Dear Hot Politics Lab friends,

I am very happy to invite you to a workshop organized as part of my NWO XS project called ‘ANTHROPOL: What do anthropological records tell us about democratic checks and balances? A pilot study of hunter-gatherer politics’. It is embedded within the Hot Politics Lab and will take place on Friday, 15 December 10:00-16:00 in the REC Common Room B9.22.

Please let me know by the end of the week if you would like to join the workshop by emailing h.mazepus@uva.nlmailto:h.mazepus@uva.nl (we will order lunch).

This interdisciplinary workshop will focus on the discussion of the early results of the project based on the coding of ethnographic records of hunter-gatherer societies. Guests with expertise in different disciplines will join us to reflect on several main themes:

- Can anthropological records help us study the evolved psychologies? - What are anthropological records good for? What would be the best next steps to build on this type of analyses of hunter gatherers? - How to test hypotheses about the human political mind in contemporary political information environment? - What is missing in current explanations of democratic/authoritarian preferences of citizens and explanations of democratic backsliding? - How could we take the research agenda studying human minds and preferences for empowering and constraining political authorities further?

The schedule for the workshop:

10:00-10:30 Walk in, coffee/tea

10:30-12:00 Session 1

* Introduction of the project and early results (project team: Honorata Mazepus, Natália Kubalová, and Henriett Pálházy) * Kristen Syme (Leiden University) * Pascal Boyer (Washington University in St. Louis)

12:00-13:00 Lunch

13:00-14:30 Session 2

* Alexander Bor (Central European University) * Magnus Feldmann (University of Bristol) * Closing discussion

14:30-15:00 Coffee break

15:00-16:00 Hot Politics Lab talk by Pascal Boyer (cognitive anthropologist and evolutionary psychologist, the author of Minds Make Societies and Religion Explained; see http://www.pascalboyer.net/)

All the best, Honorata

--- Dr. Honorata Mazepus University of Amsterdam | Department of Political Science Research group: Challenges to Democratic Representation Co-director Hot Politics Labhttps://www.hotpolitics.eu/ [cid:image001.png@01DA282C.CFD55E30]

Recent publications: Mazepus, H., Osmundsen, M., Petersen, M.B., Toshkov, D., & Dimitrova, A. (2023). Information battleground: Conflict perceptions motivate the belief in and sharing of misinformation about the adversary. Plos one, 18(3), e0282308.https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0282308 Mazepus, H. & Toshkov, D. (2022) Standing up for Democracy? Explaining Citizens’ Support for Democratic Checks and Balances, Comparative Political Studies 55(8): 1271-1297 https://doi.org/10.1177/00104140211060285 Rimkutė, D., & Mazepus, H. (2023). A widening authority–legitimacy gap in EU regulatory governance? An experimental study of the European Medicines Agency’s legitimacy in health security regulation. Journal of European Public Policy, 1-25. https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/bj4vn