Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Ben Ansell

@benansell.bsky.social

29K followers 980 following 5.2K posts

Professor of Comparative Democratic Institutions, Nuffield & University of Oxford, FBA. http://benansell.substack.com. BBC Reith Lecturer 2023. Host BBC Radio 4 Rethink. Columnist for Prospect. Director, Centre for Advanced Social Science Methods (CASSM). .. more

Videos

Ben W. Ansell is Professor of Comparative Democratic Institutions at Nuffield College, University of Oxford and, with David Samuels, editor of Comparative Political Studies.

Source: Wikipedia

Political science 47%

Economics 40%

Posts Media Videos Starter Packs

Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 7h

Pavlou is exhibit A for self radicalisation on Twitter

1 3

Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 8h

Separation of powers but then you get power and well….

1 4

Reposted by Ben H. Ansell

jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 8h

in vought's view, the president is a living embodiment of the "will of the people" and congress has no legitimate power to limit him

47 69 740

Reposted by Ben H. Ansell, Will Jennings, Rebecca Tushnet , and 5 more Ben H. Ansell, Will Jennings, Rebecca Tushnet, David R. Miller, James Goodwin, Mark Rice, Suzanne Conklin Akbari, Nathan P. Kalmoe

jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 9h

vought's view is that the president is an elected dictator and lo and behold he is seizing outright the power of the purse

Kevin Elliott @kjephd.bsky.social · 9h

Unconstitutionally taking money that the law says must be spent on one purpose & using it for something else—when it's to establish personalist control over the FUCKING MILITARY—is about as dangerous a constitutional crisis/failure as you can imagine

Via: www.nbcnews.com/politics/tru...

The Office of Management and Budget sent a notification to Congress about their intent to use research and development funds to pay members of the military, two sources with direct knowledge tell NBC News.

A spokesperson for the OMB confirmed to NBC News that it plans to use the research and development funds and that there are two years' worth of funds available within the Department of Defense.

68 1K 3.8K

Reposted by Ben H. Ansell, Will Jennings, Brendan Nyhan , and 11 more Ben H. Ansell, Will Jennings, Brendan Nyhan, Tom Clark, Juan Cole, Michael Kevane, Robert C. Richards, David R. Miller, Michael D. McDonald, Jason Lyall, David Rosnick, Aviel Roshwald, Stella M. Rouse, Nathan P. Kalmoe

Kevin Elliott @kjephd.bsky.social · 9h

97 1.8K 5.1K

Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 9h

Social Studies is a very cool degree full of absolute maniacs

1 2

Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 10h

Horribly discovery that I knew fact one but not even more amazing fact two

Reposted by Ben H. Ansell, Trevon D. Logan

Jake Grumbach @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · 10h

Just got back from Normal, IL for a lecture at Illinois State University. Established in 1857 after this small town lawyer named Abe secured the funding. Was reminded once again that US public universities are the triumph of civilization

18 96 750

Reposted by Will Jennings, Robert C. Richards, Tim Leunig

Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 13h

Really interesting article from @jburnmurdoch.ft.com but especially intriguing to me is the number of comments below that are essentially 'OK the data don't agree with my hunch but here's an unrelated statement that proves that I'm right about AI, the death of higher education, etc'

What the graduate unemployment story gets wrong

People with a degree are faring better, not worse than their non-graduate counterparts

www.ft.com

2 14 65

Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 14h

New motto for the Daily Telegraph just dropped.

Rick Burin @rickburin.bsky.social · 1d

Imagine being this lame

The Telegraph saying that an activist dancing dressed as a frog is a terrorist (in coward quotes), and for some reason they’ve added that the person is non-binary

2 6 49

Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 14h

And we now have "cola-bottle duck" to add to the lexicon

Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 14h

A factor that also explains the attraction of Istanbul (I mean lots of other things are great about Istanbul too but Turkey's openness to tourism from the wider world is one of them)

Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 14h

Good continuation of the thread this!

1 1

Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 14h

But Abby I just went on holiday to Dubai and it had great beaches/no homeless/a nice airport etc etc

2 2

Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 14h

Yeh that’s one I was wondering about. Certainly a current desire among some to be part of the elect.

Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 19h

Cahokia did have a good amount of human sacrifice iirc

Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 19h

Given Leo’s recent pronouncements clearly much too woke

Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 20h

Pyramids gushing with sacrificial blood? Sounds reasonable.

1 2

Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 20h

Always a banger candidate

Reposted by Max Nathan

Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 20h

I love how the Isle of Man - and actual Crown dependency a few miles off the coast - is completely ignored, while these guys fixate on petrostates thousands of miles away.

2 1 11

Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 21h

Actually since Sparta is the model for British boarding schools and Machiavelli the model for the contemporary Conservative Party maybe we are more than halfway there.

6 3 31

Reposted by Simon Hix, Michael H. Whitworth

Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 21h

What with all this the UK should emulate Dubai stuff, following hot on the heels of Singapore model, are there any other niche authoritarian city states we could go for? Brunei? Machiavelli’s Florence? Ancient Sparta?

32 32 180

Reposted by Ben H. Ansell

Rick Burin @rickburin.bsky.social · 1d

Imagine being this lame

27 80 370

Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 1d

Fair play on that comment ;)

Reposted by Ben H. Ansell

Reposted by Ben H. Ansell, Andrew Scott

Roland Smith @rolandmcs.bsky.social · 1d

This strikes me as a pretty major Brexit shift from Starmer.

Perhaps the beginning of 'Brexit is sh1t and has caused real economic damage'.

76 260 850

Reposted by Ben H. Ansell

Sunder Katwala (sundersays) @sundersays.bsky.social · 1d

Steven Swinford writes that the Opposition frontbench want the government to succeed on boats, so the argument is more about the economy. That is a political tactic, but they should in principle support the UK/France deal at scale as much more real world than Rwanda ever having the scale to deter

1 4 22

Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 1d

“Pro-Brexit economist” Jonathan Portes there ;)

Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 1d

Marie-us Aurelius

Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 1d

Matthew Lynn has broken the containment zone of the Daily Telegraph! America, welcome to Brexit discourse.

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias.bsky.social · 1d

Think I'm going to cancel my Post subscription and find some other local news source to support