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Will the Labour party turn into a losing machine under Corbyn?
Jeremy Corbyn is currently the frontrunner for the leadership of the British Labour Party. While few would have bet on him when he announced his bid, he is now the bookies’ favourite. A number of prominent figure on the right of the party have come forward to warn against the electoral consequences of him becoming…
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Does better research mean better teaching?
Does research performance increase the quality of teaching, or does it hamper it? Many people say that there is a positive relationship between research performance and teaching quality. Research should feed back into teaching and vice-versa. Following this logic, there should be a clearly positive relationship between student satisfaction (with the obvious problems of taking this…
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An Interactive Map of West European Parties
Following on the previous post on Southern Europe, this is a map of all West European parties mapped along their economic policy positioning and their position on European integration. By clicking here, you get access to a large interactive version of the map where you can show and hide countries and zoom in and out.…
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A Map of the South European Party System
There has been a lot of discussion recently about the rise of left-wing Euroscepticism in Southern Europe in the midst of the Eurozone crisis, with parties like Syriza and Podemos conquering power (in the case of the former) or appearing as serious challengers to mainstream parties (in the case of the latter). In the graphs…
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Human capital and tourist scams
A few days ago I arrived at Lisbon airport, took a cab (registry nr 283) for a journey I’ve done countless times and which usually costs a bit less than 10 Euros. I chat in Portuguese with the cab driver, give him directions, signalling that I know my way around. The meter indicates 9 Euros…
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How did David Cameron manage to win the 2015 elections in spite of austerity?
The poor hit by austerity don’t vote, while the rich who benefit do How can we explain the Conservative victory in last week’s British elections in the context of the austerity measures the Tories have been pushing through since they came to office? Indeed, even if the deficit hasn’t come down near the levels announced…
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Welfare States and Migration Policy Regimes in Europe: How More Welfare Reduces Immigration Flows
I gave a talk on the relationship between welfare and immigration at the ISCTE-University of Lisbon last week. The talk can be listened to below and the slides are here.
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Does fiscal austerity strengthen UKIP?
In their manifesto published yesterday, the Conservative party have pledged to increase funding for the NHS by 8bn a year, besides other policies that have been criticized for for not being clearly funded. Many observers have argued that all these spending increases will need to be be compensated somehow by deep cuts in other domains,…
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The irrelevant British median voter
When you watch the campaign for the next general elections in the United Kingdom, you may get the impression that the two biggest contenders, Ed Milliband and David Cameron are competing for the same voters. They promise this, they promise that in multiple attempts to convince what in political science jargon we call the “median…
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The Political Economy of the British General Election
The real campaign for the British general election is now in full swing and there’s a new poll every hour predicting a lead of one or the other party. Now polls change all the time, and most of the time they are wrong. I don’t care that much about how many votes Labour gets today…
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Alexandre Afonso 