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Matthew Shugart

@laderafrutal.bsky.social

2.9K followers 600 following 1.5K posts

Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Political Science, UC Davis. Researching electoral systems, parties, legislatures. 🍑🍊🌻 Orchardist. 🇺🇸 🇮🇱🇺🇦🇹🇼🇰🇷 Zionist and small-d democrat. Blog/links to pubs: fruitsandvotes.wordpress.com

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Matthew Shugart @laderafrutal.bsky.social · 2d

I’ve devoted much of my career to comparative presidentialism. I’ll know I’ve succeeded only if journalists stop saying things like I just heard on France24: “the French presidency may be the strongest in the world.”

If so, then why can’t he keep a cabinet in office?

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Matthew Shugart @laderafrutal.bsky.social · 12d

8 years? Seems impossible!

Matthew Shugart @laderafrutal.bsky.social · 17d

I’d need the details to answer. (I can’t open the article due to not having a subscription.)

Matthew Shugart @laderafrutal.bsky.social · 27d

So the Doha op might have failed DUE TO OVERLY PRECISE TARGETING.

(Sorry for shouting but it’s important.)

Matthew Shugart @laderafrutal.bsky.social · 29d

This is a very important paper. The thread offers a nice overview.

Steffen Ganghof @ganghof.bsky.social · Sep 5

What constitutional forms of democracy exist in the world today and what’s their rationale? A forthcoming paper of mine in Global Constitutionalism @globcon.bsky.social gives some new answers to these questions. Short 🧵https://shorturl.at/iWAeg

(PDF) Taking democracy seriously A theory and global typology of democratic forms of government

PDF | Although the distinction between presidential, parliamentary and hybrid forms of government is fundamental to the study of democratic... | Find, read and cite all the research you need on Resear...

shorturl.at

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Matthew Shugart @laderafrutal.bsky.social · 29d

Thanks for the call out. Interesting!

(And a nice distraction from… stuff)

Reposted by Matthew Shugart

Laurenz Ennser-Jedenastik @laurenzennser.bsky.social · Sep 5

Election nerds, can you help me?

Here are data from 1000s of local elections in Austria, held under list-PR with D'Hondt allocation and no fixed electoral threshold (whoever wins 1 seat is in). The graph shows the vote share of parties centered around the threshold ...

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Matthew Shugart @laderafrutal.bsky.social · Aug 29

UC Davis is recruiting in comparative politics!

"We are especially interested in candidates working on regional and/or emerging-market powers, though the successful candidate may work in any area of Comparative Politics."

Assistant level, tenure track.

recruit.ucdavis.edu/JPF07299

Department of Political Science - Comparative Politics

University of California, Davis is hiring. Apply now!

recruit.ucdavis.edu

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Reposted by Matthew Shugart

Jack Santucci @jacksantucci.bsky.social · Aug 25

I’m playing with ways to visualize state leg. size relative to population. Start with ratio. Tried normalization and robust scaling.

Here, we have the factor by which a state’s value differs from the median. Left: houses; right: senates.

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Reposted by Matthew Shugart

Jack Bailey @jack-bailey.co.uk · Aug 25

🧵 I have a new paper online @apsa-preprints.bsky.social where I try to answer a deceptively simple question:

𝘞𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦’𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦 '𝘱𝘰𝘴𝘵' 𝘪𝘯 𝘧𝘪𝘳𝘴𝘵-𝘱𝘢𝘴𝘵-𝘵𝘩𝘦-𝘱𝘰𝘴𝘵 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘦𝘭𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘢𝘭 𝘴𝘺𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘮𝘴?

Summary below 👇

preprints.apsanet.org/engage/apsa/...

Where is the Post in First-Past-the-Post (and Beyond)? A Logical Model of the Effective District-Wide Threshold

I present a new model of the effective district-wide threshold: the vote share at which any given party has a 50/50 chance of winning its first seat in a district. To derive my model, I rely only on s...

preprints.apsanet.org

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Matthew Shugart @laderafrutal.bsky.social · Aug 22

Well, the campaign is underway. The bills to put this on the ballot passed the legislature only yesterday. But the opposition hasn’t been sitting around waiting.

(My posting this is not an endorsement of any position.)

Reposted by Matthew Shugart

Vasabjit Banerjee @vasabjit.bsky.social · Aug 20

Many far-right groups in Europe today are linked to Russia in the same way many far-left groups were to the Soviet Union in the 1920s-1980s. Plus ça change...

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Matthew Shugart @laderafrutal.bsky.social · Aug 20

That’s unfortunate. And I seem to be having one today (for different reasons, probably). Here’s hoping for better days ahead…

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Matthew Shugart @laderafrutal.bsky.social · Aug 19

(I deleted the comment because of a dumb typo and apparently it was confusing in its wording. I stand by the point I was *trying* to make!)

Matthew Shugart @laderafrutal.bsky.social · Aug 19

If only you read the comment as closely as the bio.

Matthew Shugart @laderafrutal.bsky.social · Aug 19

I think we agree. I’m suggesting the standard model ought to be to constrain the executive’s movements, not the legislators’.

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Matthew Shugart @laderafrutal.bsky.social · Aug 14

They’ve been waiting for Trump all this time to seal the great deal!

Matthew Shugart @laderafrutal.bsky.social · Aug 13

So the fantasies of Russian imperialist fanatics that they’ll reclaim Alaska aren’t entirely fantasy?

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Reposted by Matthew Shugart

Dan Silverman @dmsilverman.bsky.social · Aug 13

All too plausible, and tremendously concerning.

Who — in the room or outside it — will stop this?

ChrisO_wiki @chriso-wiki.bsky.social · Aug 11

1/ Russia is reportedly planning to declare the war in Ukraine over after a peace treaty is signed by Trump on 15 August – but the intention appears to be to convince Trump that Ukraine is a recalcitrant warmonger that doesn't deserve any more aid if it refuses to go along. ⬇️

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Reposted by Matthew Shugart

Jonathan Bernstein @jonathanbernstein.bsky.social · Aug 13

And there was never any such norm; Bork was defeated in 1986 after three nominees had been defeated within the 20 previous years.

Most of the demonization of Bork (which did happen, yes) and all of it that mattered was either absolutely true points by Dems or...

Andy Craig @andycraig.bsky.social · Aug 13

It’s a deeply wrong premise here that the Senate should, as a normative matter, rubber-stamp Supreme Court nominees so long as they have suitably prestigious elite credentials, and not consider how they are likely to rule or the substance of what they believe.

Ben @coxsportsohio.bsky.social · Aug 12

should've let us put nixon's hatchet man on the supreme court, sincerely, the Good Conservative Tom Nichols of MSNBC

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Matthew Shugart @laderafrutal.bsky.social · Aug 13

It was a good morning to be in the orchard.

Reposted by Matthew Shugart

Jonathan Bernstein @jonathanbernstein.bsky.social · Aug 12

But that's not all! During Trump's presidency, he took credit for a vaccine to end the pandemic, and Democrats...urged everyone to take it!

...which so upset "conservatives" that they not only turned against that vaccine, but against vaccines in general.

m @keptsimple.bsky.social · Aug 12

it's wild to post this when a more realistic version of it actually happened and it was conservatives who refused the treatment

I am now fully convinced, like never before, that if President Trump somehow cured cancer...

...that Democrats would protest in favor of cancer in the streets

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Matthew Shugart @laderafrutal.bsky.social · Aug 12

Oh, I once had a Twitter feud with Hazony. Fun times.

Matthew Shugart @laderafrutal.bsky.social · Aug 10

I was going to email you and ask if you’d seen it. But then I checked Bluesky! Thanks for sharing.