Simon Hix
Stein Rokkan Chair in Comparative Politics, at EUI. FBA, FRSA. Democracy, parties, elections, electoral systems etc. Live music. COYI
- From the brilliant Adam Przeworski's latest substack diary. I share this same fear. Having seen how authoritarian leaders (e.g. Orban) manipulate "free and fair" elections, I think people are too complacent about the 2026 midterms.
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- So did you take a burner phone or trust to luck no one at immigration would root around in your social media ? :)
- A burner!
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- True!
- @alanbeattie.bsky.social having a good moan about the US-UK trade deal. Why do you hate Britain so much, Alan? 😉 on.ft.com/438PHzp Britain’s trade deal with Trump may not be good news for the world
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- You nailed it 👏
- We have an American Pope! Wow!! That’s out of left field. A Trump effect?
- As we predicted (ecfr.eu/publication/...), the right-wing majority in the 2024-29 European Parliament is watering down the European Green Deal.
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- Reminder that they are a partner and not a rubber stamp?
- Indeed. Although most of the chat is the other way: ie. the people who didn’t back him in the first vote were on the right of the CDU!
- Wow! What are the SPD playing at? on.ft.com/434jvx6 Friedrich Merz fails in initial vote to become Germany’s chancellor
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- Interesting. Thanks.
- Very good piece by @nixonsimon.bsky.social on Breugel’s innovative proposal for a European common defence fund. Europe needs to do this, and the EU needs to get over its reluctance. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
- Some very good points by @gideonrachman.bsky.social, about why the EU is better at trade deals than the US: on.ft.com/3ECSdpq
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- Yep. Exactly! This has been a long time coming.
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- Voting has become more like online shopping than being a lifelong supporter of a particular football team!
- 🗳️ Populism is a warning sign. English local elections show it again: People feel abandoned & look scapegoats. Drawing on own research & others, I argue 👇🏽 💡 To counter populism: We need to reinvest in citizens, e.g. housing, health & dignity. Short 🧵 📖 www.socialeurope.eu/to-counter-p...
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- Absolutely. I would also add public transport, which is crumbling in Germany and the UK.
- This is great. I also think it would be interesting to plot the two-party vote share in European Parliament elections on the same graph, which revealed a collapse in support for Lab+Con well before Brexit.
- @drjennings.bsky.social tells it like it is. A familiar picture in the UK:
- Tories squeezed: losing seats in the North and Midlands to Reform, and seats in the South and South West to the Lib Dems, eg.
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- Sorry guys! Sloppy
- England needs PR for local elections. With such fragmented politics, first-past-the-post yields massively skewed and unrepresentative results. And, coalitions in local government will force needed compromises: www.theguardian.com/politics/liv...
- Thanks Toby. This was a lot of fun. Hope your listeners agree.
- “We’re back to the politics of the 1890s and 1910s - J S Mill & Asquith & Le Parti Radical versus the nationalists who want to roll the clock back” - @simonhix.bsky.social www.politicalphilosophypodcast.com/the-eu
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- Thanks Bernd. I’ll have a think about that
- Very good analysis by @robfordmancs.bsky.social. We need PR in the UK, starting with local elections in England and Wales (it’s already used for these elections in Scotland and NI): www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
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- How was the Brexit referendum a PR vote? That was a classic case of majoritarian binary choice winner-takes-all!
- WTAF?!?
- “As a British student in the US in the early 90s, I thought it was the greatest country on Earth. I acquired an American wife & kids, but we ended up in Paris. Over decades I’ve tracked the lives of US friends & relatives” @simonkuper.bsky.social share a name, and parallel lives! on.ft.com/3Gd0BfC
- Thanks Toby. That was a fun discussion. Hope your listeners agree.
- This is the most incredible commentary on what is happening in the US, by one of the most eminent political scientists on the planet. You have to read this. open.substack.com/pub/adamprze...
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- Good point. I guess if Trump/a Republican loses the next presidential election, the US will still be a democracy in Przeworski’s opinion.
- I found this piece fascinating, on the thinking behind the tariffs. Eg. Denial of the contradiction between complaining that the global south doesn’t apply labour and environmental standards and complaining that Europe prevents US hormone-injected beef! on.ft.com/4ckmCoG
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- True. But neither of those countries had immigration officers with the power to search visitors’ phones for social media posts that were critical of the government.
- Excellent by @faisalislam.bsky.social, eg: “The US economy did very well [from free trade]. The problem …was that it was not evenly distributed among sectors. And what the US lacked was levels of redistribution and adaptation to spread that wealth across the country.” www.bbc.com/news/article...
- Peter Katzenstein already explained this back in the early 1980s, in his classic “Small States in World Markets”
- Finally some robust defiance. Go New York and Chicago! www.nytimes.com/2025/04/04/u...
- Bravo South Korea. This is what proper democracy looks like 👏 on.ft.com/3E7kvI7 South Korea’s president removed from office over martial law bid
- The only thing I would add is that many of the lowest paid “working class” in many societies do not have the right to vote, as they are recent migrants. “Progressive” parties should be campaigning to give all legal residents voting rights.
- This is an excellent thread. Thank you @casmudde.bsky.social
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- I guess it depends which human’s hormones they are injecting 😉
- US trade deficit calculations are purely based on trade in goods. What happens if services trade is taken into account, eg. those US digital services we all consume in huge quantities?
- If you want to understand the warped logic (aka nonsense) behind the tariff rates, here’s a useful explainer: on.ft.com/42tEaLM “Reciprocal tariffs: you won’t believe how they came up with the numbers”
- This is very good. Trump is using tariffs to exert power and patronage, because that’s a major lever the Presidency has. Makes sense.
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- Trump claims that European states charging VAT is a “tariff” on US goods! Where does this madness end? Eg. when I pay a 20% tip on a meal in an American restaurant, should I see this as a tariff on the eating service I am selling to America? 🤷♂️
- For 80 years, US foreign policy consensus has been: - democracy/rule of law - defending allies - free trade - global institutions European and Asia-Pacific democracies have been huge beneficiaries => we need a new political and institutional framework otherwise Trump will divide and rule us
