The special issue of @cpsjournal.bsky.social “Back from the Brink: Countering Illiberalism in Liberal Democracies”, co-edited by myself and Isabela Mares, was just published. The issue includes 8 articles, many of which set new research agendas. A🧵w/overview 1/10
journals.sagepub.com/toc/CPS/curr...
Agree with every word...
www.ft.com/content/ba3b...
See Douthat is free to make up any absurd definition of democracy, elections, and corruption that he likes. The problem for the rest of us is that he gets to say these things through an established and respected outlet like the NYT.
Also I don’t want to point out the obvious- but of course it was a *doctored image* because Trump isn’t really the messiah healing a dying Epstein with the avengers hovering around him.
It is crazymaking to listen to the right claim Orban's loss means he was never an authoritarian when people in Hungary feared that opposing him would immiserate their families
www.nytimes.com/2026/04/13/o...
This pattern holds a crucial lesson for America’s current moment. As democratic norms erode and elections become increasingly tilted, anti-corruption movements offer what partisan politics cannot: the moral authority to unite society against a rigged system. When traditional opposition fails, these movements succeed because they transcend party lines, mobilizing citizens around a cause larger than any candidate: the fundamental fairness of the system itself. Research shows that in polarized societies, the most effective opposition doesn’t fight on the traditional left-right battlefield where positions are entrenched. Instead, it creates an entirely new axis of conflict.1 Framing the stakes as clean versus corrupt shifts debate from rigid ideological divisions to a universally resonant moral question: are you on the side of the people or a corrupt elite?
Truth is, Orbán is just the latest in long list of authoritarians to be defeated by anti-corruption politics.
A Democratic landslide is possible if they can credibly take up the anti-corruption mantle. But that can’t happen if voters see them as corrupt and beholden to wealthy donors.
More, more more!
Ding dong, the mafia state is out!
Magyar has his work cut out for him: much of the damage in Poland is still there, and that regime only lasted 5 years.
But in the meantime, this is a fantastic result, and so overwhelming that Orbán conceded without the expected legal challenges, etc!
Reuters says Tisza has at least 135 seats: 133 is the constitutional supermajority!
Live by highly disproportional electoral systems (which Orbán made even more disproportional with the extra compensation votes awarded to winners), die by highly disproportional electoral systems.
OK, where should JD go next?
Now Tisza is at 135, surpassing supermajority
Do architecture and urban planning affect political behavior? Happy to share a paper that @tesaliarizzo.bsky.social and I have coming out at the APSR which uses computer vision to investigate how the built environment shapes inequalities in civic participation in Mexico: osf.io/preprints/so.... 🧵1/5
Children in Juárez, Mexico, watched a live broadcast of the launch of NASA's Artemis II mission. JOSE LUIS GONZALEZ/REUTERS
call me a liberal nationalist but I feel proud to export an American culture of space exploration, multicultural immigrant cuisine, the Black American music tradition, football basketball baseball, NY Jewish comedy, land grant universities, and social libertarianism
When the first dimension of politics is race and the end goal of political competition is not redistribution but maximal social integration. Sounds pretty good actually.
loving this thread. Another gap here is institutional architecture of Dem Party. Popularists want to keep the institutional configurations while tinkering with policy, but you cannot compete with a radicalized GOP with a 1990/2000s Dem party. Political selection & party-voter linkages need change.
something strange and horrible and somehow fitting that we should have a very real threat of madman civilizational destruction at the very moment when we also have humans on the dark side of the moon taking pictures that show how small, precious, and beautiful our world and existence is
Armageddon is terrible, but boring competent governing doesn’t sell, plus Biden didn’t give interviews, and so making up stuff about the economy was our only option!
Death, Diversion, and Departure by Chipo Dendere
Authoritarian regimes thrive when citizens exit the country, whether through death, fleeing the country, or dropping out of participation.
📚 https://cup.org/3ZmT4kG
Probably not a good idea to watch this clip on a public bus. Bawling. What an incredibly beautiful representation of humanity.
Congrats again to Ezra Klein:
bsky.app/profile/mcop...
A selection of the best responses to this question.
(from @sameyler.bsky.social @jordanw2382.bsky.social @interfluidity.com @pamherd.bsky.social)
Hannah the plumber but in Florida.
probably completely obvious but the reason Project Hail Mary is doing so well (apart from being very well made) is that it is all about problem-solving, cooperation, self-sacrifice, and forming deep relationships with those from far away. All values that people feel a desperate need for right now.
Spencer is brusque about career politicians: “Politics at uni, work for an MP, become an MP. If you have a handful of people who’ve done it that way, absolutely fine. But at the moment, there’s way too many like that and they lose themselves along the way.”
GOAT
Americans about to have a generation with liver toxicities even as they drink less.
Should have been the winning message of the elections in 2024. but unfortunately we were told it was the eggs.
Fascism is worse than neoliberalism in literally every way
Oh this is a nice piece after the mealy mouthed ungenerous review by The Guardian of this well cast, acted and staged show.
Two very good points :
1. Bluesky all too often substitutes attempts at social punishment (insults, ad hominems, obscenity) for any kind of argument or substantive engagement
2. this kind of endless policing of ideological purity does bubkes to build the kind of constitutional coalition we need.