Alexandre Afonso
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alexandreafonso.bsky.social
Alexandre Afonso
@alexandreafonso.bsky.social
3.5K followers 1.2K following 480 posts
Associate professor at Leiden University. Political economy, migration, welfare states 🇨🇭🇵🇹 🇳🇱 http://alexandreafonso.me
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alexandreafonso.bsky.social
Not exactly a Xmas merrymaking post, but I wrote something on the changing environment for international academics in the Netherlands and how it has changed over the last 10 years: open.substack.com/pub/alexandr...
December 20, 2025 at 9:19 AM
Reposted by Alexandre Afonso
aspidea.bsky.social
✨ MaxCPE is back! ✨

Don’t miss this week's webinar on Wednesday, 17th Dec, at 1pm CEST. Alexandre Afonso (@alexandreafonso.bsky.social) will present his co-authored paper on public opinion towards immigrants & Martin Ruhs will join us to discuss.

✉️ Drop an email to maxcpe@mpifg.de to sign up
December 15, 2025 at 2:29 PM
Reposted by Alexandre Afonso
mpifg.bsky.social
🚨 MAX-CPE is back! Our online series on Comparative Political Economy offers monthly workshops on topics ranging from financial nationalism to tax havens and geofinance.

Coming up December 17, 2025: “Making Global Migration More Acceptable?” by @alexandreafonso.bsky.social

s.gwdg.de/vcF6uF
Date: December 17, 2025, 13:00. Title: "Making Global Migration More Acceptable? How the Rights and Obligations of Immigrants Upon Arrical Shape Preferences for Immigrant Admission." Speaker: Alexandre Afonso.
December 10, 2025 at 12:18 PM
Reposted by Alexandre Afonso
roderikrekker.bsky.social
(1/10) 🚨Preprint alert!🚨

In this article, I challenge claims of a generational rise of conservative men. In the media and recent academic publications, the so-called ‘youth gender gap’ has been interpreted as a generational phenomenon.

doi.org/10.31234/osf...
OSF
doi.org
November 16, 2025 at 2:24 PM
alexandreafonso.bsky.social
This is the BBC headline on yesterday's coup in Guinea Bissau. However reports in the Portuguese press (GB was a Portuguese colony) imply that the detention of the president is a smokescreen and he may have orchestrated the coup himself?
Solderiers seize power in Guinea Bissau and detain the president
November 27, 2025 at 8:30 AM
Reposted by Alexandre Afonso
alexandreafonso.bsky.social
Looking forward to our next PEPP talk with @huysmans.bsky.social, December 2 in the Hague cc. @mileskellerman.bsky.social
November 20, 2025 at 11:58 AM
alexandreafonso.bsky.social
Looking forward to our next PEPP talk with @huysmans.bsky.social, December 2 in the Hague cc. @mileskellerman.bsky.social
November 20, 2025 at 11:58 AM
alexandreafonso.bsky.social
Happy to inform you that because of the cloudflare outage I cannot mark exams
November 18, 2025 at 2:48 PM
Reposted by Alexandre Afonso
markmcgeoghegan.bsky.social
The Danish Social Democrats are currently on course for their worst election result since at least the Second World War, despite their brand of far-right accommodationism being touted as a blueprint for other centre-left parties.
November 18, 2025 at 11:58 AM
alexandreafonso.bsky.social
Difference is stark.
November 18, 2025 at 12:46 PM
alexandreafonso.bsky.social
"But Switzerland's boring": this looks like a really cool article based on qualitative interviews with ultra rich people on whether they'd move for tax reasons academic.oup.com/ser/advance-... cc. @gabrielzucman.bsky.social
November 14, 2025 at 6:51 PM
Reposted by Alexandre Afonso
benbraun.bsky.social
The central argument in this excellent paper & thread is that the open-access turn has neglected profit; indeed, it turbo-charged publishers’ margins. As political economists who know a thing or two about profit and power we should speak up a lot more. As it says below: What we’re doing is crazy.
hansonmark.bsky.social Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · Nov 11
We wrote the Strain on scientific publishing to highlight the problems of time & trust. With a fantastic group of co-authors, we present The Drain of Scientific Publishing:

a 🧵 1/n

Drain: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820
Strain: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
Oligopoly: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
A table showing profit margins of major publishers. A snippet of text related to this table is below. 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year. A figure detailing the drain on researcher time. 1. The four-fold drain 1.2 Time The number of papers published each year is growing faster than the scientific workforce, with the number of papers per researcher almost doubling between 1996 and 2022 (Figure 1A). This reflects the fact that publishers’ commercial desire to publish (sell) more material has aligned well with the competitive prestige culture in which publications help secure jobs, grants, promotions, and awards. To the extent that this growth is driven by a pressure for profit, rather than scholarly imperatives, it distorts the way researchers spend their time. The publishing system depends on unpaid reviewer labour, estimated to be over 130 million unpaid hours annually in 2020 alone (9). Researchers have complained about the demands of peer-review for decades, but the scale of the problem is now worse, with editors reporting widespread difficulties recruiting reviewers. The growth in publications involves not only the authors’ time, but that of academic editors and reviewers who are dealing with so many review demands. Even more seriously, the imperative to produce ever more articles reshapes the nature of scientific inquiry. Evidence across multiple fields shows that more papers result in ‘ossification’, not new ideas (10). It may seem paradoxical that more papers can slow progress until one considers how it affects researchers’ time. While rewards remain tied to volume, prestige, and impact of publications, researchers will be nudged away from riskier, local, interdisciplinary, and long-term work. The result is a treadmill of constant activity with limited progress whereas core scholarly practices – such as reading, reflecting and engaging with others’ contributions – is de-prioritized. What looks like productivity often masks intellectual exhaustion built on a demoralizing, narrowing scientific vision. A table of profit margins across industries. The section of text related to this table is below: 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year. The costs of inaction are plain: wasted public funds, lost researcher time, compromised scientific integrity and eroded public trust. Today, the system rewards commercial publishers first, and science second. Without bold action from the funders we risk continuing to pour resources into a system that prioritizes profit over the advancement of scientific knowledge.
November 12, 2025 at 8:30 AM
alexandreafonso.bsky.social
Perhaps some of the Netherlands' housing problems would not be so acute if everyone didn't want to live in a max. 2 or 3-storey terraced house like the Brits, but rather in a flat in a larger building (say 5-6 floors), like the Germans or the Swiss?
November 3, 2025 at 10:06 AM
alexandreafonso.bsky.social
Just discovered the existence of this 💥🚨Portuguese martial art💥🚨🥷 called Jogo do Pau.
November 2, 2025 at 12:20 PM
Reposted by Alexandre Afonso
maddow.bsky.social
this is insane.

www.kivitv.com/canyon-count...
October 31, 2025 at 6:50 PM
Reposted by Alexandre Afonso
leoniedejonge.bsky.social
Visualized here. Hot tip for journalists: the real question isn’t why Wilders lost, but why the far right has consolidated — despite Wilders's ineffectiveness in government.
October 30, 2025 at 1:55 PM
Reposted by Alexandre Afonso
simonhix.bsky.social
I have just written a Substack piece with some scenarios of what would have happened in the recent Dutch election if there had been 4% electoral threshold (with apologies to my Dutch friends for banging on about this!) substack.com/home/post/p-...
What Would happen if The Netherlands had a 4% Electoral Threshold?
Political scientists of electoral systems love The Netherlands.
substack.com
October 31, 2025 at 3:03 PM
alexandreafonso.bsky.social
Nice that you are all energised by the dynamism of a young, good looking progressive centrist. Now let me introduce you to the approval rating of Emmanuel Macron.
October 31, 2025 at 8:38 AM
alexandreafonso.bsky.social
An interesting argument I have heard in the coverage of the Dutch election is that Wilders may not be unhappy about having a smaller representation in parliament, because he did not like having a large ragtag group of inexperienced and unreliable MPs that he could not control.
October 30, 2025 at 10:53 AM
alexandreafonso.bsky.social
Not that it matters a great deal, but Wilders's PVV has taken over as biggest party ahead of D66 in the latest count. Difference is 3000 votes, both have 26 seats.
October 30, 2025 at 10:22 AM
Reposted by Alexandre Afonso
leoniedejonge.bsky.social
🗳️ First exit polls from the Netherlands: Wilders’ PVV appears to shrink from 37 to 25 seats. Make no mistake — the far right remains strong. Support hasn’t disappeared; it’s shifted across parties. The Dutch political landscape is more fragmented than ever — and the far right is no exception. 🇳🇱
October 29, 2025 at 9:43 PM
alexandreafonso.bsky.social
Only about half of the voters who voted Wilders in 2023 voted for him again.
October 29, 2025 at 9:35 PM
alexandreafonso.bsky.social
Also, the Netherlands may soon have its first gay PM in Rob Jetten, leader of D66.
October 29, 2025 at 9:33 PM
alexandreafonso.bsky.social
Discuss.
October 29, 2025 at 8:56 PM