Jonas W. Schmid
@jonaswschmid.bsky.social
Researching autocratic politics, ministers & international cooperation at the University of Oslo.
New paper out in @jpeaceresearch.bsky.social! Here, I look at the non-linear relationship between levels of executive constraints and a country's risk of experiencing incumbent takeovers. academic.oup.com/jpr/advance-...
Executive constraints and incumbent takeovers
Abstract. This paper provides a systematic study of how judicial and legislative constraints on the executive safeguard against incumbent-driven regime tra
academic.oup.com
The WhoGov Project has a new webpage 🎉 It brings our datasets, publications, team, and news together in one home. We have big plans for expanding the dataset and building the project, and we'll keep it updated. Take a look (and join our mailing list): whogov.net
WhoGov — Data on governing elites
Mapping the people who govern us — worldwide and across centuries. WhoGov provides open, global data on the members of government, from 1966 to today. Hosted at the University of Oslo.
whogov.net
We have an open call for a postdoc interested in causal effects of Voting Advice Applications on political behaviour (deadline Aug 20): www.jobbnorge.no/en/available...
Postdoctoral Fellow in Political Science (304454) | NTNU - Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Job title: Postdoctoral Fellow in Political Science (304454), Employer: NTNU - Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Deadline: Thursday, August 20, 2026
jobbnorge.no
Only a handful of dictatorships don't hold national elections, and that is because they are monarchies, never institutionalised them, or are in a state of prolonged conflict. Disbanding elections outright means you are betting against the notion that international democratic norms will be enforced.
The Guardian@theguardian.com · 2w agoNicaragua’s president says country will not hold any more elections
Pete Hegseth: "We need our warriors to embrace the Spartan mindset" U.S. Military: *suffers crushing defeat to the Persians*
‘Polarization’ has become the master concept for diagnosing our current democratic crisis. But this is not polarization. It is the radicalization of the political right. By misdiagnosing it, we risk becoming complicit in the crisis. 🧵 Just out in Perspectives on Politics doi.org/10.1017/S153...
Happy to be back in Oslo and to join this great company!
The WhoGov Project@whogov.bsky.social · 2mo agoWe are happy to announce that our team has been strengthened by four new members who will code many, many ministers with us in the years to come! Welcome to our new PhD @gelonn99.bsky.social and our new Postdocs @javierpadilla.bsky.social, @andreinathoma.bsky.social & @jonaswschmid.bsky.social!
⚽📚 The Ultimate World Cup Research Thread I've set up a little automated thread: every day of the 2026 World Cup (11 Jun–19 Jul) it shares one study on what football does to society: politics, economics, migration, health, crime & more. One paper a day. Kickoff below 👇
We are happy to release Version 4 of WhoGov, which expands WhoGov to 2025. It now contains data on cabinet members from 1966-2025. The update is supported by UiO:Democracy and can be downloaded through GETGOV's page or through Nuffield College: politicscentre.nuffield.ox.ac.uk/whogov-datas.... 1/2
Governing elites since the dawn of modern democracy (GETGOV) - Department of Political Science
Ever since humans settled into communities, there have been political classes. A small elite governs, while the majority are governed. Yet, who are the people in the governing elite? GETGOV will answe...
sv.uio.no
How will the rise of autocracies in international relations reshape global governance and what can democratic policy-makers do to counter this? I wrote a blogpost on this based on a policy brief with @jonastallberg.bsky.social and @faradj.bsky.social: www.democracywithoutborders.org/43349/how-th...
How the rise of autocracies is reshaping global governance
This article explains how autocracies are reshaping global governance through institutional drift, informal cooperation and domestic backlash, and how democracies can react to defend liberal norms and...
democracywithoutborders.org
New publication! "Governing for Growth? Economic Performance and Finance Minister Survival in Democracies and Autocracies" by @jonaswschmid.bsky.social and @jacobnyrup.bsky.social now out in Political Research Quarterly. doi.org/10.1177/1065...
Sage Journals: Discover world-class research
Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.
doi.org
Remember that recent paper claiming to show that "ideological bias" determined the results obtained by immigration policy research teams? A careful, open-code reanalysis by @kauspurg.bsky.social & Josef Brüderl finds that the result arises from a coding error. —> doi.org/10.31222/osf...
📢 New article 🌟 👥 Jonas W. Schmid @jonaswschmid.bsky.social & Jacob Nyrup @jacobnyrup.bsky.social (ISV) 👉 Governing for Growth? Economic Performance and Finance Minister Survival in Democracies and Autocracies 📗 Open Access in Political Research Quarterly 🔗 doi.org/10.1177/1065...
Governing for Growth? Economic Performance and Finance Minister Survival in Democracies and Autocracies - Jonas Willibald Schmid, Jacob Nyrup, 2026
Are the highest-ranking public officials rewarded for good performance? Using the case of finance ministers, we argue that this depends on the type of regime. D...
doi.org
Equally insane is the complete lack of both condemnation from political elites and spontaneous mass protests from citizens. Indeed, grand corruption is already a fully normalised feature of authoritarian rule in the United States.
Greg Sargent@gregsargent.bsky.social · 3mo agoThis is insanity: Trump's DOJ is about to "settle" his lawsuit against the IRS by creating a $1.7 billion slush fund to pay off victims of Biden "weaponization." I talked to Jamie Raskin about this. It's even more corrupt than it first appears. 1/ (new piece) newrepublic.com/article/2105...
1/ Excited to report we have a new paper out @nature.com today! The bottom line: training data for LLMs does not just fall from the sky - it is created in the context of existing social political institutions - and that has consequences for LLM output. nature.com/articles/s41...
State media control influences large language models - Nature
Government-controlled media influences the output of large language models via their training data, and models queried in the languages of countries with lower media freedom show a stronger ...
nature.com
New in Nature: LLMs give "the party line" in the languages of authoritarian regimes. This works when they control the media, which feeds pretraining data. We show more state control over the media means less critical LLMs. 6 studies spanning 38 languages & 13 models. Details ↓
My new paper with Margarita Zavadskaya is out in @poppublicsphere.bsky.social! Since 2022, the Kremlin has turned pseudo fact checking into a key propaganda strategy. But how does it affect citizens? We run an experiment to answer this Q (10/): doi.org/10.1017/S153...
Senior professors with good funding and armies of research assistants should share what they delegate to their RAs without giving them authorial credit. This will help us without such resources understand the ethical boundaries of using Claude Code and other LLMs for our own work.
Are top public officials rewarded for good performance? In our new paper "Governing for growth?" (doi.org/10.1177/1065...). @jacobnyrup.bsky.social and I study how economic performance affects the political survival of finance ministers to show that this depends on the regime they work in. Thread ⬇️
Sage Journals: Discover world-class research
Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.
doi.org
PRIO is hiring a new Executive Assistant, This is a role that sits at the heart of our leadership, and is involved with most aspects of management. You will work closely with me - not sure if that is a boon or a curse - but there is room to shape how the role evolves www.prio.org/about/career...
Executive Assistant to the Director – Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO)
Are you interested in academic research and enjoy working in an international environment? If you are also committed to quality and are a service minde ...
prio.org
Delighted to share a short blog post on the dark logic of visual "strongman" propaganda — drawing on survey experiments in Venezuela, Türkiye and the US!
The Loop@ecprtheloop.bsky.social · 3mo ago🌊 #Illiberal Wave No.46 💪 @plutscher.bsky.social, @draege.bsky.social, @karstendonnay.bsky.social & @chknutsen.bsky.social draw on 3 experiments across Venezuela, Türkiye + the US to show that visual strongman #Propaganda can deter opposition movements + mobilise supporters. 👉️ bit.ly/48vkRV3
The best indication so far the WHCD Trump shooting wasn't staged? No evidence yet of huge insider bets just before it happened on Polymarket or Kalshi :-)
We are excited to have won @polstudiesassoc.bsky.social's joint prize for Specialist Group of the Year! If you are a researcher studying autocracies, come join this great community!
Political Studies Association@polstudiesassoc.bsky.social · 4mo ago*PSA Prize Winners* 🎉 Congratulations to Autocracy and Regime Change @psaautocracy.bsky.social as PSA Specialist Group of the Year joint prize winner. This group is recognised for remarkable energy and impact as a relatively new group and building an impressive group membership. ➡️ buff.ly/dvOF0Sa
Scheidel's "Great Leveler" argued equality has historically come from violence. Can peaceful redistribution do the same? In our lab experiment, redistribution doesn't reduce punishment — it shifts it from 'punish the rich' to 'punish free-riders.' 🧵 journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...
Inequality aversion and prosocial punishment: Evidence from a one-shot public goods game
The willingness to engage in costly punishment of free riders (prosocial punishment) is crucial to foster group cooperation and understand public goods provision. While prosocial punishment is common ...
journals.plos.org
Very happy that my article "Electoral autocracies, hybrid regimes, and multiparty autocracies: same, same but different?" won the Frank Cass Prize for the best young scholar article in @democratization.bsky.social in 2025! Read it here or check the thread below: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Jonas W. Schmid@jonaswschmid.bsky.social · last yr.Ever felt uneasy about how concepts & measures of "grey zone" autocracies are used interchangeably across the literature? Then check out my 🚨new paper🚨 in @democratization.bsky.social and get some substance to back up your gut feeling: tinyurl.com/ypdm2kna Or at least read the main points below ⬇️
Why I don't expect liberal democracy to go away any time soon: My article on the resilience of liberal democracy, published in @jeppjournal.bsky.social. Perfectly timed to the day after Orbáns defeat and a small spike in "democracy-optimism". There are, I argue, good reasons for such optimism.
With Hungary’s crucial election a few days away, its National Election Office has published a list of accredited international observers (n. 859). Having spent nearly a decade researching the behavior of international observers, I decided to take a closer look 😊 www.valasztas.hu/en/internati...
International observers registered for the parliamentary elections to be held in 2026
valasztas.hu
