Ben Ansell @benwansell Twitter profile

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Ben Ansell

8 months

I am deeply grateful and honoured to have been asked to give this year's Reith Lectures by the BBC. The title of the series is 'Our Democratic Future', which is no simple topic but I hope to do it justice. A v quick thread on details. 1/n

Our Democratic Future: Professor Ben Ansell announced as BBC Radio 4’s Reith Lecturer for 2023

The lectures and question-and-answer sessions will be chaired by presenter, journalist and author Anita Anand

www.bbc.co.uk

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Last Seen Profiles

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

2 years

Just loving the UK right now, where the godfather of the Prime Minister’s son and the ex-partner of his wife are furious that the Leader of the Opposition might pressure a police force not to issue a penalty for having a curry because that might compel Prime Minister to resign.

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

2 years

Without wishing to be too critical, this is the author of the 2017 Conservative manifesto agreeing with the author of the 2019 Cons manifesto that the economy of the last decade has been a disaster for young people. If only they had been in a position to do something about it.

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

2 years

Political Theory Comparative Politics Formal Theory International Relations

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

2 years

Can’t imagine how you guys found exponential growth of a virus so hard to understand.

Isabel Oakeshott

@IsabelOakeshott

2 years

Who needs quadratic equations? A few people, for sure, but not as many as would benefit from learning about business and geopolitics from a very young age. Our education system is not fit for purpose …

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

5 months

It is deeply unconservative to say that only people earning above the 73rd percentile of the income distribution can live with who they love. A very very misguided policy.

Colin Yeo

@ColinYeo1

5 months

I hope there are many on the right who will be opposed to this. It’s incredibly family-unfriendly and it’s particularly punishing to those outside London, minority communities and British citizens returning from abroad.

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

2 years

I recognise that Trussonomics is basically Ayn Rand read by somebody who just drank eight cans of Dr Pepper but I don’t understand why they think lowering the top rate of tax will attract global talent if they just end up cratering the pound.

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

2 months

They said the Conservative Party could never make a connection with teens and yet here we are

Election Maps UK

@ElectionMapsUK

2 months

Westminster Voting Intention: LAB: 44% (=) CON: 19% (-1) RFM: 15% (+1) LDM: 9% (=) GRN: 8% (+1) SNP: 3% (=) Via @YouGov , 19-20 Mar. Changes w/ 12-13 Mar.

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

11 months

British political choices over the past decade.

Sam Freedman

@Samfr

11 months

We're poorer as a country. Someone has to take the hit. Is it going to be the same people who took the last two hits? Or do we share it about this time?

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

1 year

I am intrigued indeed about any ranking you could possibly devise that claims that Oxford is more ‘radical’ and ‘progressive’ than SOAS.

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

2 years

The head of the Office for Students, a man with zero previous experience in higher education, endorsing Victor Orban, a man who shut down one of Europe’s great universities, is I think the nadir of the government’s war on woke. It is frankly embarrassing and dismaying.

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

1 year

As a political scientist I would just like to say LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLLLL.

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

2 years

Like the final scene of a very over-written Ealing comedy.

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

11 months

As a quantitative social scientist at @NuffieldCollege , I heartily oppose this very limited, pernicious argument. There is room in our world for many ways of thinking. And not every degree or job should be valued by its earnings potential. Oh, and FWIW I was a history grad.

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

2 years

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

1 year

When you carefully ignore the second and third largest words in your wordcloud.

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

1 year

POPULISM AGAINST LIBERALISM. I swore I wouldn't. But then I figured, who wouldn't want a deep data dive into whether there's truly a 'new woke elite' with sharply different views to the British people? So I did at the 'forbidden place'. A thread. 1/n

Populism against Liberalism

The idea of a new woke elite against the masses is in vogue. But it's also vague.

benansell.substack.com

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

2 years

Alternatively, populism is a term with a long legacy in academic work that John Gray has failed to read and that accurately describes a series of recent political movements that he sympathizes with in his decades-long personal war against liberalism.

Tom McTague

@TomMcTague

2 years

“Populism is a term used by centrist liberals to describe political blowback from the disruption of society produced by their policies.” Oof, that is good by John Gray in the @NewStatesman

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

4 years

🚨 Where are people social distancing in the UK?🚨 Thanks to the Google Community Reports we can see how people have behaved since March. Good news - social distancing is happening everywhere. Less good news - there is still a divide. And guess what explains it... BREXIT...😬 1/n

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

4 years

Completely embarrassing that our union would pluck a number like this from a non peer-reviewed working paper by a computer scientist. We are a profession that values expertise. The idea that universities opening could double the UK death rate is not something to raise lightly.

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

2 years

I wonder what those British politicians and academics who played footsie with Bannon think about this guy now.

Ron Filipkowski

@RonFilipkowski

2 years

Steve Bannon today: “Ukraine’s not even a country. It’s kind of a concept. It’s not even a country .. It’s just a corrupt area that the Clinton’s turned into a colony where they can steal money out of.”

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

2 years

I hope John Mearsheimer looks at today’s images from Bucha and thinks about the limits of ‘realism’ as both an explanatory theory and moral position.

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

4 years

🚨The problems with democracy coding and bias 🚨 Political scientists among you will know about the Polity IV score. This has been until recently the preferred measure of democracy for many scholars. So why, you may ask, does it not like democracy in US or UK? 1/n

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

5 years

I think, regardless of one's position on Brexit, the fact that the government has (a) no idea if all non-EU trade deals will roll over, and (b) won't inform business which ones they have yet to sort out, ought to be considered an utter dereliction of duty.

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

1 year

Pippa Crerar

@PippaCrerar

1 year

💥And she’s back… Liz Truss blames a “powerful economic establishment” for her downfall in 4,000 word essay…

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

1 year

💰💰WHY IS IT SO HARD TO TAX WEALTH? 💰💰 Wealth taxes are back in the news. Wealth inequality is sky high. But actually existing wealth taxes? Politicians struggle to introduce them. My new Substack explains why. Read on 1/n

A Puzzling Inheritance

Why, in a world where wealth matters more than ever, we want to tax it less

benansell.substack.com

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

3 years

📚🚨 NEW BOOK ALERT 🚨📚 I'm delighted that my book with Johannes Lindvall has just been published. Its title is "Inward Conquest: The Political Origins of Modern Public Services". Over the next weeks I'll set out why you should buy it! Let's begin... 1/n

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

10 months

Props to Elon for creating the world’s first social notwork

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

1 year

@yuanyi_z Beginning to wonder if innumeracy is the reason commissioning editors have published an implausibly high number of these pieces.

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

3 months

On immigration and housing in the UK. A quick thread. There has been a 'debate' over the last few days online about whether high levels of immigration are responsible for unaffordable housing in the UK. Albeit with rather little reference to data. Here's some... 1/n

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

2 years

This is interesting but I don’t think the markets are saying you can’t run deficits. They are saying you can’t run huge deficits that require politically unpopular tax cuts while firing the head of HMT, ignoring the OBR, refusing to acknowledge costs of Brexit and slamming BoE.

Hugo Gye

@HugoGye

2 years

Smart voices on the left increasingly realising that the collapse of Trussonomics could really hurt them. 'Unfortunately, the conclusion most will take from the past weeks is a simple one: the government cannot borrow its way out of economic crises.'

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

2 years

Odd really given that Welby called the invasion of Ukraine an ‘act of great evil’. But I’m sure Boris had done his homework and didn’t just say this off the cuff.

Adam Bienkov

@AdamBienkov

2 years

Boris Johnson attacks the Archbishop of Canterbury, telling Conservative MPs that Welby was far less vociferous in his criticism of Putin than he was of the UK's refugee policy.

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

6 years

Right now, being the Professor of Comparative Democratic Institutions at the University of Oxford feels pretty ironic. Congregation denied the right to vote or have formal debate on #USS .

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

3 years

I’m a member of APSA council. I’m afraid to say this statement, which includes the unfortunate phrase ‘both sides should do better’ was not run by the Council and I certainly don’t approve of this kind of equivocal response. One side was responsible.

APSA

@APSAtweets

3 years

Statement on the Insurrection at the US Capitol

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

1 year

What I find particularly funny about the BBC’s pusillanimity is that every other sector is looking at the polls and basically slow-walking any Conservative policy they don’t like until election day 2024. But the Beeb have decided it’s December 2019.

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

21 days

@lea_ypi @DarwinCollege @spectator Dismal, embarrassing, chauvinist rubbish from the Spectator.

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

2 months

The constant character assassination of anyone who has the temerity to disagree with the British tabloids is just poisonous stuff. ‘Enemies of the people’, ‘anti-Tory activist’ etc etc. We can get mad at social media but some newspapers have always been like this.

Ian Dunt

@IanDunt

2 months

She's a thoughtful, knowledgeable and principled figure. So it's utterly unsurprising that she should be considered a threat to a government supporting newspaper.

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

1 year

🏘️🏘️WHO WANTS TO BUILD NEW HOUSES? 🏘️🏘️ My latest Substack post just launched. In it I look at way it's so hard to build houses in the UK, what the public want, and what politicians might do. And there's a brand-new constituency MRP! Read on... 1/n

The UK's Political Housing Crisis

Can we build it? No we can't...

benansell.substack.com

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

5 months

@olg_yaari Blocked and felt sad for

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

5 days

This is, it has to be said, very funny

Matt Katz

@mattkatz00

6 days

Dep. Commissioner Daughtry says he found "a book on terrorism" at Columbia. (The book is not a how-to book, but a history written by a renowned British historian.)

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

5 years

As we enter a key Brexit endgame week, a few thoughts on the ironies of British negotiation. Thread:

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

5 months

From the ex-head of the Migration Advisory Committee

Centre for Economic Performance

@CEP_LSE

5 months

“It is despicable to label migrants as ‘abusers’ of the system when everything they have done is legal under rules set by the government.” @alanmanning4

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

2 years

💷💷💷 Rather than ramble aimlessly about today's 'mini-budget', I thought I would change tack and present a very fresh (i.e. finished yesterday) paper that has actual data on what the British public want tax rates to look like. To see, read on... 1/n

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

2 years

One incredible thing about Zelensky is his ability to adjust his message to his audience - Churchill for UK Parl, MLK for Congress, and now this for the Bundestag. All while making the same underlying case. Not pandering but persuading.

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

1 year

This snide and unapologetic response to the appalling motion passed by UCU says everything you need to know about the leadership capabilities of Jo Grady. Our sector deserves better.

Jo Grady

@DrJoGrady

1 year

UCU stands against every single war and for you to suggest otherwise is an absolute disgrace. I didn’t agree with the motion that passed, and I know that neither do many UCU members. But we won’t take lessons from you on this or any other matter.

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

1 year

It’s hard to imagine a more damaging story on the farrago that is UK visas for musicians than this one. The most egregious part is the rip off fee for emergency visas that didn’t even arrive in time. The Home Office is just dire.

Visa delay meant Ukrainian orchestra’s key members missed UK concert

Promoter claims ‘catastrophe’ has cost it more than £88k and accuses British government of hypocrisy

www.theguardian.com

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

8 months

I’m sorry but this paragraph is vile. Not ‘as much as anything else’. Deeply unserious and infantile stuff.

The New Statesman

@NewStatesman

8 months

The terrible truth of the Ukraine war is that it is precisely its simulated character, its hyper-reality, that makes it so bloody, writes @thephilippics .

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

3 years

Number 10 comms strategy in full

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

1 year

New Substack post on how much trouble the Conservative Party are in, drawing on BES data back to the 1960s and on a survey I fielded two weeks ago. Answer lots. But they've adapted before. Can they do it again?

Are the Conservatives in a death spiral?

Twitter's got nothing on this doom loop

benansell.substack.com

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

6 months

This is absolutely appalling. We simply CANNOT have a ‘world class university system’ if we deny permanent academics the possibility of having their small children join them. The Home Office…

‘Unthinkable cruelty’: Kenyan expert working at Bristol University denied visa for six-year-old...

Furious colleagues denounce decision that there are ‘no compassionate grounds’ to allow the child to join her mother

www.theguardian.com

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

5 months

You don’t need to support 3/4 of Brits being unable to marry who they love. It’s not you. And it’s sad to see

Sebastian Payne

@SebastianEPayne

5 months

Great to see @JamesCleverly taking tough, decisive action to slash net migration. The new higher income threshold will have a real impact, as will reducing family dependents. Cutting immigration closer to the 2019 target of 250k is foundational to recovering the Tories' fortunes.

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

1 year

I would suggest, given the graph below from a survey I ran a few weeks ago, that the fact that Conservatives are lagging massively in every group under sixty is probably not because of 'school indoctrination'.

Eric Kaufmann

@epkaufm

1 year

“Complacent Conservative strategists who think today’s young people will magically return to the fold once they pay tax, get a mortgage or have a family are in for a rude awakening” - my latest ⁦ @Telegraph ⁩

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

5 years

“I found myself picking Mr Nash’s works out of my bookshelf at home...’’ Sure you did. Because being aware that Nash did not write books, you have made sure to keep copies of Econometrica and the Annals of Mathematics from the 1950s on your shelf.

Simon Usherwood

@Usherwood

5 years

As long as Brexiteers hold their nerve, game theory proves that no-deal is now inevitable it's @Sherelle_E_J

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

2 years

🚨HOUSING AND POPULISM🚨 I'm delighted to announce that @The_JOP has published a FirstView version of our (me, @fghjorth , @jacob_nyrup , @mvinaes ) paper 'Sheltering Populists'. A quick thread on our findings 1/n

Sheltering Populists? House Prices and the Support for Populist Parties | The Journal of Politics:...

Populist parties, particularly from the right of the political spectrum, have sharply increased their electoral support in recent years, creating great media and scholarly interest. In this article...

www.journals.uchicago.edu

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

5 years

I am absolutely fuming about this. How on earth are we supposed to attract top international faculty with this kind of behaviour from the Home Office? The idea that someone will take a job here and be forcibly separated from their children is insane.

Oxford professor’s children refused visas to join her in UK

US family split as Home Office makes it increasingly difficult for overseas academics to work in UK universities

www.theguardian.com

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

3 years

🇬🇧🇪🇺 Who caused Hard Brexit? Some thoughts from the perspective of a social scientist. In the last few days we have seen an interminable debate on whether Remainers, Soft Brexiters, or Hard Brexiters are responsible for Hard Brexit. And it’s a false debate. Why? 1/n

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

5 months

As I read this, British citizens wishing to bring a spouse to the UK now require the same salary as a skilled migrant does to bring their own dependent. Which is an intriguing form of levelling that won't possibly backfire...

Colin Yeo

@ColinYeo1

5 months

Many British citizens will be unable to live legally in the UK with their spouses. This is twice the national minimum wage. A lot of people simply cannot afford it, no matter how hard they work.

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

2 years

I spent yesterday being perturbed by the unsubstantiated allegation the civil service was antisemitic. Today I am perturbed by the odd phrase “talking about civil service wokeism” - who on earth is writing these press releases? Spiked?

Stephen Pollard

@stephenpollard

2 years

Proper puzzled by this. I am pretty hot on antisemitism, especially institutionally, and this mystifies me. I'm unaware of any serious - or for that matter unserious - accusation that the civil service culture is antisemitic.

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

5 years

How should we be thinking about the confusing array of UK General Election polls right now? As @leonardocarella pointed out the other day, it all depends on how votes split within Remain and Leave groupings. I've tried to model this a little more. Thread follows 1/n

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

1 year

So, the government has replaced Erasmus with a scheme with less reliability, less money, and less efficiency run by Capita, a firm with a track record of abject failure in government outsourcing projects. I recall some colleagues telling me, don't worry it'll be fine. Not so much

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

1 year

🌟WHY POLITICS FAILS LAUNCH DAY🌟 Delighted that Why Politics Fails is out today in the UK. I've written a Substack that sets out why I wrote the book and why I hope you all buy it! And for those who don't want to stop scrolling Twitter, a quick thread.

Why Politics Fails: Out in the UK Today

Why it's so hard to get the world we want and what we can do about it

benansell.substack.com

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

2 years

I found this part of Starmer's speech today very moving on the feelings of guilt produced by the lockdown.

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

2 years

So @apsrjournal have written an interesting piece on what makes submitting there different to submitting to a 'subfield journal' such as, well, @cps_journal (which they mention). I have some thoughts as editor of aforementioned subfield journal...

Notes from the Editors | American Political Science Review | Cambridge Core

Notes from the Editors - Volume 116 Issue 1

www.cambridge.org

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

5 months

Anyway, glad that my own political science career hasn’t led me to agitate for a policy that has led to 3/4 of British citizens not being able to marry who they love.

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

2 years

Ukraine crisis is quite clarifying about relative competence in Johnson's cabinet - Wallace, very impressive; Truss, erratic but broadly on right page; Patel, utterly dire.

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

2 years

@mattyglesias She has been one of the most famous people on the planet for seventy-odd years though. It's hard to think of a parallel on that front.

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

1 year

Very excited to say that Why Politics Fails is coming out exactly four weeks today in the UK! Many thanks to Con Brown, ⁦ @MeadOlivia ⁩ and ⁦ @daniel_crewe ⁩ for sending along these early copies. If you’re intrigued please pre-order at !

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

7 months

Despite Brian’s good humour about it, the financial cost of the British visa and citizenship system is exorbitant and iniquitous. A scandal in my view.

Brian Klaas

@brianklaas

7 months

In the last few months, I’ve had to pay £3,200 for a visa to stay in the UK, plus £1,720 for a citizenship application, taking my total in visa fees well above £15,000. What an absurd system. Well, jokes on them, because I will be voting in the next general election.

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

5 years

I search in vain for a Quillette article on the exile of Central European University, an actual example of free speech under threat. Perhaps that might be a useful thing to examine along with safe spaces and trigger warnings.

Tim Bale

@ProfTimBale

5 years

Does anyone else who works at a university read these pieces and just not recognise what on earth they’re going on about?

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

3 years

On this topic, once again I must insist that Polity be more systematic in its coding. Is US suddenly less democratic than during the period during which a African Americans were disenfranchised (til 1965) or than it was DURING THE CIVIL WAR!!!

Javier Osorio

@javier_osorio

3 years

Political scientists have been measuring democracy around the world for decades. Today, the Polity V score, one of the most common measures of democracy, downgraded the US as an Anocracy (not a democracy) and recorded an “attempted (presidential) coup"

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

1 year

Following up on @jburnmurdoch 's excellent piece on generational political divides, my new Substack post does a deep dive into generational differences in British politics. 1/n

Generation Games

Britain's generations disagree fundamentally. But perhaps not on things that can be resolved.

benansell.substack.com

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

4 years

Incredibly proud of @jacob_nyrup and Stuart Bramwell, Oxford DPhil / @NuffieldCollege students who have just had their paper accepted by the APSR! It presents an important new dataset on every cabinet minister worldwide going back decades. More info here

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

4 years

🧑‍🎓MERITOCRACY IN THE NEWS👩‍🎓 @David_Goodhart and Michael Sandel have both written provocative new books about the trouble with 'meritocracy'. Both argue that non-graduates have been undervalued and that graduates in non-graduate jobs are disillusioned. What do the data show? 🧵1/n

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

8 months

After years of po-faced messaging, the Opposition have discovered that having a sense of humour might be politically effective.

Conflix

@labourpress

8 months

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

2 years

Narrator: It was not the end.

Mark Harper

@Mark_J_Harper

2 years

No. The UK voted to leave the EU. That meant leaving the Single Market and putting an end to freedom of movement. The end. Yes, there are issues with the Protocol, but @trussliz , @BrandonLewis & @ConorBurnsUK are working to deal with those issues.

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

1 year

Why are the Conservatives doubling down on small boats? Because that's what the voters they want to win back care about. And I'd expect continued 'greatest hits of social authoritarianism' policies. Quick thread with some data on attitudes among different types of voters. 1/n

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

4 years

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

2 years

So on the one hand there’s <gestures at everything>… all this. But on the other hand I have a book coming out next year called Why Politics Fails. 🤷‍♂️

Why Politics Fails: The Five Traps of the Modern World & How to Escape Them

www.amazon.co.uk

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

2 years

Brexiteers discovering the structural dependence of the state on capital was not on my 2022 bingo.

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

4 months

It’s good to see politicians finally taking this seriously but honestly the contours of this scandal have been clear for years and it’s mad it took an ITV dramatisation for Westminster to take proper notice.

Chris Mason

@ChrisMasonBBC

4 months

The latest on the Post Office scandal is on @BBCr4today , @BBCBreakfast , @bbc5live this morning and here @BBCNews

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

5 months

Weird conservative Americans referring to Oxford as an ‘urban hellscape’ has made my Xmas.

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

3 years

Little known fact - if you pay ten pounds extra this converts into an Oxford MA.

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

4 years

@jkertzer @leonardocarella Wait til they discover Party ID predicts voting behavior

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

3 years

I never thought leopards would eat my migrant workforce.

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

2 years

That crunching sound you hear is a thousand British columnists crumpling up their ‘liberal overreach’ opinion pieces before throwing them in the bin.

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

3 years

Shame they didn’t introduce nightclub vaccine passports right away or we could have had two straight months of centrist dad Britpop, trance, and drum and bass nightclubs

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

1 year

Let's just look at how education works split by age. Here we have under fifties versus fifties and over. There's still a steep education gradient in the over fifties but among the young less so. The postgrad Lab result for under 50s was so high I had to change axis length... 4/n

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

2 years

I read John Gray making this argument when I was in my final year of undergraduate study. I am now old. He has been flogging this dead horse for a quarter of a century. Nice work if you can get it I guess.

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

2 years

Since Mr Timothy has noticed this arch tweet and taken offence I am certainly happy to note he proposed taxing wealth to fund elder care and to further note that this is hardly a policy that improves the economic headwinds facing young people. Leaving the single market OTOH.

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

1 year

As ever, I am slower than the news cycle but 2 weeks ago I ran a poll of 3500 people with YouGov as part of my @ERC_Research WEALTHPOL project (it landed on the final day of my funding... Oct 31). I have a vote intention question but I also have some cool housing questions. 🧵1/n

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

2 years

As an editor… I can tell you I never read cover letters. Don’t waste your time. We judge you on your manuscript not where you come from, or whatever argument you want to make in your cover letter. So if you write one, make it ‘here’s my paper; it’s all my own work’. Done.

Vineet Chopra

@vineet_chopra

2 years

As an editor, I can't tell you how many times I see cover letters where I just ... wonder? The first impression is the most important one, and too many times - it's not the best impression. How to write a compelling cover letter: a thread. NB: These are my views and mine only!

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

3 months

Given Liz Truss’s interview with Steve Bannon and now Lee Anderson’s attack on the Mayor of London, we seem to have passed some kind of rubicon. Not the Foxification of the Conservative Party but the Newsmaxification.

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

2 years

There's more I won't get into. But dare I put it this way - it feels like APSR editors have written a list about how tough they are / how great their journal is not why it differs from subfield journals. And, I dunno, but that seems like selecting on the dependent variable.

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

5 years

Hugely excited that my paper on populism and housing with @davidrkadler is out and it's Open Access - so please do read it! The paper was funded by my ERC grant @wealthpol , so thanks @ERC_Research ! So what's the take-home of the paper? 1/n

WEP Journal

@WEPsocial

5 years

Online first & #openaccess : "Housing and populism" by David Adler ( @DiEM25Europe ) & @benwansell , part of the Special Issue "Housing Markets". @Rout_PoliticsIR

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

1 year

A lovely Christmas gift from @public_affairs and @HachetteUS - advance copies of the North American version of Why Politics Fails! Available to preorder at

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

3 years

🎺So I have a little something to announce... 🎺 I'm delighted to be writing a new book for @VikingBooks @VikingBooksUK . And this time for a wider audience. The book won't be coming out for sometime yet - it has to be finished! - but here's the gist 1/n

The Bookseller

@thebookseller

3 years

"In these divided and turbulent times, we need this book. The neat and deceptively simple structure of Why Politics Fails (following the five traps) is a great way in to a big topic", @VikingBooks pre-empts @benwansell 's debut trade book:

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

5 months

More on the dark consequences of this week's spousal visa threshold policy. There will be so many stories like this. Again and again and again...

Thanks to James Cleverly, I may never live in the same country as my kids again | Claire Armitstead

This increase to the spousal visa salary threshold means UK residence for them and their partners is out of the question, says Guardian associate editor Claire Armitstead

www.theguardian.com

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

14 days

Those British newspaper columnists opining that student protestors in the US are the ‘end of civilisation’ might wish to consider whether this kind of massive overreaction by the police is something they really endorse.

Robert Mackey

@RobertMackey

14 days

It is worth watching this CNN video from the moment Emory Econ Professor @CarolineFohlin came across the violent arrest of a protester on campus and asked the police, with shock, "What are you doing?" That's all that prompted an officer to hurl her to the ground and handcuff her.

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

3 months

Newspaper of record RIP

Jakub Krupa

@JakubKrupa

3 months

What is the editorial process that leads someone to believe that you should put another episode of a soapy royal drama above Navalny's death on the front page of a newspaper?

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Ben Ansell

@benwansell

2 years

@aljwhite Bots and trolls famous for relying on their blue tick status

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