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Ben Ansell

@benansell.bsky.social

29K followers 980 following 5.2K posts

Professor of Comparative Democratic Institutions, Nuffield & University of Oxford, FBA. http://benansell.substack.com. BBC Reith Lecturer 2023. Host BBC Radio 4 Rethink. Columnist for Prospect. Director, Centre for Advanced Social Science Methods (CASSM). .. more

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Ben W. Ansell is Professor of Comparative Democratic Institutions at Nuffield College, University of Oxford and, with David Samuels, editor of Comparative Political Studies.

Source: Wikipedia

Political science 47%

Economics 40%

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Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 2h

Man sounds like I’m due for execution on this basis.

Mark O’Neill 🐻 @radiobeartime.com · 1d

If the government really wants to scrap degrees which deliver no value to the UK and indeed have led to £ billions in damage to the economy and culture of the UK then it just needs to scrap the Oxford PPE degree and arrest everyone who has taken it.

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Reposted by Ben H. Ansell, Nicolai von Ondarza

Alex Andreou @sturdyalex.bsky.social · 11h

“It’s far too soon to predict how the next election will shape up. We are roughly the same distance from Labour having to call a General Election, as we are from the last pandemic lockdown. Try to conceive of that amount of stuff still to happen.”

Quiet Riot @quietriotpod.bsky.social · 11h

🆕 Anti-Woke Wake: It the Tory Party dead or just resting? ☠️

💥 Tory Conference debrief
💥 France latest political soap
💥 A deal on Gaza - but antisemitism on the rise

An amazing episode with special guest @samfr.bsky.social.

🍊 open.spotify.com/episode/5JQF...

🍏 podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/q...

Anti-Woke Wake: Is the Tory Party dead or just resting?

Podcast Episode · Quiet Riot · 09/10/2025 · 1h 13m

podcasts.apple.com

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Reposted by Ben H. Ansell

Joey Politano🏳️‍🌈 @josephpolitano.bsky.social · 13h

My ideology is that we should give a super-competent guy lifetime dictatorial power so we can build a high-public-sector-capacity developmental state. Now to take a big sip of my coffee and see the competence level of the guy we've elevated to lead the country I live in.

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Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 19h

Well indeed…

Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 19h

I was on a barging holiday with apolitical friends who were entirely radicalised by the end of the weekend.

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Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 19h

Imagine waiting til the end of the budget for the obvious counterbalance in spending cuts or other tax increases that never comes and realising that you now don’t have enough drink left

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Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 19h

Yeh as an occasional neoliberal I think some of the tax reforms in it were individually fine. But collectively it was insane.

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Reposted by Ben H. Ansell, Scott L. Greer, Jonathan Hopkin , and 4 more Ben H. Ansell, Scott L. Greer, Jonathan Hopkin, David R. Miller, Bessma Momani, James Goodwin, David Darmofal

Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 19h

Good lord.

@apnews.com

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Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 19h

You'd think there would be more interest from the UK media too tbh

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Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 19h

It was after all 'at last a true Tory budget' according to the papers the day after...

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Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 19h

I think there were some parts of the Truss budget that might have made sense in a better fiscal environment or *not all at once* that could be traced to right-wing think tank thought. But rot had already set in and the whole debacle has now got cargo cult status.

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Reposted by Ben H. Ansell, Will Jennings, Tom Shakespeare , and 8 more Ben H. Ansell, Will Jennings, Tom Shakespeare, Roger Scott, Jane E. Fountain, Sanford F. Schram, Robert C. Richards, David R. Miller, Stacy D. VanDeveer, Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò, Nathan P. Kalmoe

Governor JB Pritzker @govpritzker.illinois.gov · 23h

If you come for my people, you come through me.

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Reposted by Ben H. Ansell, James Q. Wilson, Patrick A. Jansen , and 25 more Ben H. Ansell, James Q. Wilson, Patrick A. Jansen, Nicole Dubilier, Steve Peers, Carl Henrik Knutsen, Michael A. Clemens, Efrén O. Pérez, Juan Cole, John Collins, Jussi T. Eronen, Laurent Pech, David R. Miller, Ben Tonra, Michael D. McDonald, Philipp Sarasin, Henry Jones, Greg Linden, Matthew P. McAllister, Cullen S. Hendrix, Nancy M. Wingfield, Aviel Roshwald, Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò, Nathan P. Kalmoe, Francesco Nicoli, Colin Woodard, Andrew Kydd, David Darmofal

Governor JB Pritzker @govpritzker.illinois.gov · 1d

I will not back down.

Trump is now calling for the arrest of elected representatives checking his power.

What else is left on the path to full-blown authoritarianism?

Donald Trump Truth Social Post: Chicago Mayor should be in jail for failing to protect Ice Officers! Governor Pritzker also.

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Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 1d

I guess 26 out of 83 unfulfilled pledges ;)

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Reposted by Ben H. Ansell, Rosemary A. Joyce, Mirya R. Holman , and 3 more Ben H. Ansell, Rosemary A. Joyce, Mirya R. Holman, Claire L. Adida, Leah Stokes, Nathan P. Kalmoe

Taniel @taniel.bsky.social · 1d

JUST IN: The Republican Mayor of Fairbanks, Alaska’s second biggest city, lost re-election last night to a Democrat.

Mayor David Pruhs is a conservative who fought protections for LGBTQ+ residents; he made comments this year drew condemnation this year from Alaska Natives. He lost to Mindy O'Neall.

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Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 1d

If I were the leader of the opposition a year after an election, facing an unpopular government, I would simply focus my energy on criticising the current government's policy record rather than constantly bemoaning the last fifteen years of policymaking, in which I was intimately involved.

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Reposted by Ben H. Ansell, Will Jennings, Tim Bale , and 5 more Ben H. Ansell, Will Jennings, Tim Bale, Charles West, Chris Hanretty, Philip Cowley, Holger Nehring, Catherine J. Frieman

Stephen Bush @stephenkb.bsky.social · 1d

Something grimly predictable about the way that the conversation about 'ripoff degrees' in the UK is always about degrees that aren't rip-offs, but are instead fairly obvious 'this student has chosen something unlikely to pay off economically' rather than the short tail of crap business degrees:

Everyone needs educating in the fight over university degrees

Political confusion over the purpose of these institutions means the obvious fixes are being neglected

www.ft.com

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Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 1d

Sure agreed. Though the irony is ‘majority sports’ are… well… sports, which are mostly very multiracial in the UK.

Reposted by Dani Rodrik, Marc Lynch, Ben H. Ansell , and 11 more Dani Rodrik, Marc Lynch, Ben H. Ansell, Elizabeth Saunders, Hugo Mercier, Jacob T. Levy, Bessma Momani, Samantha Brennan, Dana R. Fisher, Kate Starbird, Brian Weatherson, Leah Stokes, Aviel Roshwald, Nathan P. Kalmoe

Henry Farrell @himself.bsky.social · 1d

"It wanted to signal strength. Instead, it’s revealing its weakness. The administration’s need to break the academy is forcing it to make a desperately risky gamble." www.nytimes.com/2025/10/08/o...

Opinion | You Beat Trumpism by Banding Together. It’s as Hard and as Simple as That.

www.nytimes.com

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Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 1d

Have achieved a life goal of mentioning Salako in an article.

Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 1d

Just as an example, imagine talking about English literature since 2000 without mentioning Kazuo Ishiguro, Zadie Smith, Monica Ali, Salman Rushdie, Neel Mukherjee, Kaliane Bradley etc etc.

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Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 1d

Something I touched on in my @prospectmagazine.co.uk piece the other day.

Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 3d

Me in @prospectmagazine.co.uk following up on a Substack I wrote earlier this summer. Come for the unnecessary discussion of Crystal Palace in the 1990s, stay for the reference to Jesse Plemons.

Who’s ‘white British’? Who cares?

Politicians seem to be fuelling racist debate about what it means to be British, rather than calling it out

www.prospectmagazine.co.uk

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Reposted by Jonathan Portes, Steve Peers

Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 1d

Spot on from @stephenkb.bsky.social. And the other aspect of this nasty turn is the eliding of British ‘culture’ with ‘white British’, which will shock anyone who has watched TV or football, or listened to music, or read a book, or indeed breathed since 1980.

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Reposted by Ben H. Ansell, Michelle Everson

Dan Snow @thehistoryguy.bsky.social · 1d

We have built a society in which people of different skin tones, religious backgrounds & cultures get along, share power, work alongside each other, procreate with each other, recognise the each other’s humanity and democratic rights. It is a STUNNING ACHIEVEMENT OF WORLD HISTORIC PROPORTIONS.

Omar Khan @omaromalleykhan.bsky.social · 1d

I know statistics are poorly understood and are misused. But facts matter

Between the 1991, 2001, 2011 and 2021 Census *every* ethnic group in the UK has become *less* geographically segregated and *all* groups, majority and minorities, are more likely to interact with people not like them

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Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 1d

Oh ok well fair enough, that produces the injuries I’d come to expect.

Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 1d

What’s with all the coloured plastic tho. Only eighties kids will remember entirely wooden apparatus

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Reposted by Ben H. Ansell, Will Jennings

Mark O’Neill 🐻 @radiobeartime.com · 1d

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Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 1d

So, France? But without a President.

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Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 1d

And even then stuck at heart ascension level 19.

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Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 1d

Guys it only took circa 800 hours of my life

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