Max Heermann
@maxheermann.bsky.social
790 followers 330 following 40 posts
Political Scientist at ETH Zürich. Previously University of Konstanz. Digital policy, European integration, International solidarity.
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maxheermann.bsky.social
📣 Happy to announce the publication of our article (w @sharonbaute.bsky.social & @leuffen.bsky.social) on democratic backsliding and public opinion @jeppjournal.bsky.social!

📌https://doi.org/10.1080/13501763.2025.2503973

Study funded by @excinequality.bsky.social
maxheermann.bsky.social
Thanks for the shoutout! Your paper sounds super interesting, will read it soon!
Reposted by Max Heermann
sidneyrothstein.bsky.social
Out now in Competition & Change
@compchange.bsky.social

“Dependent development in digital
capitalism: The politics of startup
policies in the new periphery”

@journals.sagepub.com
#polisky
journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1...

1/n
first page of "Dependent development in digital capitalism: The politics of startup policies in the new periphery." abstract: As digital technology’s economic importance increases, policymakers pivot to supporting startups – new, small, high-risk firms that produce technological innovation. Tracing the passage of startup policies in Brazil and Spain between 2014 – 2022, this article argues that startup policies do little to reduce peripheral countries’ dependence on the core. In each case, startups advocated for these policies by relying on financial and organizational resources from the giant US-based technology firms known as “Big Tech.” The article makes three contributions to the framework of dependent development. First, it reinforces existing observations that dependence on Big Tech extends beyond the Global South. Second, it revives political analysis of dependency, exploring the political conditions for economic development in the periphery. Lastly, it shows how startups’ political dependence on Big Tech implies important limits on startups’ ability to lead peripheral economies out of dependence on the core.
Reposted by Max Heermann
rfrbrghs.bsky.social
🇪🇺🇨🇭For a long time, most voters in Switzerland hardly cared about the country’s relationship with the EU.

Now, in the wake of Trump’s 39% tariff bombshell, it has surged to become the 3rd most important issue for voters!

Healthcare costs remain top concern

Just revealed by @leewas.bsky.social
leewas.bsky.social
𝗚𝗲𝘀𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗵𝗲𝗶𝘁𝘀𝗸𝗼𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗻 – 𝗱𝗮𝘀 𝗺𝗶𝘁 𝗔𝗯𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗱𝗿ä𝗻𝗴𝗲𝗻𝗱𝘀𝘁𝗲 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗯𝗹𝗲𝗺 𝘂𝗻𝗱 𝗱𝗮𝘀 𝗩𝗲𝗿𝗵ä𝗹𝘁𝗻𝗶𝘀 𝘇𝘂𝗿 𝗘𝗨 𝗻𝗲𝘂 𝗶𝗻 𝗱𝗲𝗻 𝗧𝗼𝗽3: Das und vieles mehr zeigt die neue @20min.ch -/Tamedia-Wahlumfrage von @leewas.bsky.social

cc @lucasleemann.bsky.social
Reposted by Max Heermann
svenhegewald.bsky.social
Residential mobility also matters: Urbanites who grew up in rural areas but later moved to cities are less polarised. Divided loyalties dampen affective divides — helping explain why ruralites are consistently more polarised than urbanites. 5/7
Reposted by Max Heermann
davidsteinecke.bsky.social
Missed it over the summer? For those interested in legislative behavior, multinational societies or Imperial Austria:
Check out our (not so new) article in @lsqjournal.bsky.social. Thrilled to have written this with my two amazing co-authors Phil Howe & Christina Zuber.
doi.org/10.1111/lsq.70029
maxheermann.bsky.social
It was a great keynote indeed in an amazing venue last week at #sisp in bella Napoli.
himself.bsky.social
"science fictional visions of the earth being devoured by machine intelligences and transformed into paperclips are not nearly weird enough to capture what is happening all around us, right now." www.programmablemutter.com/p/understand...
Reposted by Max Heermann
michae.lv
We already had a fifth freedom, the Freedom of Movement of Non Personal Data. What, you hadn’t heard?
Free flow of non-personal data: Parliament approves EU’s fifth freedom
Press Releases PLENARY SESSION   IMCO   04-10-2018 - 12:16  
New rules aimed at removing obstacles to the free movement of non-personal data within the EU for companies and public authorities were adopted by MEPs.
Reposted by Max Heermann
alexandreafonso.bsky.social
As if the whole academic publishing business wasn't squeezing authors (and taxpayers) enough.
benpatrickwill.bsky.social
Journal publishers *are* bundling your papers up in "data licensing agreements" for big tech companies to use for AI model training. Our publisher, T&F, got £75m from Microsoft for that last year alone.
Reposted by Max Heermann
markuskollberg.bsky.social
This has important implications:

1) Creating a common front (or, "firewall" / "cordon sanitaire") against a radical right challenger requires a mainstream-party consensus. Once one party leaves this broad coalition, the effects of elite messaging weaken significantly.
Reposted by Max Heermann
fbermingham.bsky.social
Interesting speech by European Council president Costa at the Bled Forum today

Confirms security / Ukraine aspect of EU US deal that VDL pushed back strongly against. Clear break here
maxheermann.bsky.social
"The Brussels effect began to sputter. Now, the world that it was crafted for is to all intents and purposes dead." @abenewman.bsky.social
abenewman.bsky.social
1/New in @financialtimes.com w/ @himself.bsky.social on the Brussels Defect. Europe's longstanding path to power -- market regulation -- now a source of vulnerabilities. Europe's national security and democracy are at risk. Defection might be the only escape.

www.ft.com/content/5820...
Europe urgently needs a remedy for the ‘Brussels defect’
The EU must stop thinking it can turn thorny political controversies into solvable technical issues
www.ft.com
Reposted by Max Heermann
miriamsorace.bsky.social
Thrilled to share this 16-country conjoint experiment with @catherinedevries.bsky.social & @simonhix.bsky.social. We find strong support for majoritarian reforms and tougher legal enforcement, even when paired with policies people dislike. Policy-inelastic institutional preferences exist! A 🧵...
Sage Journals: Discover world-class research
Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.
journals.sagepub.com
Reposted by Max Heermann
himself.bsky.social
www.bostonreview.net/articles/hen... "Yet the door to Joe’s apartment—which argues with him and refuses to open because he has not paid it the obligatory tip—sounds ominously plausible. Someone, somewhere, is pitching this as a viable business plan to Y Combinator"
Reposted by Max Heermann
chesdata.bsky.social
The 2024 CHES included for the first time questions to measure positions on executive constraints & judicial independence, key features of horizontal accountability. Here, the rad right party family stands out as much less likely to support constraints on executives & judicial independence 4/
Reposted by Max Heermann
kekepana.bsky.social
I detect confusion between a Trumpian trade “deal” and a real trade agreement. A Trumpian deal is based on the assumption that governments can simply tell companies what transactions they will do, whether in trade or investment. Most governments cannot do that. 1/
Reposted by Max Heermann
etiennehoera.d-64.social
Important takeaway for the next round of this: by itself, COM isn’t equipped to manage the domestic politics of this, it needs stronger backing from capitals. Convenient for member states to hide behind it and then blame it for the outcome (sometimes more than they blame the US I feel).
lucasguttenberg.bsky.social
I agree, but COM was also caught between a rock and a hard place: I am not sure member state governments, and in particular the one in Berlin, would have had the polical stamina for a full-scale trade war. And of course they would have blamed the COM for all the collateral damage it would have had.
nvondarza.bsky.social
I think European leaders - both national and in the EU - are underestimating what it will do to their publics to be humilated by Trump.

Like the NATO summit and Rutte's 'Daddy' strategy, mabye the outcome could have been worse. But losing pride and being humilated is also a price that is paid.
Reposted by Max Heermann
abenewman.bsky.social
Even in his last days Joe Nye worked to make the world a safer place. Powerful podcast w/Bob Keohane on their work, friendship and the risks of the Trump presidency for US national interest.
www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/jos...
Joseph Nye and the End of the American Century
A Conversation With Robert Keohane
www.foreignaffairs.com
Reposted by Max Heermann
meraymaddah.bsky.social
🚨 New piece for @ecpr.bsky.social's @ecprtheloop.bsky.social@maxheermann.bsky.social & I map trips of world leaders using @josefkorbelschool.bsky.social's COLT of over 78K+ foreign trips by heads of state and gov from 1990-2023.
Reference: bsky.app/profile/jose...
Network visualization of foreign diplomatic visits using the COLT dataset.
- Countries are shown as circular nodes sized by the number of inbound visits.
- Node color indicates world region: blue for Asia, yellow for Europe, red for Africa, green for Latin America and the Caribbean, pink for Oceania, and purple for Northern America.
- Directed arrows represent path of state visits from a leader’s country to their first destination, with line thickness indicating visit frequency in each decade.
Edge colors denote decades: dark blue (1990s), orange (2000s), and light green (2010s–2023).
maxheermann.bsky.social
(2) Remember the rapid early trips of "Außenkanzler" Friedrich Merz? In a blog post for @ecprtheloop.bsky.social, @meraymaddah.bsky.social and I explore a rich new dataset on diplomatic travels to analyse where state leaders go for their inaugural foreign visits.
bsky.app/profile/ecpr...
maxheermann.bsky.social
(1) In the new In_equality magazine by @excinequality.bsky.social, we draw on original survey data from 9 countries to argue that public support for mutlilateral health policy is more robust than populists want to make you believe.
bsky.app/profile/exci...
excinequality.bsky.social
🎉 New Issue Alert! The eighth issue of In_equality magazine is here: 7 Years of Research. Looking Back and Ahead. This edition dives into our research over the past seven years and takes a look at what’s next. Read it here (also available in German): t1p.de/hfl2c @Uni Konstanz
maxheermann.bsky.social
Despite being a self-declared purist, at #IPSA2025 I learned to appreciate iced coffee more than ever.

If you're summer is also too hot (to immerse yourself in academic papers), I'm happy to offer two new short pieces perfectly timed for consuming with a cool coffee variant of your choice.
Reposted by Max Heermann
maxheermann.bsky.social
There is a pdf if you log into the website and the guidebook app works reasonably well.