Political Trust Network: Call for papers (Barcelona, October 2026)
The young and fast growing academic 'Political Trust Network' organizes yearly workshops, where scholars of trust can meet up, present papers, and exchange ideas. These workshop have been brilliant, socially and professionally!
Congrats Leo!
From context to congruence: Immigration salience and voter socialization Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 January 2026 Leonardo Carella and Francesco Raffaelli This paper considers how issue salience environments affect long-term patterns of political choice via processes of political socialization. Drawing on the well-known βimpressionable yearsβ hypothesis, we theorize that voters who grew up in high-immigration salience contexts subsequently exhibit higher levels of voter-party agreement on immigration (issue congruence). We find support for this hypothesis from two studies, which leverage cross-sectional variation within cohorts in exposure to immigration salience in votersβ formative years. The first employs congruence data from a survey of 10 European countries, linked to historical salience data from the Comparative Manifesto Project. The second is a within-country study, measuring salience and congruence from two long-running German public opinion survey series. The analysis suggests that growing up at times when immigration is high on the political agenda can have long-term consequences for the relationship between votersβ preferences on that issue and their political choices, shedding light on the mechanism behind βgenerational realignmentβ.
Really happy this work with @fraraffaelli.bsky.social found a home at EJPR. We show that growing up at times of high salience of immigration produces cohorts of voters who are more likely to vote for parties that they agree with specifically on immigration.
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
In the midst of chaos, excited to share a new publication with @aeggers.bsky.social and Marko Klaőnja, dx.doi.org/10.1111/lsq..... As usual, I write an embarrassing thread about my wonderful coauthors-- 𧡠(1/)
For the historical polling nerds out there, an article about our project with @ropercenter.bsky.social that digitised ~800 surveys by Gallup poll in Britain between 1955 and 1991 has been published in JEPOP. The merged dataset contains over three-quarters of a million respondents.
1/ Does growing up poor always lead to political apathy?
Very happy to share my first paper published (open access) in @electoralstudies.bsky.social, where I show that parents' influence mitigates the poverty gap in participation, while economic mobility does not.
π shorturl.at/p5Bac
Fascinating paper by @grattonecon.bsky.social, @bartonelee2.bsky.social, 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
Although not yet available to read (January 2026!), very happy to see our book on political trust online. Co-edited with @mfair.bsky.social and available open access, we think it'll be a useful addition to the field.
www.e-elgar.com/shop/gbp/a-r...
How common are βsurvey professionalsβ - people who take dozens of online surveys for pay - across online panels, and do they harm data quality?
Our paper, FirstView at @politicalanalysis.bsky.social, tackles this question using browsing data from three U.S. samples (Facebook, YouGov, and Lucid):
Let me add this forthcoming paper by Besley et al (in the @qjeharvard.bsky.social), which, I think, provides a nice micro-foundation for between-cohort variation in zero-sum attitudes. They define βgrowth experienceβ as the average GDP growth an individual has lived through since birth, weighted by
Very pleased to say my new article is out @polstudies.bsky.social ! In it I compare single individuals to those with partners with different past vote choices/party identifications and demonstrate that this is associated with an individual's own vote choice. doi.org/10.1177/0032...
π€ Do surveys exaggerate democratic support due to social desirability bias (SDB)?
β‘οΈ Using survey-mode variation & list experiments in 24 countries, @pcmagalhaes.bsky.social & @aarslew.bsky.social find no evidence that SDB inflates democratic attitudes www.cambridge.org/core/journal... #FirstView
Oh look, Labour has spent months targeting the wrong voters.
Imagine asking people two questions -- whether each of these is a good or bad way to run a govt:
1) having a democratic political system
2) having a strong leader who does not have to bother with parliament and elections
What percent says *both* are good?
44%!
β¨Very happy to see my paper "Attitudinal ambivalence toward multiculturalism" out on @jeppjournal.bsky.social !
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
1/8 π§΅
I'm recruiting 2 PhD researchers to work with me on a project studying how social groups influence vote choices!
Info on the position and how to apply π www.kuleuven.be/personeel/jo...
Please share with interested students who would like to move to beautiful Leuven!
New preprint w/ @grahn.bsky.social & @joenoonan.se
What happens when the world's most powerful democracy rolls back core liberal values? πΊπΈ
In this paper, we show how US liberal retrenchment, especially on womenβs rights & LGBTQ+ equality, damages US global standing.
π doi.org/10.31219/osf...
This is a very interesting observational paper for those working on gendered dynamics of far-right, descriptive rep & femonationalism
Does women's descriptive rep. lower anti-gender discourse among far-right? No, it *increases* it (according to parl speech data 2009-2023)
doi.org/10.1177/1465...
π¨ working paper (w. @morganlcj.bsky.social @markuswagner.bsky.social): Protesters are not judged equally - even if tactics of groups are similar.
We ran an experiment in π©πͺ testing how people react to farmers vs. climate activists blocking roads.
What we find is disturbing:
osf.io/preprints/os...
What an extremely relevant graph for what happened yesterday
Does political trust cause political participation?
In this paper, James Tilley, Sven Oskarsson and I use twin data to argue that the correlation is largely explained by confounding with family background.
Just accepted @thejop.bsky.social:
www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...
Moving right on immigration: no evidence that it weakens the far right
Cutting social and public spending: solid evidence that it strengthens the far right
So what does the Labour party - obsessing over the threat by Reform - do? Moves right on immigration and cuts social spending
New research alert! Our study investigates the effectiveness of human-only, AI-assisted, and AI-led teams in assessing the reproducibility of quantitative social science research. We've got some surprising findings!
Happy to share that my paper (w/ James Tilley) is now out in @bjpols.bsky.social
We show that expenses misconduct by British MPs was not associated with political distrust among their constituents.
Open access here: doi.org/10.1017/S000...
I'm assisting @robfordmancs.bsky.social in organising this ECR event for UK in a Changing Europe.
Get your papers in, come to Manchester, enjoy the rain, have a drink, go home, tell your mates how good it was.
We are hiring a Postdoctoral student for our AI program.
15-month position to start Spring 2024 β 75 000 USD per year. The work can be done remotely or in Ottawa, Canada. Travel funding will also be provided.
Applications to be submitted to Abel Brodeur abrodeur@uottawa.ca
What else can you call this but fascism? What would you say if you saw it in another country? www.cnn.com/2023/12/16/p...
An interesting paper on support for long-term policy making (journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....), with evidence that political trust matters for boosting support.
Alternative evidence to a recent paper of mine (osf.io/7hazf) that finds a null effect. π
Very pleased to see our work on social values published as part of UK in a Changing Europe's new public opinion report (ukandeu.ac.uk/wp-content/u...).
Here's a thread from @leonardocarella.bsky.social summarizing our main findings:
π¨Do echo chambers polarize? Yes! π¨Very excited that our paper βThe Polarizing Effect of Partisan Echo Chambersβ w @sarahobolt.bsky.social and James Tilley has been published FirstView at APSR! Link: www.cambridge.org/core/journal... Thread π1/n
