Carl Henrik Knutsen
chknutsen.bsky.social
Carl Henrik Knutsen
@chknutsen.bsky.social

Political science professor, University of Oslo; Research group leader, CIR group; Researcher, PRIO; co-PI, V-Dem

Political science 57%
Sociology 20%
Join us tomorrow at @uio.no for the 3rd C-REX/CIR meeting on Democracy and Extremism. Presentations by @chknutsen.bsky.social & @jacravn.bsky.social, followed by comments from parliamentary leader T. Brenna (Labour Party) & H. Nordby Lunde (former Conservative MP). www.sv.uio.no/c-rex/aktuel...
Demokratiets motstandskraft i møte med det ekstreme - C-REX – Senter for ekstremismeforskning
Hvordan designe et robust demokrati og beskytte det mot voldelig ekstremisme? Innledninger ved professor og statsviter Carl Henrik Knutsen og professor og statsviter Jacob Aasland Ravndal. Kommentarer...
www.sv.uio.no
Ser frem til å innlede til dette frokostmøtet sammem med @chknutsen.bsky.social om demokratiets motstandskraft i møte med det ekstreme i regi av @crexuio.bsky.social og CIR forskergruppen ved @statsvitenskap.bsky.social

www.sv.uio.no/c-rex/aktuel...
Demokratiets motstandskraft i møte med det ekstreme - C-REX – Senter for ekstremismeforskning
Hvordan designe et robust demokrati og beskytte det mot voldelig ekstremisme? Innledninger ved professor og statsviter Carl Henrik Knutsen og professor og statsviter Jacob Aasland Ravndal.
www.sv.uio.no

Haha, very un-Norwegian, but I would of course have liked that ;)

Hereby confirming that I’ve also been honored 😀 Thanks again for the great collaboration, @adridelrio.bsky.social and @plutscher.bsky.social !
Check out or new article — published today in @poppublicsphere.bsky.social — where we discuss and provide guidelines for the construction and use of datasets.

We draw on our lessons from three major data collection efforts on education policies and systems 👇
Donald Trumps plan to subvert the midterms is underway
From David Graham, on the cover of the next edition of @theatlantic.com

www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...
Donald Trump’s Plan to Subvert the Midterms Is Already Under Way
Our election system is reaching a breaking point.
www.theatlantic.com
It just got 10% dumber.

Not a joke: Trump just imposed an additional 10 percent tariff on Canada because he still doesn't understand that Reagan was a vehement free trader. www.wsj.com/politics/pol...
"Mate, I can't do anything but tell it to you straight. This Canada thing is literally the dumbest thing I've ever heard. The Canadians ran an advertisement showing Ronald Reagan being against tariffs. Guess what? Ronald Reagan was against tariffs."
Video from today's first gas attack.

Saturday morning in Chicago.
New version (0.6.0) of my #rstats package {democracyData} xmarquez.github.io/democracyData/ with @freedomhouse.bsky.social data to 2024, as well as several other sources, plus minor improvements all around
Access and Manipulate Most Available Democracy Datasets
Archives a large number of democracy datasets, many of historical interest. It also provides a number of functions to download these datasets (where available) and determine membership of a country in...
xmarquez.github.io
The self-censorship continues...

"I was the editor of Governing, a magazine and website covering state and local governments. But after facing increasing internal censorship pressures — largely to avoid critical coverage of President Donald Trump — I refused to go along, and I resigned."
Another disturbing example of how Trump silences dissent: "the chief content officer for our parent company... stated in a meeting that we should not run articles that could draw the attention of the Trump White House and have them try to shut us down." www.politico.com/news/magazin...
Opinion | I Quit My Job in the Face of Pro-Trump Censorship
A veteran journalist says his bosses were afraid of crossing the administration.
www.politico.com
🚨 New article out!

“Right-Wing Terror, Media Backlash, and Voting Preferences for the Far Right” in @bjpols.bsky.social

👉 doi.org/10.1017/S000...

We (Alex De Juan, @juvoss.bsky.social & I) examine how right-wing attacks shape support for the far-right in Germany.

Short summary thread below 👇
The Inspector General system is basically broken now. Most IGs have been fired, most positions remain vacant. Those who remain or would take the job pose no risk to holding the regime accountable.
Congress added more barriers to Trump firing IGs after his first term. He just ignored them.
“Senior department officials who were defense lawyers for the president … are now in jobs that typically must approve any such payout, underscoring potential ethical conflicts.”

The language of “ethical conflicts” here is a comical insult to the reader. But saying “rancid corruption” would be rude.
Trump Said to Demand Justice Dept. Pay Him $230 Million for Past Cases
www.nytimes.com

48 chapters on various aspects of Norwegian politics. Including one by @sirianned.bsky.social and myself on the historical development and current state of Norwegian democracy:

global.oup.com/academic/pro...

Check out the data paper (open access) and the publicly available data: We hope that many people will use it in their research and for other purposes.
NEW -

Paths to Power: A New Dataset on the Social Profile of Governments - https://cup.org/47i6oKQ

- @jacobnyrup.bsky.social, @chknutsen.bsky.social, @peterla.bsky.social & Ina Lyftingsmo Kristiansen

#OpenAccess
Great project, great people, great department!

(From a completely unbiased member of the same department)
We are hiring PhDs and postdocs to work on the ERC project GETGOV, where I am the PI.

We will investigate governing elites since 1789. I am sure that it will be a lot of fun and result in great research!

Postdocs: www.jobbnorge.no/en/available...

PhDs: www.jobbnorge.no/en/available...
Postdoctoral Fellow in Political Science (3-4 years) (288628) | University of Oslo
Job title: Postdoctoral Fellow in Political Science (3-4 years) (288628), Employer: University of Oslo, Deadline: Monday, November 17, 2025
www.jobbnorge.no
We are already thinking about the next steps. We are currently building a website presenting the data. Here, we will add interactive visualizations and useful information.
Paths to Power (PtP) - Department of Political Science
Paths to Power (PtP) is a new global dataset on the background characteristics of 44,000+ cabinet members across 141 countries in the period 1966–2021. It documents their educational, occupational, an...
www.sv.uio.no
We also see where British cabinet members attended university. Unsurprisingly, Oxford and Cambridge
graduates dominate.
We also show how the data can be used to give new insights in different fields. Do democracies or autocracies have the best educated cabinet members? Turns out that leaders are better educated in democracies, but cabinet members have about the same level of education across regimes.
However, we were by no means able to do this ourselves, so @peterla.bsky.social and @inalkristiansen.bsky.social joined the project. Moreover, we got help from an army of RAs and scholars spread across 6 continents, speaking +15 languages. We are enormously grateful to everyone who helped!
What if we google all the cabinet members in WhoGov and note down what they did before joining government? (This was before LLMs, not sure they are too helpful with this but that is a discussion for later day).

Luckily, @chknutsen.bsky.social had secured funding from the Research Council of Norway
Paths to Power (PtP) is out in @bjpols.bsky.social! It is a database with data on cabinet members' social profile globally from 1966-2021.

This is a great team effort with @chknutsen.bsky.social, @peterla.bsky.social, @inalkristiansen.bsky.social. But many more helped us along the way 🙏

A short 🧵
Paths to Power: A New Dataset on the Social Profile of Governments | British Journal of Political Science | Cambridge Core
Paths to Power: A New Dataset on the Social Profile of Governments - Volume 55
www.cambridge.org
NEW -

Paths to Power: A New Dataset on the Social Profile of Governments - https://cup.org/47i6oKQ

- @jacobnyrup.bsky.social, @chknutsen.bsky.social, @peterla.bsky.social & Ina Lyftingsmo Kristiansen

#OpenAccess
‘Fredsprisen til María Corina Machado er … mer enn en personlig anerkjennelse. Den er en påminnelse om at demokratiets fremtid hviler på dem som våger å protestere … .’

@mariannedahl.bsky.social i @aftenposten.no

www.aftenposten.no/meninger/kro...
Fredsprisen til María Corina Machado treffer tidsånden
Årets fredspris er en påminnelse om at demokratiets fremtid hviler på dem som våger å protestere uten vold.
www.aftenposten.no
How do different forms of state capacity protect democracy? D Andersen, @chknutsen.bsky.social & @skaaning.bsky.social argue coercive & administrative capacity affect stability in distinct ways depending on threat: buff.ly/2yUrCqu

@polstudiesassoc.bsky.social @uoypolitics.bsky.social @sagepub.com