GitHub - xmarquez/democracyData: Access and manipulate most standard scholarly measures of democracy Access and manipulate most standard scholarly measures of democracy - xmarquez/democracyData

New version of my R package {democracyData} available: github.com/xmarquez/dem...

Inequality aversion and prosocial punishment: Evidence from a one-shot public goods game The willingness to engage in costly punishment of free riders (prosocial punishment) is crucial to foster group cooperation and understand public goods provision. While prosocial punishment is common ...

Scheidel's "Great Leveler" argued equality has historically come from violence. Can peaceful redistribution do the same? In our lab experiment, redistribution doesn't reduce punishment — it shifts it from 'punish the rich' to 'punish free-riders.' 🧵
journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...

Very happy that my article "Electoral autocracies, hybrid regimes, and multiparty autocracies: same, same but different?" won the Frank Cass Prize for the best young scholar article in @democratization.bsky.social in 2025! Read it here or check the thread below: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Why I don't expect liberal democracy to go away any time soon: My article on the resilience of liberal democracy, published in @jeppjournal.bsky.social.

Perfectly timed to the day after Orbáns defeat and a small spike in "democracy-optimism".

There are, I argue, good reasons for such optimism.

With Hungary’s crucial election a few days away, its National Election Office has published a list of accredited international observers (n. 859). Having spent nearly a decade researching the behavior of international observers, I decided to take a closer look 😊

www.valasztas.hu/en/internati...

Three days left to apply for our mini-conference on political elites - deadline is April 1st!

It will be held August 20-21st, 2026 in Oslo. We promise good food (maybe brown cheese), beautiful scenery, & great work on political elites

Call for papers w. submission link here: bit.ly/whogovminico...

Authoritarian Persuasion at Home and Abroad: The Partial Effectiveness of Foreign Influencers in Propaganda Work - Siyu Liang, Lachlan McNamee, 2026 How do authoritarian regimes make propaganda persuasive? This study evaluates the impact of foreign influencers in propaganda. Social media videos and state bro...

Foreign influencers help authoritarian regimes: while they may not sway domestic audiences already saturated with propaganda, they can reshape the perceptions of more credulous foreign publics journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

Flag of University of Gothenburg, hanging from the wall of the Department of Political Science building. Added text: We're Hiring! Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Cross-National Survey Methodology in Political Science. Combined position at V-Dem Institute and Governance and Local Development Institute.

📢 We are hiring: Combined Postdoc position at V-Dem Institute and GLD!
Applications are open for a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Cross-National Survey Methodology in Political Science.

Application: web103.reachmee.com/ext/I005/103...

🧵1(4)
#Polisky #PoliSciSky #PoliticalScienceJobs #PostDoc

The gap that's opened up between the military capacity of the United States (unmatched in human history) and its political and diplomatic capacity (none) is frightening

The Nazis stopped Jewish doctors from practising, so thousands of them left the country (my great grandfather was one of them). So many left that this was a good natural experiment for estimating the causal effect of losing doctors on infant mortality (& thousands died)

Updated data and new insight: a new version of WTH’s authoritarian regime type dataset This article presents an updated and extended version of the widely used Wahman, Teorell, and Hadenius (WTH) (2013) dataset on autocratic regime types. While maintaining the original WTH framework,...

Updated data and new insight: a new version of WTH’s authoritarian regime type dataset

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

There is still one month left to apply to the WhoGov Mini-Conference on Political Elites. The deadline is the 1st of April.

It takes place in Oslo, August 20-21st, 2026. We welcome research on political elites broadly understood.

Call is found here : bit.ly/whogovminico...

I just learned that Ayatollah Khamenei and Ayatollah Khomenei are not the same person. Here's my plan for regime change in Iran....(1/23)

PhD student in International Relations The Department of Economic History and International Relations is a dynamic and strong education and research department at the Faculty of Social Sciences at Stockholm University. Its International Re

📚 2 PhD positions in International Relations at @stockholm-uni.bsky.social! The positions are linked to my ERC-project about local change and public support for protectionism #academicsky #polisky
Deadline April 10, 2026, apply here! 👇
su.varbi.com/en/what:job/... -
su.varbi.com/what:job/job...

Russia, Venezuela, Iran, China, the Sahel region, the United States ...

Want to know why state agents carry out brutal repression — or participate in illegal coups?

Our new book "Making a Career in Dictatorship" provides answers — it just got published by @academic.oup.com:

tinyurl.com/ystwm3tf

Beijing watching a completely mentally unstable U.S. President reorient all U.S. foreign policy to coerce Brussels:

In announcing the final makeup of the board, Trump highlighted how Putin will be joined by other distinguished individuals, including

Genghis Khan
King Leopold II
Caligula
Pol Pot
Lucky Luciano
Curtis LeMay
Tony Blair
Sauron
Hernán Cortés
Count Dracula
Benito Mussolini
Henry Kissinger
Thanos

Welcome to our Spring 2026 season!
To join any or all, remember to join our mailing list: mailchi.mp/fe045331c9c7...

America is afflicted by a rare combination: early-stage authoritarianism, but with a late-stage dictator. Think El Salvador today ruled by a crazy Papa Doc Duvalier.

While chaos is the defining feature of this struggle, pro-democratic forces can still prevail…

www.thebulwark.com/p/crazy-or-c...

Donald the Dove

You should include US states next time to make the map even more colorful.

Come join us 15-16 June 2026 in London!

The CfP for our 4th Annual Conference, co-organized with @qmul-sse-cgd.bsky.social, is open until 1 Feb!

We invite scholars of authoritarianism at all career stages to apply here: forms.gle/5eQ1NHMtK5GS...

For more information: tinyurl.com/2ap6attd

Logo of the Michael Scott Paper Company from the TV show the office.

Same thing.

Seeing people do "here's the savvy take on how and why the US should acquire Greenland" and just feeling so *embarrassed* for them. Have some dignity. You don't need to be an apologist for the world's dumbest autocrat, you're not somehow sophisticated for seeing The Smart Play on imperial vainglory.

Come join the best (mini) conference on political elites in Oslo!!!

Zoom screenshot of the orga committee's meeting with various filters on the members' faces.

And if you need more convincing, here is live footage from the organization committee's planning meeting.

Join us for the 3rd(!) round of our workshop/mini-conference! We promise great research, fun people, and rumor has it that you will also get a chance to eat the best Chinese food in all of Norway if you attend!

We are happy to announce the call for papers for the third WhoGov Mini-Conference on Political Elites!

It will be held on August 20-21st, 2026 in Oslo. We welcome research on political elites broadly understood and not just papers using WhoGov.

You can find the call here: bit.ly/whogovminico...

Abstract for the publication "Does Hard Propaganda (Also) Work in Democracies? Evidence from the United States"

📄 New paper out in @poppublicsphere.bsky.social with my amazing co-author @plutscher.bsky.social !

💡 Ever wondered if authoritarian strongman messaging also works in democracies? We find that, yes, it did under Trump during the BLM protests in the U.S. in 2020.

polisky csssky socsky commsky