Strong incentives for reviewers to push back against work that challenges reigning paradigms. They also prefer papers that incrementally build on their own work rather than criticize it. Anonymity is supposed to safe-guard peer review but it also creates perverse incentives for authors.

I've spent years living and working abroad. But sure, go ahead with the ad hominem attacks and straw men instead of engaging with what I actually said.

It's very funny seeing the horrified responses to this from people that seemingly don't realize that hundreds of millions of children in other countries around the world still just eat what their parents eat and 1) don't starve and 2) are not emotionally scarred for the rest of their lives.

My wife isn’t Jewish and we’re members of a Reform synagogue and our son just got his bar mitzvah date and literally no one there has ever remotely suggested we aren’t all full, valued members of the community

New Bright Line Watch report! -Expert ratings of U.S. democracy largely stable at lowest levels measured (since 2017) -Record partisan divide in public ratings of democracy driven by Republicans whose evaluations are highest since 2017 -Experts near-unanimous on many threats to democracy 🧵 below

Deadline for submission to the Boston/New England Area Working Group in African Political Economy (BWGAPE) at Harvard is March 27. Please apply! @nlnathan.bsky.social @evlieb.bsky.social @piaraffler.bsky.social @scrosenzweig.bsky.social @chinemeluokafor.bsky.social Link: forms.gle/7R9PkFWEZTc6...

After years in academia, I’m exploring data science and research roles in industry. I'm a quant. social scientist (PhD Yale ’24, NYU) focused on causal inference, experiments, and large-scale data. Feel free to get in touch or share; all leads appreciated. [email protected]

🧵 I suspect that there are a lot of people out there, who are deeply troubled by the actions of ICE, but are also uncomfortable with the response of activists. One friend preferred the protests from the civil rights era. I pointed out that at the time, most mainstream white Americans disapproved...

Trump Announces 5,000% Increase In All Numbers

Well, it's a little clearer now why billionaires are so invested in technology that produces better written emails.

I miss Harry Reid

IN NEW ISSUE: Ethnic voting - @scrosenzweig.bsky.social examines the subject through the lens of group norms & social pressure using data from Africa. Read in more: buff.ly/YYogOYs #polsci @polstudiesassoc.bsky.social @uoypolitics.bsky.social @sagepub.com #polsci #poisky

That multiple NYS races show up on this list is a huge indictment of the New York Democratic Party. Lost all races in Nassau County, where candidates ran on their opposition to Mamdani, while just across the Sound in Westchester, Ken Jenkins—who did not—cruised to victory with 66% of the vote.

It's not in this article but the government asserts that the sandwich was thrown at "point blank range", which implies subway sandwiches have defined effective weapon ranges of varying lethality, and I would like to see the government's chart of these ranges.

Great analysis of the situation in Tanzania by Dan Paget

I’m sure I’m not the first to say this, but I can’t see a photo of Bovino without thinking he’s Col. Lockjaw from One Battle After Another

This is an excellent piece on Raila Odinga and how his politics fit into Kenyan politics since independence writ large

#NYC #NoKings 👑

So dangerous that they must be blown into small pieces rather than arrested … unless they are actually captured in which case they may go home with a warning. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/18/u...

This is a great paper that I had a chance to read an earlier version of as a committee member for the @epovb.bsky.social Best Paper award (which it won).

Why most polls overstate support for political violence www.gelliottmorris.com/p/most-polls...

So happy to see this out! We caution against excessive optimism that the opposition will restore countries back to their democratic trajectories after electoral victory. Weakened institutions and the memory of repression makes it tempting to continue rather than buck the trend of autocratization.

More evidence of backlash against politicians associated with political violence

🚨 New Bright Line Watch report on state of US democracy brightlinewatch.org/violence-red... -Expert ratings ~= since April but ↓ substantially since January -US now most closely resembles an illiberal democracy -Partisan gap in democracy ratings highest since 2017 Full thread of results below

Here's 90 minutes with @adamprz.bsky.social, Sue Stokes, Steven Levitsky, and @dziblatt.bsky.social on the state of American democracy right now. It was a great honor for me to be able to convene this set of people to speak together at this moment. Please share! open.spotify.com/episode/0F8W...

We must stand resolutely against political assassination and political violence of all kinds, and just as resolutely against everyone who exploits acts of violence as the pretext or excuse for political repression of political opponents.

Information environment has reached its grotesque conclusion in that there is a very real killer out there who has not been identified, apprehended, or investigated, a detail practically inconsequential to nearly every commentator’s purposes.

I mean what on earth are district court judges supposed to do at this point other than get the message from SCOTUS to let Trump do whatever he wants to no matter what the law says.

🚨🚨🚨Announcing a special issue on “Political Violence in Democracies” published by @jpeaceresearch.bsky.social and edited by @andrearuggeri.bsky.social, U Daxecker, and me. In this very long 🧵, I will introduce the special issue with its 14 articles. doi.org/10.1177/0022...

A new piece I wrote appearing in FOREIGN AFFAIRS today www.foreignaffairs.com/germany/warn...

over the last week, several political scientists i trust have declared trump a dictator and that america is not a full functioning democracy anymore. see here: goodpoliticsbadpolitics.substack.com/p/where-we-a... donmoynihan.substack.com/p/the-author... i think making a list clarifies this:

I am hiring! 1-2 post-docs to join my project on political violence in democracies at @uupeace.bsky.social!

“Conceptualizing Election-Related Violence” in Terrorism and Political Violence www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

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.

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.

Voyage of the Mimi

The real lesson of the Grok meltdown yesterday is think of the unimaginable power of controlling one of these platform scale LLMs if you don't go as over-the-top as "I'm Hitler 2.0 let's hurry up and gas the remaining Jews". If it's even slightly more subtle immense possibilities for info dominance.

Elon Musk's latest changes to Grok have made the LLM openly antisemitic.

In a June Democratic mayoral primary, Zohran Mamdani received more votes than 22 sitting US Senators received in their most recent general elections.

Netanyahu has spent the better part of two decades trying to strong arm the United States into an unprovoked war against Iran and finally found a president stupid enough to do it for him. Unbelievable.

i just find this so bizarre. searching through texts and doing the reading for myself is how i actually think through ideas! trying to put together a sentence is how i figure out what i actually want to say!

Here's a longer video of Brad Lander's detention just now inside 26 Federal Plaza as he tried to walk a man out of immigration court, by masked federal agents.

See below. The statement is posted as several skeets posted prior to the request.

What will you do when authoritarianism comes to America? Because it's here. Right now.

Candidly, as a civ-mil watcher, this scene at Bragg is freaking me out more than anything else that's happened so far. Just an absolute collapse of professional military norms.

Possible the Gaza protests hurt Ds electorally because they divided their coalition. But the war did that on its own, protests aside. Hard to pin down the electoral impact. But the evidence that American public opinion shifted in favor of the protestors’ cause is pretty clear-cut

State repression of peaceful protests can subject activists to injury and even death but—when broadcast to the world through media—often turns mass opinion against the state. bsky.app/profile/owas...

I don’t think this is consistent with contemporary political science research. See e.g. Wasow 2020 and Enos et al 2019 @owasow.bsky.social @ryanenos.bsky.social