@manesweisskircher
Head of the Research Group REXKLIMA at TU Dresden & Visiting Fellow at the Center for European Studies at Harvard University | Researching far-right politics, social movements, political parties, climate politics & democracy
Ich begleite gerade das forschungsjournal.de bei einem Generationswechsel in der Redaktion. Das Journal wird seit 1988 von einem ehrenamtlichen Team produziert. Zum Teil sind es noch dieselben Menschen. Jetzt sucht die Redaktion Leute, die Lust haben, das Forschungsjournal neu zu denken.
Best news of the year so far! I am very grateful for this award 🌟🥳
Huge thanks to the @ecpr.bsky.social jury and the wonderful local and international colleagues who nominated me, @leoniedejonge.bsky.social @dafnoukos.bsky.social @profannikawerner.bsky.social Gabriele Abels & Rolf Frankenberger 🙏
Meet @manesweisskircher.bsky.social, one of our visiting scholars from TU Dresden. Join him next week for a seminar on “Electromobility and the Politics of Climate Change: Far-Right Climate Obstruction and Its Impact on Mainstream Parties.”
🗓️ 3/12 @ 1pm
🔗 ces.fas.harvard.edu/events/2026/...
Super happy that this is finally out!
@akueppers.bsky.social, Lukas Daniel and I try to locate the German Anti-Covid party "dieBasis" politically.
TL;DR: The ideological classification remains blurry, but populism played an important in they party's communication.
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
🎉Neue Publikation🎉
Zum neuen Portal von #ZZF und #MMZ habe ich einen Beitrag zu den "Böhsen #Onkelz" & ihrem Einfluss auf den (frühen) #Rechtsrock in Deutschland beigesteuert:
radikale-rechte.de/comment/018-...
#BöhseOnkelz
🎉 New publication 😍 The 4th wave of the #farright is marked by #mainstreaming & #normalisation - but how can we distinguish between them? In our new article, @gefjonoff.bsky.social and I map the existing literature, introduce a conceptual framework & outline research avenues. doi.org/10.1017/S147...
Ungated author's version: Im Osten nichts Neues? Die elektorale Unterstützung von #AfD und Linkspartei in den östlichen und westlichen Bundesländern bei der BTW 2021
Ebenfalls von 2025 ist dieses Paper von @manesweisskircher.bsky.social und @sabinedvolk.bsky.social zu climate obstruction extrem rechter Parteien, vor allem mit Bezug auf Solarenergie:
doi.org/10.1080/0964...
Meet @tevoelker.bsky.social, one of our Visiting Scholars from
@wzb.bsky.social. Join her TODAY for a seminar on “Democratic Resilience: How Parties, Civil Society, and the Media Resist Far-Right Politics.”
🗓️ Feb 25 @ 2:00 - 3:15pm
🔗 ces.fas.harvard.edu/events/2026/...
📢 Our study (w @jessicakuhlm.bsky.social) on AfD success in integration council elections is now published in @pvs-journal.bsky.social
📖 doi.org/10.1007/s116...
👉Socioeconomic factors explain where the AfD runs, but not its success
❗Mainstream party competition is central to counter PRRP success
My second just-published paper in our special issue compares Pirate 🏴☠️ and Green 🍃 parties (against other party types) across first- and second-order elections (EP). Using updated data from my dissertation, I find no comparative advantage in EPE for 🏴☠️, but some for 🍃
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
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Are you interested in the #RadicalRight in Germany? → C. Otteni and M. Weisskircher. “Global Warming and Polarization. Wind Turbines and the Electoral Success of the Greens and the Populist Radical Right”. In: European Journal of Political Research 61.4 (2022), pp. 1102-1122.
🚨Excited to see my two new publications in a special issue on 🏴☠️ parties, co-edited with Vladimír Naxera, now out in Comparative European Politics. The first is the SI introduction (with Vladimír) and a reflection on two decades of 🏴☠️ politics in Europe. This was fun!
link.springer.com/content/pdf/...
Received: 24 October 2025
Revised version received: 18 December 2025
Accepted: 2 January 2026
👉 Submit to @pvs-journal.bsky.social for a quick turnaround.
Kudos to the handling editor, @martingross.bsky.social.
New publication in @politicsgenderj.bsky.social!
Who perceives feminism as a threat, and why do a lot of women perceive feminism as threatening?
With @evaanduiza.bsky.social, we explore these questions in the context of Spain.
We find: ⬇️
doi.org/10.1017/S174...
NEW PUBLICATION
“How the Media Cordon Sanitaire Crumbles: Lessons from Germany” now out in @prxjournal.bsky.social
🔓 doi.org/10.1080/2474736X.2026.2621808
I’m very happy that this paper is out – this project is particularly important to me.
2025 open acces {#tbp|#ThrowBackPaper): The Radical Right Research Robot: a model for political science comms on splintered social media #radicalright @rrresrobot.bsky.social 🤖
It must be very hard to publish null results Publication practices in the social sciences act as a filter that favors statistically significant results over null findings. While the problem of selection on significance (SoS) is well-known in theory, it has been difficult to measure its scope empirically, and it has been challenging to determine how selection varies across contexts. In this article, we use large language models to extract granular and validated data on about 100,000 articles published in over 150 political science journals from 2010 to 2024. We show that fewer than 2% of articles that rely on statistical methods report null-only findings in their abstracts, while over 90% of papers highlight significant results. To put these findings in perspective, we develop and calibrate a simple model of publication bias. Across a range of plausible assumptions, we find that statistically significant results are estimated to be one to two orders of magnitude more likely to enter the published record than null results. Leveraging metadata extracted from individual articles, we show that the pattern of strong SoS holds across subfields, journals, methods, and time periods. However, a few factors such as pre-registration and randomized experiments correlate with greater acceptance of null results. We conclude by discussing implications for the field and the potential of our new dataset for investigating other questions about political science.
I have a new paper. We look at ~all stats articles in political science post-2010 & show that 94% have abstracts that claim to reject a null. Only 2% present only null results. This is hard to explain unless the research process has a filter that only lets rejections through.
🖤
Wie traurig, Heinz Wassermann ist tot.
Er war ein feiner Mensch und toller Lehrender/Diplomarbeitsbetreuer. Ohne ihn wäre meine Karriere und mein Leben wohl anders verlaufen.
Danke für alles, Heinz. Möge dir die Erde leicht sein!
🖤
www.kleinezeitung.at/steiermark/2...
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Are you interested in the #AfD? M. Weisskircher. “The Strength of Far-Right AfD in Eastern Germany: The East-West Divide and the Multiple Causes behind `Populism'”. In: The Political Quarterly 91.3 (2020), pp. 614-622. dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-923X.12859.
Bildbeschreibung Policy Brief Wirksam gegen RechtsauBen Eine systematische Analyse zivilgesellschaftlicher Strategien gegen die extreme Rechte Christin Janicke Hans Jonas Gunzelmann Teresa Volker Swen Hutter Zivilgesellschaftliche Organisationen spielen in der Auseinandersetzung mit Rechts extremismus eine zentrale Rolle. Sie setzen auf eine Vielzahl von Strategien, die von unterschiedlichsten Organisationen genutzt werden - von Gewerkschaften iiber Sport- vereine und Kultureinrichtungen bis zu Feuerwehren und Naturschutzverbénden. Das Projekt ,Wirksam gegen RechtsauBen" hat diese Strategien auf Basis von 191 Praxis- Handreichungen und 56 wissenschaftlichen Studien analysiert und fiinf iibergeord- nete Typen identifiziert: 1. organisationale Strategien, 2. Netzwerkarbeit, 3. politische Bildung, 4. Proteste und 5. Offentlichkeitsarbeit. Doch wihrend das Praxiswissen um- fangreich ist, bleibt die wissenschaftliche Evidenz zur Wirkung der Strategien be- grenzt. Daher braucht es einen systematischen Wissenstransfer zwischen zivilgesell- schaftlichen Handlungsfeldern, eine praxisnahe Forschung, Kooperationen zwischen Wissenschaft und Praxis sowie eine langfristige finanzielle und politische Unterstützung- zung für zivilgesellschaftliche Akteur*innen.
Das WZB-Projekt „Wirksam gegen Rechtsaußen" hat Strategien von zivilgesellschaftlichen Institutionen in der Auseinandersetzung mit #Rechtsextremismus untersucht und systematisiert. Den neuen Policy Brief dazu gibt es hier: www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10...
@chjncke.bsky.social @tevoelker.bsky.social
Take a look at Ramona Coman, @nathaliebrack.bsky.social & @miscoiu.bsky.social special issue
"Liberal Democracy under Debate: Dissensus and Competing Conceptions in the European Parliament". With @manesweisskircher.bsky.social @alvarooleart.bsky.social and more.
link.springer.com/collections/...
I'm delighted to have started as a Visiting Scholar at @harvard.edu, at the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies! Here, I will research the far right as well as climate and environmental politics. So far, it’s been great days here in #Winter #Wonderland!
ces.fas.harvard.edu/people/man%C...
A very interesting article!
Do followers of populist radical right parties across the globe talk about the same things online? @fravittonetto.bsky.social analyses the emergence of transnational publics of the populist radical right in this new article in @ausjpolsci.bsky.social www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Two new articles in Party Politics
With
@gessler.bsky.social
Measuring party positions and issue salience with mass media and manifesto data"
doi.org/10.1177/1354...
With Hanspeter Kriesi
"Restructuring party systems in Northwestern Europe"
doi.org/10.1177/1354...
Feedback very welcome!
Unpopuläre Meinung: Expert:inneninterviews mit Wissenschafter:innen im Rahmen von BA-Arbeiten gehören abgeschafft. Interviews binden erhebliche Zeitressourcen für ein „Expert:innenwissen“, das in unseren Publikationen öffentlich zugänglich ist – dann doch lieber Literaturarbeit.
Während sich die Grünen in Baden-Württemberg zwischen 2021 und 2026 deutlich in Richtung der Mitte des Policy-Raums bewegen, bleiben sie in Rheinland-Pfalz weiter bei ihrer klar linken Position in wirtschafts- und gesellschaftspolitischen Fragen. /1
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Published in 2023: S. Volk and M. Weisskircher. “Defending Democracy Against the 'Corona Dictatorship'? Far-Right PEGIDA During the COVID-19 Pandemic”. In: Social Movement Studies online first (2023), pp. 1-19. dx.doi.org/10.1080/14742837.2023.2171385.
Thrilled to announce the great group of visiting scholars for Spring 2026 at the Center for European Studies. Some are here all year and 11 new fellows for the spring semester. Here they are :
ces.fas.harvard.edu/visiting-sch...