Steven Klein
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stevenklein.bsky.social
Steven Klein
@stevenklein.bsky.social
5.3K followers 710 following 330 posts
Senior Lecturer/Associate Professor in Political Theory, King's College London. Writing a global history and philosophy of unions (Allen Lane/Oxford) and PI for DERISK https://www.derisk.org.uk/
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stevenklein.bsky.social
Wishing everyone happy new year in every single WhatsApp group I've ever been added to
December 31, 2025 at 11:23 PM
stevenklein.bsky.social
Watching harry potter with my kids. Why doesn't Cedric just tell harry to open the egg underwater? Why does he give him a riddle? Harry straight up tells him about the dragon.
December 27, 2025 at 6:42 PM
Reposted by Steven Klein
dziblatt.bsky.social
www.foreignaffairs.com/united-state...
The Price of American Authoritarianism
What can reverse democratic decline?
www.foreignaffairs.com
December 12, 2025 at 7:59 PM
stevenklein.bsky.social
Great conversation between Jeffrey Church and John McCormick on John's new book The People's Princes

www.podomatic.com/podcasts/the...
John McCormick - The People's Princes
A conversation with John McCormick about his recent book, "The People's Princes: Machiavelli, Leadership, and Liberty" (U of Chicago Press).
www.podomatic.com
December 9, 2025 at 8:02 PM
Reposted by Steven Klein
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
stevenklein.bsky.social
Everything I know about corporate governance I learned from succession, so I assume the Paramount offer will be scuttled by someone failing to show up at a board meeting or some random ex family member who then never reappears
December 8, 2025 at 4:25 PM
Reposted by Steven Klein
jonathanfloyd.bsky.social
Pls share/re-post! New Onora O'Neill Prize! Here's a brand new @ecpr.bsky.social book prize in pol-theory, regardless of whether it's your 1st/10th book! Had honour of asking Onora myself if she would lend us her good name: ecpr.eu/news/news/de... @biapt.bsky.social @psapolthought.bsky.social
Call for Nominations: Onora O’Neill Political Theory Prize
European Consortium for Political Research
ecpr.eu
December 5, 2025 at 1:06 PM
stevenklein.bsky.social
So ok maybe someone has dealt with this. CBA is premised on willingness to pay. But it's willingness to pay in the future when the policy has taken effect. By then all sorts of things in the rest of society may have changed that affect the opportunity costs and so changed willingness to pay.
December 5, 2025 at 12:06 PM
Reposted by Steven Klein
plvezina.bsky.social
We got a new paper out on Ukrainian #refugee entrepreneurs in Poland, with Cevat Giray Aksoy and Piotr Lewandowski. Check it out here: cevatgirayaksoy.com/wp-content/u... and see below for a THREAD!!! 👇 #EconTwitter
cevatgirayaksoy.com
December 3, 2025 at 3:05 PM
Reposted by Steven Klein
alanrenwick.bsky.social
We're recruiting!

Please do spread the news far and wide. We're excited by the prospect of being joined by another great new colleague!
conunitucl.bsky.social UCL Constitution Unit @conunitucl.bsky.social · Nov 28
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
November 28, 2025 at 5:10 PM
stevenklein.bsky.social
Philosophers! When is an inaction that knowingly causes some people to pay higher taxes the same as "raising their taxes"? I feel like this is your moment.
November 27, 2025 at 5:43 PM
Reposted by Steven Klein
lisamherzog.bsky.social
Update: free copy available within the next 14 days, CUP tells me! www.cambridge.org/core/element...
Politics and the Economy
Cambridge Core - Ancient Philosophy - Politics and the Economy
www.cambridge.org
November 27, 2025 at 4:49 PM
stevenklein.bsky.social
Oh sacred budget! May the market anoint you and the OBR grant you favour. Amen.
November 26, 2025 at 9:24 AM
Reposted by Steven Klein
philtinline.bsky.social
Since Labour won power, an insidious little phrase has been popping up constantly in the media: "tax raid".

So I looked into this for @thenewworldmag.bsky.social

And it turns out it once meant something completely different.

www.thenewworld.co.uk/phil-tinline...
Why the right wing media keeps screaming ‘tax raid’
This isn’t journalism, it’s propaganda that reframes tax policy as assault and a democratically elected Labour government as thieves
www.thenewworld.co.uk
November 25, 2025 at 7:41 AM
Reposted by Steven Klein
hannah-farkas.bsky.social
Excited to see my JMP cited in the Economist—it highlights the tradeoffs workers could face with a higher minimum wage and suggests more worker protections like Fair Workweek laws could be important alongside minimum wage increases

www.economist.com/finance-and-...
November 25, 2025 at 4:00 PM
stevenklein.bsky.social
excited to have a research note for DERISK, co-authored with my two amazing post-docs Virginia De Biasio and Robert Reamer. In the note, we outline some of the threats posed by systemic risks to democracy and discuss a potential pathway forward. Check it out here: www.derisk.org.uk/working-papers
Working Papers | DeRisk
DERISK explores how systemic risks are transforming governance in western democratic societies…
www.derisk.org.uk
November 25, 2025 at 10:04 AM
Reposted by Steven Klein
rutgerbregman.com
I wish I didn’t have to share this. But the BBC has decided to censor my first Reith Lecture.

They deleted the line in which I describe Donald Trump as “the most openly corrupt president in American history.” /1
November 25, 2025 at 9:26 AM
Reposted by Steven Klein
giannisarra.bsky.social
If you're a PhD student in political theory, definitely submit an abstract.

This was a terrific conference last year, and the organising committee is an amazing group.

philevents.org/event/show/1...
2026 KCL Political Theory Conference
We invite submissions from graduate students in political theory and adjacent disciplines, including but not limited to political philosophy, social and critical theory, history of political thought, ...
philevents.org
November 21, 2025 at 3:41 PM
Reposted by Steven Klein
bjpols.bsky.social
From September 2025 -

Rethinking Citizen Competence: A New Theoretical and Empirical Framework - cup.org/3I85Zlp

- @stevenklein.bsky.social & @ethanvporter.bsky.social

#OpenAccess
BJPolS abstract discussing the challenges and proposal of a new typology for assessing citizen competence in sustaining democracy. The text addresses empirical data and suggests a solutions-oriented, systemic approach rather than individual-level interventions.
November 19, 2025 at 6:50 PM
Reposted by Steven Klein
yairwallach.bsky.social
The LMU announces the cancellation of a seminar on the topic "the targeting of Palestinian academia". The cancellation announcement is titled "LMU as a place of pluralistic discourse". Couldn't make this up.
www.lmu.de/en/about-lmu...
LMU as a place of pluralistic discourse
Statement on the Planned Event “The Targeting of the Palestinian Academia” at LMU Munich
www.lmu.de
November 17, 2025 at 8:35 PM
stevenklein.bsky.social
Rewatching the Simpsons with kids and the episode with this joke about republicans and democrats just came on... evergreen
November 18, 2025 at 7:21 AM
stevenklein.bsky.social
Labour had a window for big tax raises or fiscal change - right after the election, when they could have used the "Tory's left us with a bigger mess than we realized, we need to save the NHS." Their innate caution has led them to a dead end.
luketryl.bsky.social Luke Tryl @luketryl.bsky.social · Nov 14
Too much analysis was still treating breaking the tax pledge as “just another unpopular decision” rather than recognising consequence of breaking a promise which defined an election for the public. If is correct the govt won’t now break it they may have avoided a deeply scarring loss of public trust
November 14, 2025 at 9:35 AM
Reposted by Steven Klein
samuel-bagg.bsky.social
Misinformation *is* central to democratic problems today, but the solution is *not* to correct such epistemic failures directly. Instead, we must address them at their roots, in social identity.

Or so I argue in a new post for @apaphilosophy.bsky.social.

blog.apaonline.org/2025/11/12/t...
The Problem is Epistemic. The Solution is Not. | Blog of the APA
Doubts about the wisdom of the masses are as old as philosophy itself. Yet interest in democracy’s “epistemic” merits has surged in the last decade—and it is no mystery why. Democracy is collapsing ar...
blog.apaonline.org
November 13, 2025 at 1:16 AM
Reposted by Steven Klein
yoandhey.bsky.social
KCL PPE for Public Policy Graduate
Conference

📅Date: 26 Nov 2025
🏟️Place: KCL Waterloo Campus
🎤Keynote: Prof. Jonathan Wolff
📊Sessions: Interdisciplinary & Policy-oriented (see ⤵︎for details)
📝Register here:
kclppe4pp.github.io

Please come join us!!

#PPE #Econsky #Philsky
#Polisky #Policysky
November 12, 2025 at 10:33 AM
Reposted by Steven Klein
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