📦 Happy to share (an updated version) of the 𝗰𝗮𝘂𝘀𝗮𝗹𝗽𝗹𝗼𝘁 R package for making causal diagrams using a simple convenience function. The package features a range of pre-defined and customizable templates, now also for the classic 2x2 typology. Suggestions welcome! #rstats 🔗 github.com/sebastianvan...

Intrastate armed conflicts have increasingly internationalized. In TraCe Working Paper No. 7, Frederik Schissler, @felixbethke.bsky.social, @hannapfeifer.bsky.social, Constantin Ruhe, @reginesonja.bsky.social & Jonas Wolff systematically assess this trend. 👉 www.trace-center.de/publikatione...

I came to Minneapolis to report on what's going on, and one of the main questions I showed up with is "just what is the scale of the resistance?" After all, we're all used to the news calling Portland a "war zone" or whatever when it's just some protests in one part of town.

Proud that 🇸🇪 Sweden is among the countries targeted by the Trump administration for standing up for the soverignty of our Danish neighbours!

📦 I got tired of constantly battling TikZ or Word for decent causal diagrams, so decided to do something about it. Here is a first public version of 𝗰𝗮𝘂𝘀𝗮𝗹𝗽𝗹𝗼𝘁, an R package for creating clean, publication-ready causal diagrams with minimal effort. #rstats github.com/sebastianvan...

Important piece from @yguichaoua.bsky.social @wlacher.bsky.social. As someone who is wondering whether she should continue to teach "International conflict management" rename the class "conflict making" or eliminate it, I'd like to offer a friendly critique. 1/11 dissentmagazine.org/article/the-...

Developed a new #RStats package to access sub-national boundary spatial data (UN OCHA COD and geoBoundaries datasets) from the excellent fieldmaps project. Using #DuckDB and #geoarrow to efficiently query remote parquet and convert to sf #RSpatial #GIS github.com/epicentre-ms...

dear US friends, when a sitting president (re)builds the seat of government, it almost always means the president has no intention of leaving at the end of term. your African friends with decades of experience

Any American medium that fails to cover the largest protests in American history is failing in the basic mission of informing the public about the facts. #NoKings

notice the general mood of the timeline? how everyone is in a good mood and there’s a lot less misery and dooming? how there’s a lot of “we’re going to beat these assholes”? anyway that’s why these events are important

I'm of the view that, when @adamprz.bsky.social writes about democracy, we should pay a lot of attention... adamprzeworski.substack.com/p/musings-1

Przeworski says it cleanly, clearly, and convincingly. What then must we do? www.dissentmagazine.org/article/how-...

DEBATT | Det är vårt ansvar att yttra oss, skriver 122 experter inom fred, säkerhet, utveckling, folkrätt och mänskliga rättigheter. www.dagensarena.se/opinion/sver...

Excellent text by Henrique Garbino on why leaving the Ottawa convention is a bad idea! ⤵️ theloop.ecpr.eu/are-landmine...

This is absurd. But to be honest, we all should have left academia.edu ages ago because of their spamming. Their "AI-generated professional podcasts" of papers are another very good reason to delete your account. Good riddance!

New publication alert: "Legacies of Repression and Resistance in Early 20th Century Europe", at Comparative Political Studies. With @andrearuggeri.bsky.social and @apvjustino.bsky.social journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

The International Association of Genocide Scholars has adopted (with 90% of its members in favor) a resolution calling what’s happening in Gaza a genocide genocidescholars.org/wp-content/u...

Sánchez: Europe’s response to war in Gaza has been a ‘failure’

“People who are experts in the study of genocide can see this situation for what it is,” Melanie O’Brien, the organization’s president and a professor of international law at the University of Western Australia, told The Associated Press.

Frankly I’m surprised more comparativists aren’t saying, “Aw that’s so cute. America’s having its first little premature rumor and speculation frenzy about the autocrat’s death after his public absence for a brief period” (common in authoritarian regimes)

The precise moment when and where in recent weeks America crossed that invisible line from democracy into authoritarianism can and will be debated by future historians, but it’s clear that the line itself has been crossed. www.doomsdayscenario.co/p/america-ti...

🆕 Excited to see this article by @maureenfubara.bsky.social out. Drawing on 100+ interviews across Nigerian states, she shows how access to rents shapes whether leaders rely on armed groups or ordinary citizens for perpetrating electoral violence. doi.org/10.1177/0022...

Armed conflicts involve governments, rebel groups, militias, communal factions, and foreign forces — all interacting in complex ways. The result? A web of violence that can feel overwhelming to understand. That's why we launch the Conflict Networks Explorer peaceobservatory.com/conflict-networks

My article "Unstable Concepts, Unresolved Controversies" was attributed to an issue. It explores how conceptual issues emerged as consociationalism and centripetalism were brought together under the label power-sharing – and proposes ways to address these issues. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

🚨 Recognize these symptoms of democratic backsliding before it's too late: 1) Extreme polarization 2) Executive control of legislature 3) Quiet incremental tests of democratic norms and limits muse.jhu.edu/article...

🆕 📣 Making my BlueSky debut to share some exciting news: the first solo-authored publication from my PhD dissertation, published last week 🔓 open access in @gsqjournal.bsky.social: academic.oup.com/isagsq/artic... A thread 🧵:

Really cool work out by @andresuribe.bsky.social and colleauges on estimating the prevalence of criminal governance in Latin America ⤵️

Now out: new article w/ @niloufersiddiqui.bsky.social - "Conceptualizing Election-Related Violence" - takes stock of the rapidly growing literature on election violence, identifying points of agreement and disagreement across studies on how the concept is defined and disaggregated into sub-types.

it's wild that R, the ubiquitous statistical computing language, was co-created by a Māori prof (Ross Ihaka) — and yet the vast majority of scientists who use R don't know this is like inventing the toaster. possibly the largest impact of a single member of an indigenous community on modern science

Great, now even cars will be racist…

Europa inskränker yttrandefriheten. Allt fler fängslas pga inlägg i sociala medier. Intressant (låst) artikel i WSJ. En kvinna från England har suttit fängslad mer än 330 dagar för rasistisk tweet, vilket lett till stor debatt om vad man får skriva offentligt… (1). www.wsj.com/world/europe...

'Vacations.' The word is 'vacations.'

Veterans’ advocates who are in direct contact with troops and their families say they are deeply concerned about the morale of the roughly 4,100 National Guard members and 700 U.S. Marines deployed to Los Angeles amid protests against immigration raids. "This is not what we signed up for."

Since May: Federal district courts have ruled against Trump admin 94% of the time. Supreme Court has sided with the Trump admin 94% of the time. A judiciary at war with itself.

New study by @matthewcebul.bsky.social & J. Pinckney asks “How do nonviolent alternatives affect international support for violent rebel groups?” Surveys across 30+ countries find “alternative resistance options consistently reduce support for armed rebellion…” journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

How does rapid urban growth affect the risk of electoral violence in African cities? In a new article (open access in World Development), I find that cities growing more rapidly were at higher risk of electoral violence. doi.org/10.1016/j.wo... (1/9)

Joakim Medin: ”Jag är ännu mer motiverad att fortsätta bevaka auktoritära krafter, hur sådana makthavare fungerar. … Jag har i många år skrivit om hur mänskliga rättigheter kränks och det här gör mig bara ännu mer övertygad om att det är fortsatt viktigt.”

This new article on rebel leader training and the duration of civil wars by @tappeortiz.bsky.social in Journal of Peace Research looks very interesting! ⤵️ journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

NSF grant cuts for this week's #TidyTuesday Code: github.com/gkaramanis/t... Map by @donnermaps.bsky.social of @the-downballot.com at the-db.co/maps #RStats #dataviz

It has been over 9 weeks of siege on #Gaza, with the State of Israel banning the entry of all humanitarian aid, medical, and commercial supplies. UNRWA has thousands of trucks ready to enter and our teams in Gaza are ready to scale up the delivery. The siege must be lifted.

🔈 Very enlightening interview with @chenoweth.bsky.social on civil resistance against the Trump administration. Both a great primer on civil resistance research and a good analysis of the current challenges and opportunities! ⤵️ podcasts.apple.com/se/podcast/w...

There were another 1000 protests against the Trump administration this past week. At nearly any prior moment in U.S. history, this would be viewed as a staggering degree of unrest. Some thoughts on protest numbers in an age of growing authoritarianism: lakauffman.substack.com/p/thinking-a...

PEN Sweden (@pensweden.bsky.social) member Joakim Medin stands trial in Ankara tomorrow on spurious ‘insult to the president’ grounds. We urge #Türkiye to drop all charges and to release him immediately. Read more ➡️ www.pen-international.org/news/trkiye-... @etc.se

Several people injured in Uppsala after reports of gunfire, police say

The problem with America in 1 graph

Liverpool FC ❤️❤️❤️

Even established authoritarian regimes consider arresting defiant judges an extreme tactic—a serious escalation usually reserved for after one-party rule is firmly entrenched. Seeing a judge arrested in the US today should alarm everyone who values democratic governance. This cannot be allowed. 🧵

Make salmonella great again…

I dag har Joakim suttit fängslad av den auktoritära turkiska regimen i tre veckor på diffusa, fabricerade anklagelser. Hans fall är redan på väg in i medieskugga och Sverige gör för lite offentligt. Turkiet har klarat av den inledande fasen då kritiken var som starkast och kan nu sitta stilla.

This professor studies dictatorships. He helped convince Harvard to stand up to Trump