David Karpa
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dkarpa.bsky.social
David Karpa
@dkarpa.bsky.social
1.8K followers 1.5K following 310 posts
Postdoc at HfP, TUM. Political economy, digital authoritarianism, algorithmic governance. I work with data. Views are mine.
www.davidkarpa.com
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Reposted by David Karpa
kunkakom.bsky.social
🧵 PhD position (75%) in Political Behavior / Political Communication / CSS
📍 LMU Munich | ⏳ 3 years | 🗓 start March–May 2026

We’re hiring for DemocraGPT, a @bidt.bsky.social-funded project developing an AI-based training for difficult conversations in times of growing polarization
January 6, 2026 at 9:32 AM
Reposted by David Karpa
quinnslobodian.com
Printing this on a small index card to hand out every time I am asked why tech billionaires supported the current administration:
January 5, 2026 at 1:25 AM
dkarpa.bsky.social
Great thread about the demand-side for non-democracy. Jacob unpacks a lot here and provides useful literature. Gather, folks!
jacobedenhofer.bsky.social Jacob Edenhofer @jacobedenhofer.bsky.social · 4d
By way of preparing for teaching and making sense of current events, I spent today trying to synthesise the demand-side literature on democratic backsliding (see figure below). The starting point of most of this literature is simple: Do voters punish politicians who violate democratic norms, or do
January 3, 2026 at 8:57 AM
dkarpa.bsky.social
"However, executive constraints appear less central to citizens’ preferences, especially when set against the promise of economic prosperity."
bjpols.bsky.social British Journal of Political Science @bjpols.bsky.social · 16d
NEW -

Elections Without Constraints? The Appeal of Electoral Autocracy Across the World - https://cup.org/49auQPf

- @anjaneundorf.bsky.social, @sirianned.bsky.social, Kristian Vrede Skaaning Frederiksen & @aykutozturk.bsky.social

#OpenAccess
BJPolS abstract of an academic article discussing how democratic institutions prioritize citizen preferences regarding economic and physical security, with a focus on varied democratic features across thirty countries.
December 31, 2025 at 10:06 AM
dkarpa.bsky.social
Everyday at exactly six AM I get a new email from someone working for the publisher rejecting my already accepted paper for an arbitrary technical reason. This gives me the stability I need to get through the day
December 31, 2025 at 8:38 AM
dkarpa.bsky.social
Terrific read!
December 31, 2025 at 8:09 AM
dkarpa.bsky.social
December 28, 2025 at 5:17 AM
Reposted by David Karpa
isabellamweber.bsky.social
The affordability crisis is an inequality crisis. When prices spike in key sectors, it's not just inflation—it's a massive redistribution shock that hits poor households hardest.
In our **new working paper**, we identify the sectors that matter most. A thread 🧵
scholarworks.umass.edu/entities/pub...
December 8, 2025 at 8:42 PM
dkarpa.bsky.social
I cannot imagine anyone thinking that
jessicahullman.bsky.social Jessica Hullman @jessicahullman.bsky.social · 19d
Many think LLM-simulated participants can transform behavioral science. But there's been a lack of accessible discussion of what it means to validate LLMs for behavioral scientists. Under what conditions can we trust LLMs to learn about human parameters? Our paper maps the validation landscape.
1/
December 18, 2025 at 8:01 PM
Reposted by David Karpa
jomichell.bsky.social
New research!

Austerity and the labour market in the UK.

papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Headline result: austerity reduced wages, increased employment rates, and contributed to weak productivity.

1/n
Estimating the effects of austerity on the labour market: Evidence from Great Britain
Between 2010 and 2019, in response to concern about the public finances, the UK government imposed substantial cuts to public spending. This austerity programme
papers.ssrn.com
December 15, 2025 at 10:48 AM
dkarpa.bsky.social
Print this paper out and have it in your pocket in case of emergency
heimbergecon.bsky.social Philipp Heimberger @heimbergecon.bsky.social · 23d
Our paper on the inflated effects of corporate tax cuts on economic growth, published in the European Economic Review, is the journal’s most downloaded paper and has attracted the most attention on social media over the last 3 years. It's also among the most widely cited papers🧵
December 15, 2025 at 8:07 AM
dkarpa.bsky.social
This is so important to acknowledge. Non-reforms in 2008 were the issue, with a moderation effect by the media. (I think)
dingdingpeng.the100.ci Julia M. Rohrer @dingdingpeng.the100.ci · 23d
The "smartphones/social media" discourse suffers from some amazing historical amnesia. There was no 2008 financial crisis and no global pandemic starting in 2020, it's all SCREENS SCREENS SCREENS. Major world events? Just the backdrop against which SCREENS happened.
December 15, 2025 at 7:19 AM
dkarpa.bsky.social
Great resource!
dingdingpeng.the100.ci Julia M. Rohrer @dingdingpeng.the100.ci · Aug 25
Ever stared at a table of regression coefficients & wondered what you're doing with your life?

Very excited to share this gentle introduction to another way of making sense of statistical models (w @vincentab.bsky.social)
Preprint: doi.org/10.31234/osf...
Website: j-rohrer.github.io/marginal-psy...
Models as Prediction Machines: How to Convert Confusing Coefficients into Clear Quantities Abstract Psychological researchers usually make sense of regression models by interpreting coefficient estimates directly. This works well enough for simple linear models, but is more challenging for more complex models with, for example, categorical variables, interactions, non-linearities, and hierarchical structures. Here, we introduce an alternative approach to making sense of statistical models. The central idea is to abstract away from the mechanics of estimation, and to treat models as “counterfactual prediction machines,” which are subsequently queried to estimate quantities and conduct tests that matter substantively. This workflow is model-agnostic; it can be applied in a consistent fashion to draw causal or descriptive inference from a wide range of models. We illustrate how to implement this workflow with the marginaleffects package, which supports over 100 different classes of models in R and Python, and present two worked examples. These examples show how the workflow can be applied across designs (e.g., observational study, randomized experiment) to answer different research questions (e.g., associations, causal effects, effect heterogeneity) while facing various challenges (e.g., controlling for confounders in a flexible manner, modelling ordinal outcomes, and interpreting non-linear models). Figure illustrating model predictions. On the X-axis the predictor, annual gross income in Euro. On the Y-axis the outcome, predicted life satisfaction. A solid line marks the curve of predictions on which individual data points are marked as model-implied outcomes at incomes of interest. Comparing two such predictions gives us a comparison. We can also fit a tangent to the line of predictions, which illustrates the slope at any given point of the curve. A figure illustrating various ways to include age as a predictor in a model. On the x-axis age (predictor), on the y-axis the outcome (model-implied importance of friends, including confidence intervals). Illustrated are 1. age as a categorical predictor, resultings in the predictions bouncing around a lot with wide confidence intervals 2. age as a linear predictor, which forces a straight line through the data points that has a very tight confidence band and 3. age splines, which lies somewhere in between as it smoothly follows the data but has more uncertainty than the straight line.
December 13, 2025 at 7:34 PM
dkarpa.bsky.social
Thanks to a natural experiment, we are able to leverage marking discontinuity in order to estima...
chanret.bsky.social Chris Hanretty @chanret.bsky.social · 25d
Thanks to @johnholbein1.bsky.social I learned about this paper on rent control in Berlin.

Because I was marking, I immediately downloaded the replication materials.

bsky.app/profile/john...
johnholbein1.bsky.social John Holbein @johnholbein1.bsky.social · 26d
Um, ok...

This paper forthcoming at the JOP provides evidence that rent control in Germany actually made tenants MASSIVELY *less* NIMBY.

This result was in the opposite direction of the authors' pre-registered expectations.

And the effect sizes are, truly, massive.
December 13, 2025 at 7:30 PM
Reposted by David Karpa
goodauth.bsky.social
Here's what we learned about free speech in 2025.

This research helps explain the complicated logic behind censorship.

Read the latest: goodauthority.org/news/what-we...
What we learned about free speech in 2025
This research helps explain the complicated logic behind censorship.
goodauthority.org
December 12, 2025 at 5:48 PM
Reposted by David Karpa
tonirodon.bsky.social
Politicians often overestimate citizen indifference to policies, likely reflecting scepticism about whether opinions are genuine or just survey responses link.springer.com/article/10.1...
How Politicians (mis)Perceive Policy Salience - Political Behavior
For representation to work well, elected politicians need to have a good grasp not just of which policies citizens support but also of which policies are most salient to citizens. Recent studies have ...
link.springer.com
December 12, 2025 at 8:39 AM
dkarpa.bsky.social
The ultimate "I have three short comments on your presentation"
jameschalmers.bsky.social James Chalmers @jameschalmers.bsky.social · 26d
An academic disliked an Oxford Very Short Introduction (145 pages) in his field so much that he wrote a 200 page book review attacking it. www.pierre-legrand.com/ewExternalFi...
December 12, 2025 at 7:09 AM
Reposted by David Karpa
alexhanna.bsky.social
Tech bros don’t actually understand the sci-fi they claim to love. Thank you Al Jazeera English for having me on.
December 10, 2025 at 7:07 PM
dkarpa.bsky.social
God bless america
December 9, 2025 at 10:08 AM
Reposted by David Karpa
adambonica.bsky.social
Study after study shows campaign ads barely move the needle. So where does money’s real power come from? I ranked the five ways money corrupts politics—from least to most corrosive. What I’ve learned from 15 years of tracking political money:
Money Doesn't Buy Elections. It Does Something Worse.
Campaign ads barely move the needle. The real influence is hiding in plain sight.
open.substack.com
December 6, 2025 at 8:22 PM
dkarpa.bsky.social
Imagine everyone treated books like this...
soashworth.bsky.social Scott Ashworth @soashworth.bsky.social · Dec 6
Imagine running a bookstore and treating the books like this.
December 6, 2025 at 8:59 PM
Reposted by David Karpa
ecpr.bsky.social
📣 Call for #ecprgc26 Panels and Papers
👁️ The Many Faces of Digital Authoritarianism
🪑 Ahmed Maati & Stefan Wurster
✅ @digitalaut-ecpr.bsky.social endorsed
⌛ Deadline: 5 Jan buff.ly/XSm1QJJ

#MixedMethods #Polisky #BigData
The Many Faces of Digital Authoritarianism
General Conference 2026, 8 – 11 September, Jagiellonian University
buff.ly
December 2, 2025 at 12:00 PM
Reposted by David Karpa
daveparisi.bsky.social
Finally got to the "I want to burn it all down" portion of the gen AI-era semester, where I realize they're all using some sort of LLM to "help" organize their thoughts and it's just spitting out raw sewage onto the screen.
November 17, 2025 at 10:04 PM
dkarpa.bsky.social
Important paper!
simonecremaschi.bsky.social Simone Cremaschi @simonecremaschi.bsky.social · Nov 17
Now out @apsrjournal.bsky.social with page numbers! 🫒

We advance a new argument on how economic crises fuel support for far-right parties in left-behind places by tapping into long-standing community narratives

shorturl.at/bA55v

@catherinedevries.bsky.social
November 17, 2025 at 6:00 PM
dkarpa.bsky.social
"many people would forfeit democratic elections to avoid living in a dangerous society but not to obtain wealth and other goods. Electoral democracy is attractive globally but can be undermined by concerns about crime and safety."

Interesting, considering crime is mostly a consequence of low wealth
November 17, 2025 at 7:18 AM