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Italien – die wahre schwäbische Hausfrau Europas
Die Debatte über die Schaffung europäischer Anleihen zur Bekämpfung der Coronakrise ist von Vorurteilen geprägt, die nicht der Realität entsprechen. Italien wird oft als zu verschwenderisch dargestellt, hat aber tatsächlich in den letzten 30 Jahren äußerst sparsam gewirtschaftet. Es zahlt heute allerdings immer noch für politische Fehler, die in den 1970er und 1980er Jahren gemacht…
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Do Southern Europeans work less than Northern Europeans?
Recently, the Dutch right-wing magazine Elsevier used this cover to illustrate its stance on the rescue package devised by European governments to tackle the corona crisis. The header reads “not a cent more for Southern Europe”. The drawing is quite explicit: at the top, blond hard-working Northern Europeans. At the bottom, a hairy South European…
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The Coronacrisis and Southern European Welfare States
Alexandre Afonso, Leiden University Written for The Future is Blue Newsletter The corona-crisis and the measures to slow the spread of the virus have led governments to put their economies in an “induced coma”. A large proportion of workers are either asked to work from home, or to put their economic activity on hold. The…
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Mapping the international mobility of political scientists
Pippa Norris was kind enough to share an advance version of the dataset she collected on academic political scientists around the world, which will be presented for the 50th anniversary of the European Consortium for Political Research. The datasets contains lots of variables about the education, place of work and career of political scientists employed…
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Um mapa das relações familiares no Governo de Antonio Costa
Nas ultimas semanas, os jornais relataram um numero impressionante de relações familiares no governo de António Costa: casais, primos, irmãos a assumir cargos públicos em vários ministérios e secretariados de estado. Este artigo no Jornal Economico aponto a existência de uma rede de 50 pessoas e 20 famílias, todas elas ligadas ao governo e ao…
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Mapping Preferences over Brexit in the House of Commons
In the graph above (zoomable version here), I have mapped the votes of British MPs in the 8 options given to them on March 27 (a couple of hours ago) in indicative votes. This is a 2-mode network linking MPs and options for Brexit. The network graph shows how different options are related to each…
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Visualising the world’s 20 richest countries, 1800-2016 in one minute.
I made this animation using John Burn-Murdoch’s code and data from the Maddison Project Database.
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Academic hierarchies in US political science
In a number of recent projects (see e.g here), I have been interested in the structure of the academic job market, how it is organised in different countries, and how it may shape the ideas that it produces (see here for a comparison of economists in the US and Germany). Something that we highlight in…
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Assigning podcasts as assignments to students
In my course on Global Challenges, I ask students to submit a policy podcast. Here are the guidelines that I give to students, and an example of what students have done. Purpose of the assignment The purpose of this assignment is for you to demonstrate the ability to use the theoretical tools provided in the course by…