Benjamin Lauderdale

@benlauderdale.bsky.social

380 followers 92 following 84 posts

Professor of Political Science at University College London

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Political science 43%

Economics 19%

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Benjamin Lauderdale @benlauderdale.bsky.social · 10d

Inexplicably you can’t get this in the US either.

Benjamin Lauderdale @benlauderdale.bsky.social · 10d

I think it is fair to say that we would all lose our minds if asked to either do the reviewing on the publishing timescale, or indeed if we had to put up with the academic timescale for the publishing.

Benjamin Lauderdale @benlauderdale.bsky.social · 10d

It is a window into the awkward joins inherent in academic publishing. On the one side, academics slowly and fitfully arguing with one another, everyone weakly incentivised; on the other, the ruthless industrial efficiency of people with performance targets to hit this week.

Benjamin Lauderdale @benlauderdale.bsky.social · 17d

True connoisseurs start with a good acronym and work from there towards a research agenda.

Reposted by Cas Mudde, Ben H. Ansell, Scott L. Greer , and 12 more Cas Mudde, Ben H. Ansell, Scott L. Greer, Dave O’Brien, Justin H. Kirkland, Benjamin Lauderdale, Lucy Barnes, Ariadne Vromen, Aileen McHarg, Steven Fielding, Jack Stilgoe, Stuart J. Turnbull‐Dugarte, Jake Anders, Laura McAtackney, Alan Renwick

UCL Constitution Unit @conunitucl.bsky.social · 28d

Join and help to lead the Constitution Unit!

@uclspp.bsky.social is looking for a Lecturer in British and Comparative Politics who will also join our senior team and contribute to our research and impact activities.

Applicants must have, or be near to finishing, a PhD.

Apply 👇

Job opportunity: Lecturer in British and Comparative Politics

The UCL Department of Political Science and Constitution Unit are seeking to appoint a Lecturer in British and Comparative Politics. The successful candidate will join the senior team at the Unit.

www.ucl.ac.uk

Benjamin Lauderdale @benlauderdale.bsky.social · Nov 24

It is also a generational opportunity to squeeze a few hundred million from universities without their best staff fleeing to the US, I guess.

Benjamin Lauderdale @benlauderdale.bsky.social · Nov 22

Thanks! I do remember you!

Benjamin Lauderdale @benlauderdale.bsky.social · Nov 22

"Oh no... you cut student events to invest in staff recruitment. The students are protesting, and the noise is reducing research productivity."

Benjamin Lauderdale @benlauderdale.bsky.social · Nov 22

Apparently I have not fully recovered from being Head of Department yet, as the thought of playing this game made me slightly ill.

Benjamin Lauderdale @benlauderdale.bsky.social · Nov 7

There is a fun revisionist argument to be made that when George Washington declined to be a monarch, that was bad actually. And this derived from the original mistake of focusing the Declaration of Independence on George III, who was not really the driver of the things the colonists objected to.

Benjamin Lauderdale @benlauderdale.bsky.social · Nov 6

If you are losing money on every student, fewer students is good, right? All those Home students are crowding out the overseas students! 😉

Benjamin Lauderdale @benlauderdale.bsky.social · Oct 10

It isn’t arbitrary if they are using more land. Now, one can certainly debate whether that is the right criteria for taxation or not, whether there would be bad effects from such a shift, and also how the valuation would work (eg does it take into account planning permissions? it probably should)

Benjamin Lauderdale @benlauderdale.bsky.social · Oct 9

There is a transition fairness problem for people who have just paid high SDLT and would be paying high annual LVT, but some partial crediting of recent SDLT against the initial years of the LVT would be a fair transition.

Benjamin Lauderdale @benlauderdale.bsky.social · Oct 9

I realise that nothing is ever simple, but wouldn’t replacing Council Tax, Business Rates, and SDLT with a Land Value Tax at a rate that raises similar revenue be a massive improvement on many dimensions?

Benjamin Lauderdale @benlauderdale.bsky.social · Oct 3

Greater love hath no man than to ask for an R function to check a matrix for rows with identical elements, however permuted.

Benjamin Lauderdale @benlauderdale.bsky.social · Sep 22

My understanding is that HMRC will not let an employer do this.

Benjamin Lauderdale @benlauderdale.bsky.social · Sep 22

That said, there is still the timing problem: you can’t pay people until they have secured right to work.

Benjamin Lauderdale @benlauderdale.bsky.social · Sep 22

These fees are not eligible to be reimbursed as expenses, they have to be paid (post-tax) by the applicant. UCL gives people relocating from abroad a taxable relocation supplement to cover this: www.ucl.ac.uk/human-resour...

Relocation Scheme

Support and benefits for staff relocating.

www.ucl.ac.uk

Benjamin Lauderdale @benlauderdale.bsky.social · Sep 5

Vive La France!

Benjamin Lauderdale @benlauderdale.bsky.social · Aug 9

Analogously, if you want research assistants to code some data for you from some texts that purports to measure some feature of the texts, you don’t get to cite that someone once successfully used RAs to code data for them, you have to validate it for your application.

Benjamin Lauderdale @benlauderdale.bsky.social · Jul 15

This issue goes way back, I wrote a blog post in 2018 about this with respect to Brexit, referencing TARP in 2008. Markets are not suited to provide informative political signals about the merits of policy: benjaminlauderdale.net/blog/archive...

You cannot trick financial markets into solving your political problem if you tell the markets that this is the plan. : benjaminlauderdale.net

benjaminlauderdale.net

Benjamin Lauderdale @benlauderdale.bsky.social · Jun 12

Is it the year of Linux on the desktop yet?

Benjamin Lauderdale @benlauderdale.bsky.social · Jun 6

When we had this visit many years ago they asked us “isn’t this a great form?” and it is a miracle that neither of us said anything impolite. Maybe you are supposed to frame it?

Reposted by Ailsa Henderson, Benjamin Lauderdale

Benjamin Lauderdale @benlauderdale.bsky.social · May 10

Well, not the whole show, the Dambusters Dog Prize section will also be pretty substantial.

Benjamin Lauderdale @benlauderdale.bsky.social · May 10

I will once again suggest en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operati... (if you want to have that segment of the show become the entire show).

Operation Petticoat - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

Benjamin Lauderdale @benlauderdale.bsky.social · May 4

Had just tapped through to make this joke when I saw Andy’s reply.

Reposted by Jürgen Maier, Robert Huber, Benjamin Lauderdale , and 1 more Jürgen Maier, Robert Huber, Benjamin Lauderdale, Markus Wagner

British Journal of Political Science @bjpols.bsky.social · Apr 22

NEW -

Winning Votes and Changing Minds: Do Populist Arguments Affect Candidate Evaluations and Issue Preferences? - cup.org/4jGIsVP

- @markuskollberg.bsky.social, @benlauderdale.bsky.social &
@chriswratil.bsky.social

#OpenAccess

BJPolS abstract discussing a study on the impact of populist rhetoric on voter preferences and political competition.

Benjamin Lauderdale @benlauderdale.bsky.social · Mar 27

My solution to this constrained optimisation problem is to focus on generating lots of true and novel trivialities. Maybe some day they will add up to something? Maybe not. Other strategies are available.

Benjamin Lauderdale @benlauderdale.bsky.social · Mar 27

My hot take is that saying things that are simultaneously true, novel, and also non-trivial is incredibly difficult, regardless of whether you are a social scientist or a journalist.

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