David Attewell
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davidattewell6.bsky.social
David Attewell
@davidattewell6.bsky.social
2K followers 2.2K following 110 posts
SNSF Postdoc Mobility Fellow in political science at Aarhus University, by way of the University of Zurich. Research on deservingness, solidarity, and social cleavages in politics.

Website: https://www.davidattewell.net/
Posts Replies Media Videos
Reposted by David Attewell
profjanegreen.bsky.social
UK politics followers, these graphs are in a paper by @jamesdgriffiths.bsky.social and co (inc. me).

There's so much useful info in them.

The long-term context for the politics of our time, how the 'Brexit elections' differed, though note the Y axes may need to be bigger for the next election!!
November 28, 2025 at 9:29 AM
Reposted by David Attewell
roderikrekker.bsky.social
(1/10) 🚨Preprint alert!🚨

In this article, I challenge claims of a generational rise of conservative men. In the media and recent academic publications, the so-called ‘youth gender gap’ has been interpreted as a generational phenomenon.

doi.org/10.31234/osf...
OSF
doi.org
November 16, 2025 at 2:24 PM
davidattewell6.bsky.social
A fascinating-looking set of papers on a central and under-explored issue of our political moment ⬇️
tabouchadi.bsky.social Tarik Abou-Chadi @tabouchadi.bsky.social · 2d
With the Progressive Politics Research Network, we have published 8 new research briefs on the politics of housing. What does a progressive agenda on housing look like? Which elements are important? What the hurdles are and how can they be overcome?
politicscentre.nuffield.ox.ac.uk/progressive-...
November 27, 2025 at 10:44 AM
Reposted by David Attewell
gefjonoff.bsky.social
New publication w/ my friend & amazing coauthor @fedetrastulli.bsky.social in @ejprjournal.bsky.social! 🎉

doi.org/10.1017/S147...

We explore: Who considers which political issues as important & how is this related to sociodemographic/socioeconomic variables?
Who prioritises what? Determinants and measurement of voters’ issue prioritisation | European Journal of Political Research | Cambridge Core
Who prioritises what? Determinants and measurement of voters’ issue prioritisation
doi.org
November 21, 2025 at 3:34 PM
Reposted by David Attewell
dpzollinger.bsky.social
In this new paper, we use open-ended survey questions to study how people perceive (changes in) social hierarchies. 

We show how and among whom status gains of women, ethnic minorities, or LGBTQ+ people are saliently perceived–namely among progressives, not just conservatives!
mabreyer.bsky.social Magda Breyer @mabreyer.bsky.social · 9d
New article out in @cpsjournal.bsky.social with Tabea Palmtag and @dpzollinger.bsky.social 📝
We use open-ended survey questions (in Germany) to assess how and among whom social status shifts are perceived. This tests cultural backlash narratives in voters' perceptions.

🔗 doi.org/10.1177/0010...
Abstract It is widely accepted in political science – and remarkably established in public discourse – that status anxieties fuel a far right backlash against progressive politics. This narrative suggests that right-wing conservatives perceive the status of women, racial, or sexual minorities as threatening. Using open-ended survey questions fielded in Germany, we show that women and minorities indeed figure in people’s perceptions of status hierarchies, but in very specific ways: First, overall, people still perceive status as largely socioeconomically determined. Second, sociocultural groups figure in perceptions of who is gaining/losing status, less so in perceptions of the top/bottom of society. Third, more than conservative voters, it is social progressives who mention women and minorities as “winners”. While on race/ethnicity, we find evidence for a backlash, on gender and sexuality we find more evidence for a progressive momentum. This matters for progressive politics today and for how we empirically study status concerns.
November 21, 2025 at 8:29 AM
davidattewell6.bsky.social
Fantastic paper and yet another great example of the power of open-ended survey questions.
mabreyer.bsky.social Magda Breyer @mabreyer.bsky.social · 9d
New article out in @cpsjournal.bsky.social with Tabea Palmtag and @dpzollinger.bsky.social 📝
We use open-ended survey questions (in Germany) to assess how and among whom social status shifts are perceived. This tests cultural backlash narratives in voters' perceptions.

🔗 doi.org/10.1177/0010...
Abstract It is widely accepted in political science – and remarkably established in public discourse – that status anxieties fuel a far right backlash against progressive politics. This narrative suggests that right-wing conservatives perceive the status of women, racial, or sexual minorities as threatening. Using open-ended survey questions fielded in Germany, we show that women and minorities indeed figure in people’s perceptions of status hierarchies, but in very specific ways: First, overall, people still perceive status as largely socioeconomically determined. Second, sociocultural groups figure in perceptions of who is gaining/losing status, less so in perceptions of the top/bottom of society. Third, more than conservative voters, it is social progressives who mention women and minorities as “winners”. While on race/ethnicity, we find evidence for a backlash, on gender and sexuality we find more evidence for a progressive momentum. This matters for progressive politics today and for how we empirically study status concerns.
November 21, 2025 at 8:45 AM
davidattewell6.bsky.social
"The entrepreneurs in the slump are longing for a boom; why do they not gladly accept the synthetic boom which the government is able to offer them? It is this difficult and fascinating question with which we intend to deal in this article."
November 20, 2025 at 10:53 AM
Reposted by David Attewell
sophieehill.bsky.social
My antitrust attitudes paper with Nick Short and Jacob Brown is out now @poppublicsphere.bsky.social

doi.org/10.1017/S153...

We find:
- voters are skeptical about M&A
- current law marginalizes important public concerns (layoffs, bailout risk, lobbying)
- expert/public cleavage > partisan diffs
What Is Ideological Capture and How Do We Measure It? Using Antitrust Reform to Understand Expert-Public Cleavages Nicholas Short, Sophie Hill and Jacob Brown Scholarship on regulatory capture—when businesses lobby regulators to act contrary to the public interest—has thrived since the 1970s. Yet it ignores an important dimension of influence, what we call ideological capture. This occurs when experts design regulatory frameworks that marginalize important public values and produce favorable outcomes for special interests even in the absence of lobbying. We present a theoretical and empirical framework for understanding ideological capture, rooted in expert-public cleavages, and measure its presence in an important policy domain (antitrust review of business mergers) with an original survey of the public and of antitrust lawyers. Our results suggest that the main framework for evaluating anticompetitive conduct, the consumer welfare standard, marginalizes important public concerns but is deeply popular among antitrust lawyers. With prior vork showing the standard arose not from conventional processes but from judicial and bureaucratic activism, we conclude that antitrust policy evidences ideological capture. Keywords: political economy, bureaucracy, regulatory capture, economic ideas, public opinion Figure 4 The Public Is Skeptical that Large Mergers Deliver Some Economic Benefits Bar charts Note: A plurality of the public disagrees that large mergers lower prices (their main purported benefit) or make it easier to start a new business but agrees that large mergers increase innovation. Respondents were less certain about the effect of large mergers on product quality. Figure 5 The Public Agrees that Large Mergers Have Significant Social Risks Note: A majority of the public agree that large mergers weaken the ties between companies and local communities, create companies that are too big to fail, have too much power to infringe on individual liberties, and have too much influence in politics. Figure 3 Expertise Outweighs Partisanship in Shaping Support for Replacing the CWS
November 18, 2025 at 10:39 AM
Reposted by David Attewell
heimbergecon.bsky.social
"academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it... The dominant four collectively generated... $12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024."
November 18, 2025 at 6:48 AM
Reposted by David Attewell
tabouchadi.bsky.social
Next week, with the Progressive Politics Research Network, we are going to publish 8 new research briefs on the politics of housing. While housing has become a huge grievance across Europe, it is often absent from progressive parties‘ agendas. Our group of experts discusses different aspects of this
November 18, 2025 at 11:33 AM
Reposted by David Attewell
westervangaal.bsky.social
Almost certain now EPP will rely on far-right groups, including Germany’s AfD, to push through amendments on #csddd #csrd, despite Manfred Weber’s promise never to collaborate with them. Will anybody in Berlin notice?
November 12, 2025 at 4:47 PM
Reposted by David Attewell
benbraun.bsky.social
The central argument in this excellent paper & thread is that the open-access turn has neglected profit; indeed, it turbo-charged publishers’ margins. As political economists who know a thing or two about profit and power we should speak up a lot more. As it says below: What we’re doing is crazy.
hansonmark.bsky.social Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · 18d
We wrote the Strain on scientific publishing to highlight the problems of time & trust. With a fantastic group of co-authors, we present The Drain of Scientific Publishing:

a 🧵 1/n

Drain: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820
Strain: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
Oligopoly: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
A table showing profit margins of major publishers. A snippet of text related to this table is below. 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year. A figure detailing the drain on researcher time. 1. The four-fold drain 1.2 Time The number of papers published each year is growing faster than the scientific workforce, with the number of papers per researcher almost doubling between 1996 and 2022 (Figure 1A). This reflects the fact that publishers’ commercial desire to publish (sell) more material has aligned well with the competitive prestige culture in which publications help secure jobs, grants, promotions, and awards. To the extent that this growth is driven by a pressure for profit, rather than scholarly imperatives, it distorts the way researchers spend their time. The publishing system depends on unpaid reviewer labour, estimated to be over 130 million unpaid hours annually in 2020 alone (9). Researchers have complained about the demands of peer-review for decades, but the scale of the problem is now worse, with editors reporting widespread difficulties recruiting reviewers. The growth in publications involves not only the authors’ time, but that of academic editors and reviewers who are dealing with so many review demands. Even more seriously, the imperative to produce ever more articles reshapes the nature of scientific inquiry. Evidence across multiple fields shows that more papers result in ‘ossification’, not new ideas (10). It may seem paradoxical that more papers can slow progress until one considers how it affects researchers’ time. While rewards remain tied to volume, prestige, and impact of publications, researchers will be nudged away from riskier, local, interdisciplinary, and long-term work. The result is a treadmill of constant activity with limited progress whereas core scholarly practices – such as reading, reflecting and engaging with others’ contributions – is de-prioritized. What looks like productivity often masks intellectual exhaustion built on a demoralizing, narrowing scientific vision. A table of profit margins across industries. The section of text related to this table is below: 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year. The costs of inaction are plain: wasted public funds, lost researcher time, compromised scientific integrity and eroded public trust. Today, the system rewards commercial publishers first, and science second. Without bold action from the funders we risk continuing to pour resources into a system that prioritizes profit over the advancement of scientific knowledge.
November 12, 2025 at 8:30 AM
Reposted by David Attewell
donmoyn.bsky.social
Three German universities offering post-docs for researchers "who cannot conduct or continue their work in the USA appropriately because of actual political pressure. "
www.uni-konstanz.de/zukunftskoll...
Early Career Rescue Fellowship
www.uni-konstanz.de
November 11, 2025 at 7:10 PM
davidattewell6.bsky.social
French public broadcaster admits (with no apology) outrageous falsehoods in interview asking LFI MP to condemn Zohran Mamdani:

1) Mamdani had not condemned October 7th
2) Mamdani called to "Globalize the Intifada"
3) Mamdani raised $ for Hamas-colluding UNRWA

www.radiofrance.fr/franceinter/...
Manuel Bompard : "Il me semble évident qu'avant Noël, il y aura une nouvelle motion de censure"
Budget, PLFSS, union de la gauche, Mamdani, Mercosur... Le député Manuel Bompard, coordinateur national de La France insoumise, est l'invité de Questions politiques.
www.radiofrance.fr
November 11, 2025 at 8:21 PM
davidattewell6.bsky.social
Europe rn:

Rad left: Mamdani shows with radical policy, leftists can win on their own. Lander who?

Soc dems: Mamdani shows how to beat the far right. What? Lol no we don't support any of his policies.

Center: Mamdani, Newsom & Jetten are the same

Rad right: AAH LGBTQ sharia is coming for us all!
November 7, 2025 at 9:41 AM
davidattewell6.bsky.social
Excited to have this paper on social networks as a mechanism for cleavage stabilization with @dpzollinger.bsky.social out!

If we have you intrigued, also pairs with (and empirically engages) our theoretical piece on puzzles of contemporary cleavage research:

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
dpzollinger.bsky.social Delia Zollinger @dpzollinger.bsky.social · 23d
How are contemporary cleavage structures stabilized in times of declining mass social and political organizations?

In this new paper with @davidattewell6.bsky.social @bjpols.bsky.social, we suggest that homogeneous social (educational) networks provide part of the answer.

tinyurl.com/49cs8jwp
Educational Networks, Social Closure, and Cleavage Stabilization | British Journal of Political Science | Cambridge Core
Educational Networks, Social Closure, and Cleavage Stabilization - Volume 55
tinyurl.com
November 6, 2025 at 8:36 AM
Reposted by David Attewell
himself.bsky.social
One of the least remarked parts of Mamdani's speech yesterday was its strong implication that he wants his army of 100k volunteers to stick around and do stuff.
November 5, 2025 at 1:32 PM
davidattewell6.bsky.social
It's striking to see all strands of the Left (in FR, UK, Canada) claim Zohran Mamdani's victory as a vindication of their approach.

It shows the success of a popular front model: a democratic socialist left building the broad (contradictory) coalition needed to win in the face of rising fascism.
November 5, 2025 at 9:40 AM
Reposted by David Attewell
bjpols.bsky.social
NEW -

Seeking Opportunity in the Knowledge Economy: Moving Places, Moving Politics? - https://cup.org/3LgxVos

"moving to opportunity results in... more left-leaning self-identification, and lower support for far-right parties"

- @valentinaconsiglio.bsky.social & @thmskrr.bsky.social

#OpenAccess
BJPolS abstract discussing the dynamic between knowledge economy migration and political shifts in Germany, specifically addressing urban versus rural opportunities and its implications on political perspectives and migration trends.
October 30, 2025 at 8:50 AM
davidattewell6.bsky.social
How can we compare the size and structuring power of different cleavages over time? Check out @jacobgunderson.bsky.social 's great paper and dataset for scholars working on cleavages at the party system level!

The latest from @dpzollinger.bsky.social and I's Special Issue in @wepsocial.bsky.social.
wepsocial.bsky.social WEP Journal @wepsocial.bsky.social · Oct 25
💥OUT NOW!

"Cleavage size and stability in turbulent times: introducing the bloc volatility and fragmentation dataset" by @jacobgunderson.bsky.social

Part of SI "Cleavage Politics in Western Democracies", edited by @dpzollinger.bsky.social & @davidattewell6.bsky.social

doi.org/10.1080/0140...
Abstract of the article "Cleavage size and stability in turbulent times: introducing the bloc volatility and fragmentation dataset" by Jacob R. Gunderson. Published online first in West European Politics. Figure 2, displaying the Loess curves showing trajectory of bloc-weighted cleavage salience index (WCS) over time for transnational (lower curve) and traditional (upper curve) cleavage types from 1951 to 2023 for 14 west european countries. Figure 3, displaying the Loess curves of WCS pooled across 15 West European countries from 1951 to 2023. Figure 4, displaying the effective number of bloc parties for the left and right camps in 15 west european countries from 1951 to 2023.
October 27, 2025 at 12:51 PM
Reposted by David Attewell
bjpols.bsky.social
#OpenAccess from August 2025 -

Media Platforming and the Normalisation of Extreme Right Views - cup.org/4mmVIAL

"exposure to uncritical interviews increases agreement with extreme statements and perceptions of broader support in the population"

- @dianebolet.bsky.social & @florianfoos.bsky.social
BJPolS abstract discussing the effects of extensive media exposure on public perceptions and normalization. It references specific research surveys conducted on Sky News UK and Australia, analyzing changes in public attitudes and policy effects due to media strategies.
October 13, 2025 at 2:30 PM
Reposted by David Attewell
lwestheuser.bsky.social
JUST OUT: "Boundaries and Cleavages: Elements of a Cultural Sociology of Political Divides."

OA: direct.mit.edu/ecps/article...

It develops what the cultural sociology of group formation can contribute to research on political cleavages.

(And why "Somewheres vs Anywheres" really doesn't cut it.)
October 8, 2025 at 1:42 PM
Reposted by David Attewell
dpzollinger.bsky.social
New SI "Cleavage Politics in Western
Democracies" @wepsocial.bsky.social!

If you're interested in transforming social & political divides in advanced democracies, this is for you.

The intro by @davidattewell6.bsky.social & me maps contributions around 3 challenges for contemp. cleavage research.
davidattewell6.bsky.social David Attewell @davidattewell6.bsky.social · Oct 7
@dpzollinger.bsky.social and I are thrilled "Cleavage Politics in Western Democracies" is out as an SI at @wepsocial.bsky.social!

Its papers explore the foundations of the cleavage pitting new left against radical right parties, and how it compares to the classic cleavages of Lipset & Rokkan:

🧵⬇️
October 7, 2025 at 12:11 PM
davidattewell6.bsky.social
@dpzollinger.bsky.social and I are thrilled "Cleavage Politics in Western Democracies" is out as an SI at @wepsocial.bsky.social!

Its papers explore the foundations of the cleavage pitting new left against radical right parties, and how it compares to the classic cleavages of Lipset & Rokkan:

🧵⬇️
October 7, 2025 at 11:28 AM
Reposted by David Attewell
vincenzoemanuele.bsky.social
🎯New publication out in @wepsocial.bsky.social
'Lipset and Rokkan meet data': a 🧵on our study (with Bruno Marino) on the electoral structuring of traditional cleavages (1870–1967) across 17 Western European countries 👇

Read the full article (open access):
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
www.tandfonline.com
September 18, 2025 at 6:26 PM