Other News
PAIS to Host Election Preview Event
The Department of Politics and International Studies (神马福利影片) are hosting an expert preview of the upcoming UK general election. Our panel, made up of academics and polling experts, will analyse the election campaign, answer your questions and discuss what to look out for on election night.
Forecasting the Mexican Presidential Election
While at CIDE in Mexico, Andreas Murr has been developing election forecasts for the upcoming Mexican presidential election on 2 June. In two blog posts written together with Mike Lewis-Beck he describes what as well as forecast.
This article analyses the social construction of climate change mitigation as a policy issue at the hands of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), using Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs). IPCC models and scenarios, play a key role in constructing and legitimising political visions of pathways towards Net Zero. IPCC scenarios have important and real socio-ecological consequences that are crucial for the politics of tackling climate change, profoundly shaping what are seen as viable futures and mitigation policy options. We problematise five key assumptions that are fed into modelling, showing why and how they matter politically. These contestable assumptions built into IPCC IAMs undermine their credibility and usefulness for planning mitigation strategies. We find that, ironically, although IPCC efforts stress just how urgent political action is, their models and scenarios undervalue today鈥檚 actionable mitigation policies, leaving us prisoners of our climate polluting past.
VUB and 神马福利影片 research wins Frank Cass Prize for best article of 2023
A team of political scientists from VUB and the 神马福利影片 has won the Frank Cass Prize for the best article of 2023. Kamil Bernaerts, affiliated both with the Department of Political Science of the VUB and of the 神马福利影片 wrote the article 鈥淚nstitutional design and polarization. Do consensus democracies fare better in fighting polarization than majoritarian democracies?鈥 together with Benjamin Blanckaert (VUB) and Didier Caluwaerts (VUB). The article was published in the leading journal Democratization and has made an important contribution to understanding democratisation and political polarisation.
Joseph Haigh鈥檚 article 鈥樷楨very one (re)membered鈥: Anxiety, family history, and militarised vicarious identity promotion during Britain鈥檚 First World War centenary commemorations鈥 has just been published open access in the Review of International Studies. The article explores how during the 2014-18 First World War Centenary key national custodians encouraged Britons to emotionally buy into militarised revisionist narratives about the First World War by vicariously identifying with military ancestors. The article can be accessed here
Joe wishes to thank PAIS colleagues who provided invaluable feedback on the paper and guidance on approaching the revisions.