... but strongly predict local-level engagement: respondents with stronger local attachments are relatively more engaged in local vs. national politics.

We use original surveys from the United States and Germany to study attachments to respondents' place of residence. These local attachments are different from local identities, are equally strong in rural and urban areas, are largely uncorrelated with objective measures of place quality...

New article with @elizabethelder.bsky.social out in @polbehavior.bsky.social. We develop a concept and measure of place attachments that is distinct from place identity.

doi.org/10.1007/s111...

Out today in @poppublicsphere.bsky.social

Emigration from closed autocracies is often thought to serve as a safety valve and improve stability. I show that it can also backfire and create more demand for emigration, thus raising popular pressure on the regime.

doi.org/10.1017/S153...

I'm especially excited about this publication: now all three of my dissertation papers have found a home!

I exploit an emigration wave from socialist East Germany in 1984 and link it to criminal activity. While some forms of crime declined, politically motivated crimes, especially regarding the border, skyrocketed. Petition data suggest that this effect is linked to increased demand for emigration.

Out today in @poppublicsphere.bsky.social

Emigration from closed autocracies is often thought to serve as a safety valve and improve stability. I show that it can also backfire and create more demand for emigration, thus raising popular pressure on the regime.

doi.org/10.1017/S153...

In a nutshell: the AfD fares better in places that experience more domestic out-migration. This relationship is particularly strong in East Germany, but noticeable in both parts of the country.

I recently spoke to the New York Times about how domestic migration and demographic change contribute to the rise of the AfD in Germany. Check out the article here:

www.nytimes.com/2025/02/25/w...

***Parties had until the end of January to nominate their candidates and finalize their party lists. Consequently, ballots couldn't be printed until then, and local election boards couldn't start sending out absentee ballots until early February. Mine, for example, was mailed on 2/5.

**While all Germans living in the country are automatically registered to vote, those who do not have a permanent address in Germany have to register to vote for each election. This is done in the last municipality where one resided before moving abroad.

*There are no precise numbers on the total number of Germans living abroad. Some estimates say there are more than 3 million: >1 million in Europe and about 1 million in the US.

214,000 may appear a small number, but it was about 2x as many as in 2021 and 3x as many as in 2017.

That Germans abroad are de facto disenfranchised is an embarrassment for an electoral system that is otherwise extremely efficient. To give one example: counting of ballots began at 6pm yesterday and was completed by 1:30am the next day (hello, California!).

This issue was known for a while. The same happened in the 2005 snap election. The Federal Returning Officer warned months ago that Germans abroad might not be able to vote. There were newspaper articles. Yet, the outgoing government took no action. Let's hope that its successor will do better.

I know that a single vote rarely matters. And considering the election result, I can say with confidence that my vote indeed wouldn't have made a difference. But this is the first election ever that I missed even though I was eligible to vote. And that bothers me more than it probably should.

About 214,000* Germans living abroad had registered to vote** in yesterday's election. Because this was a snap election with a compressed timeline, many voters didn't receive their absentee ballots in time.*** I'm one of them: mine arrived today. The day after the election.

🙋‍♂️ thank you!

Link to full paper: muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/articl...

Why does this matter? (1) While most work on legacies focuses on authoritarian rule, I emphasize the importance of authoritarian *breakdown*. (2) My results imply that the first few years after democratization are key in deciding democracy's long-term prospect.

Finally, Eurobarometer data suggests that the same patterns hold in other Central and Eastern European countries more broadly.

Household panel data replicate these findings and demonstrate that the effects are concentrated among respondents who experienced the economic hardship first-hand: older respondents and those who experienced unemployment in the early 1990s.

A priming experiment embedded in an original survey demonstrates that East Germans respond more strongly to qualitatively similar experiences with economic insecurity than West Germans: democracy satisfaction declines more among East than West Germans.

Empirically, I link low democracy satisfaction among East Germans to their experiences during the democratic transition. East Germany democratized amid record levels of economic insecurity, which taught East Germans to associate democracy with insecurity.

Excited to share my new publication, which just came out in
World Politics. The paper argues that authoritarian *breakdown* and the circumstances surrounding democratization can have long-lasting consequences for democratic expectations and attitudes. muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/articl...