiGehring1 2. Voters will actually realise that an "issue" has been solved. This rules out that populists can conjure up beliefs by exploiting misperceptions about immigration/immigration.
3. Voter will credit a government consisting of mainstream parties with this. The deeper the distrust,