Political Science Matters

After 16 years of seemingly unshakeable power, Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz suffered an astounding defeat in Hungary's 2026 general election. This political earthquake saw former insider Péter Magyar and his Tisza party secure a stunning supermajority of over two-thirds in parliament. In this episode, Raul Gomez and Roula Nezi (co-editors of the Political Data Yearbook ) are joined by Professor Zsolt...

Anthony Albanese’s Labor Party delivered a stunning landslide victory in the 2025 Australian federal election, dealing a historic blow to the centre-right. But how did this result come about — and what does it reveal about the state of Australian politics? In this episode, Raul Gomez (co-editor of the Political Data Yearbook ) sits down with Marija Taflaga (Australian National University) to delve...

On 23 February 2025, German citizens voted in an early Bundestag election to renew the lower chamber's members, after the collapse of the 'traffic light' coalition led by Chancellor Scholz in late 2024. As polls had predicted, the conservative CDU-CSU won the election and the radical-right party AfD came second, both increasing the percentage of votes relative to the 2021 elections. In...

Donald Trump has won the 2024 US presidential race, gaining a historic second term. Republicans now have full control of Washington. What role did gender play in the elections? How did Trump break down the ‘blue wall’? What can we expect from the new administration in the next four years? In this episode, Thomas Mustillo, co-editor of the  Political Data Yearbook , discusses the results of the US...

Following a disastrous result for his electoral alliance in the European Parliament elections, the French President, Emmanuelle Macron, called a snap legislative election for 30 June and 7 July 2024. While the election washed out the radical right’s hopes of determining the composition of the next government, it also produced a fragmented parliament where no political group can secure a majority o...

The tenth European Parliament elections (6-9 June 2024) witnessed a surge in far-right support, as predicted by the polls. Moreover, parliamentary fragmentation increased. Now that a weaker majority supports the EU Commission, what effects might these changes have on the future institutional relations between the EP, the Commission itself, the Council of Ministers, and the European Council? What c...

The United Kingdom is heading to the polls for the first time since its departure from the European Union. If forecasts are right, this election will be nothing short of an electoral disaster for the ruling Conservative party, which has given the country three prime ministers since 2019. How did the Tories end up in this situation? Did Rishi Sunak make a mistake by calling an early election? What...

In the 50th anniversary of democracy, Portugal held snap legislative elections on March 10. The President of the Republic called the elections in response to the early termination of the Costa III cabinet in November 2023 and the corruption scandal surrounding it. Most noticeably, the election outcomes show a loss of support for the incumbent Socialist Party (-13%), the rise of the radical right-w...

Why do some presidents with authoritarian ambitions succeed while others fail? How can we resist democratic backsliding? Laura Gamboa (University of Utah) discusses the research and outcomes of her latest book Resisting Backsliding: Opposition Strategies against the Erosion of Democracy ⁠ with Benedicte Bull (University of Oslo). Chaired by Luis Ramiro, Reviews Editor of European Political Science...

The Netherlands goes to the polls on 22 November in what is set to be a nail-biting general election. Pieter Omtzigt’s New Social Contract, a challenger party created only last summer, is predicted to become one of the major political parties in the Dutch parliament - and probably, too, in the next Dutch government. What does the new party stand for? How will its emergence affect the Dutch party s...

How do group-based cross-pressures lead to instability in voters' choices? What explains increased net electoral volatility in the democracies of advanced countries? Ruth Dassonneville (University of Montreal) discusses the research and outcomes of her latest book Voters under Pressure: Group-Based Cross-Pressure and Electoral Volatility with Nick Martin (University of Amsterdam). Chaired by L...

On October 15 2023, Polish citizens went to the polls to the renew the Parliament, producing the highest turnout ever in post-Communist Poland. The main result has been the defeat of the ruling PiS led by Jarosław Kaczyński and the victory of the opposition coalition, led by Donald Tusk. What were the main points of contentions between and withing the two political camps? Why did many Polish citiz...

The recent victory of the populist party Smer (Direction) in the 2023 Slovak parliamentary election has sparked concerns about Slovakia’s return to national populism. Are these fears warranted? Is Slovakia sliding into illiberalism and drifting away from the West? Or is the excessive focus on populism preventing analysts from seeing underlying opposing changes in Slovakia’s political landscape? In...

What are the prospects of the radical right entering the next Spanish government? Will the coalition government between the Social Democrats and the radical left survive the general election? What are the main issues in this campaign? And what might Spanish politics look like after 23 July? With only a few weeks remaining before Spain’s next general election, Raul Gomez, co-editor of the Political...

In this instalment of our Seminar Series on Migration and Ethnicity, our speaker discusses planetary movements in the 21st century and how it challenges traditional political agency through activism and resistance for justice. Speaker Engin Isin, Queen Mary University of London Find out more about this seminar: https://ecpr.eu/Events/Event/PanelDet...

Held in conjunction with the 2023 ECPR Joint Sessions of Workshops in Sciences Po Toulouse and part of our House Series, this year's Stein Rokkan Lecture's speaker illustrates how Fariba Adelkhah's embodiment of scientific freedom, including her preservation of autonomy from political authorities and defense of independence from intellectual or scientific trends, can inspire a broader...

In this instalment of our Seminar Series on the European Union, our speakers talk about how the EU struggles with a lack of coordination in its asylum and migration policies, but the pandemic has accelerated the digitalization of public services for migrants, and they have used a comparative analysis of four European cities to reveal varying approaches to coordinative Europeanization based on a di...

In this instalment of our Seminar Series on Migration and Ethnicity, Mireille Paquet of Concordia University, Montreal offers a synthesis of her research on federalism and immigration in Canada, Australia, and the United States. More on the Seminar Series: https://ecpr.eu/Events/165

In this instalment of our Seminar Series from the Standing Group on Migration & Ethnicity, Eva Østergaard-Nielsen (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona) presents the question: Do political attitudes and behaviour change in migration? More from the Seminar Series: https://ecpr.eu/Events/165

Survey research on the integration of ethnic and migrant minorities (EMMs) across Europe: Identifying research strengths and gaps with the survey metadata of the EMM Survey Registry Speaker – Laura Morales, Sciences Po Paris This seminar presents a detailed analysis of the survey metadata retrieved through the newly created EMM Survey Registry (compiled through COST Action 16111 Ethmigsurveydata a...

Why do migration and diversity policies so often derail? A complexity perspective on the governance of migration and diversity Speaker – Peter Scholten, Erasmus University Rotterdam There are few policy areas that are so often in some form of ‘crisis mode as migration and (migration-related) diversity policies. In this contribution, speaker Peter Scholten takes a complexity governance perspective...

What 2020 revealed about overseas Americans: Elections in a pandemic year Speaker – Amanda Klekowski von Koppenfels, University of Kent’s Brussels School of International Studies The pandemic and election year of 2020 revealed both the vulnerability and the potential power of overseas Americans (US citizen migrants), once again emphasising their differential inclusion in the United States. Providi...

Anti-Racist Mobilisations in Europe: Changes and Continuities Speaker – Marco Martiniello, Centre for Ethnic and Migration Studies (CEDEM), University of Liege The presentation looks at more than 40 years of anti-racist mobilisation in Europe. It first compared more specifically the mobilisation in the 1970’s and 1980’s with the mobilisations in the 2010’s and 2020’s to document the changes and th...

Blocked democratic inclusion in an immigration society: the curious case of Austria’s citizenship policy Speaker – Rainer Bauböck, European University Institute Austria has been an outlier in terms of adapting its citizenship policies to international migration. With 24% of its population having a “migration background” (i.e. two parents born abroad), Austria is among Europe’s foremost immigration...

Temporary Migration: Category of Analysis and Category of Practice Speaker – Anna Triandafyllidou, Ryerson University, Toronto In seminar, our speaker, Anna Triandafyllidou, builds on the line of research that focuses specifically on temporary migration, on one hand, and on the interplay between drivers and agency on the other. She presents a paper which develops an analytical framework that seeks...