Rubio may have signed up to this extremist rubbish for the sake of his own pathetic career. That doesn't mean that Europe has to.

“I have searched the depths of Legal Arguments not yet articulated or vetted on this subject, and will be presenting an irrefutable one in the very near future”

📣CfA for a Postdoctoral Fellow Position in political science (3-4 years) as part of the ERC project “Waging of War” (WOW) - PI Scott Gates. The application deadline is March 16th, 2026. www.jobbnorge.no/en/available...

Download and read Policy Brief No. 43 “Democracy Aid: What’s in it for Donor Countries?” at the V-Dem website: v-dem.net/media/public... You can find all V-Dem Institute Policy Briefs and other publications on the V-Dem website: v-dem.net/publications/ 3(3)

Altruistic motivations aside, looking at purely self-interested motives of donors, is there still a rationale for supporting democracy abroad? YES, says a new #PolicyBrief from V-Dem Institute: Democracy Aid: What’s in it for Donor Countries? v-dem.net/media/public... 👇 1(3) #Polisky #SocialScience

New publication! Collecting data is key for social science. @adridelrio.bsky.social, Woseeok Kim, @chknutsen.bsky.social, @anjaneundorf.bsky.social, Agustina S. Paglayan & @eugenian.bsky.social suggest how to enhance transparency and replicability based on education datasets tinyurl.com/yskszsdt

Trump is quickly passing Mobutu Sese Seko in corruption, although it took Mobutu more than two decades to reach $4 billion.

New explainer from me, on understanding ICE as a paramilitary force, in more than one sense of the term 👇 theconversation.com/ice-not-only...

📢 New article 👥 Carl Henrik Knutsen (ISV), Sirianne Dahlum (ISV), Magnus Bergli Rasmussen & Tore Wig (ISV) 👉 Who Rules? Support Coalitions and Regime Survival 📗 Open Access in Comparative Political Studies 🔗 doi.org/10.1177/0010...

Trump's relentless bullying of Ukraine presented as a "peace process" is making us sound like broken records. Like, how many times do we have to say that asking Ukraine to withdraw from its most fortified region in exchange for another useless Budapest memorandum offer is a dumb proposition?

🥉“Conceptual and Measurement Issues in Assessing Democratic Backsliding”. Working Paper 140 from 2023 is the third most viewed (4,080 times). v-dem.net/media/public... @chknutsen.bsky.social @kailmarkvart.bsky.social @silindberg.bsky.social ‪@medzihorsky.bsky.social @danpemstein.com 4(6)

NEW PAPER ALERT! My paper, with @bjornhoyland.bsky.social , on how “policy loss” shapes support for the EU has just been published in @cpsjournal.bsky.social. Check it out! 1/

We are hiring a Professor! The Department of Peace and Conflict Research at Uppsala University, the world’s leading research environments in the field, is now recruiting a Professor. We welcome applications from internationally recognized scholars. uu.varbi.com/en/what:job/...

Who cares and has ever cared about the location of a book publisher? How much time have researchers wasted on figuring out this information?

Spoke to folks in Kharkiv and Kyiv - people are freezing to death while being bombed daily for hours. It’s a humanitarian crisis. Tweets of “how incredibly strong Ukrainians are” and “prayers” aren’t enough. They need help. Now.

So America is on edge, angry and reaching a boiling post--and this is President Trump's latest tweet. Serious Nero fiddling while Rome is burning vibes...

Even in the AI era, learning to quickly "read" an academic article is an essential skill. When I started grad school, I thought I had to read every word, in order, for every article I "read". I don’t do that anymore. Here’s how I "read" most academic articles:

We updated the dashboard so it now runs on Internet Explorer as well. If you are interested in seeing where Cuban members of government are born (or most other countries for that sake) now is your chance: ptp.isv.sv.uio.no/ptp/

Ultimately you're not supposed to believe it. It not mattering is the point. The bolder the lie, the greater the impunity. The ultimate victory for evil is not convincing you, it's the truth being irrelevant.

I still remember vividly reading this NYT headline in October 2024, sitting in a coffee shop in Boston, a fortnight before the presidential election #Minneapolis

Imagine how much they’d be lying about what happened without all the videos showing it from multiple angles.

So important. What they say is not the story. That is never the story. What happened is the story. Write what happened.

📊 New paper out in Democratization! How do autocrats actually stay in power? 👉 Open access: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... Co-authored with Wooseok Kim, @eugenian.bsky.social , Ksenia Northmore-Ball, and @ktertytchnaya.bsky.social.

All countries on the Board of Peace are ruled by men and their median age is 66.

Everyone in America should have to see these cases and think about what they mean for the kind of society we are becoming. They killed a mom in her minivan. And now they have grabbed this poor sweet kid, used him as bait to grab his dad, and sent him to a detention center in Texas.

The New Trumpian Anarchy, where you bully allies abroad while you send your militia to kidnap 5-year-olds at home. @dandrezner.bsky.social @foreignaffairs.com www.foreignaffairs.com/united-state...

📢 New article 👥 Jacob Nyrup, Carl Henrik Knutsen, Peter Egge Langsæther, & Ina Lyftingsmo Kristiansen 👉 Paths to Power: A New Dataset on the Social Profile of Governments 📗 Open Access in the British Journal of Political Science 🔗 doi.org/10.1017/s000...

How do different forms of state capacity protect democracy? D Andersen, @chknutsen.bsky.social & @skaaning.bsky.social argue coercive & administrative capacity affect stability in distinct ways depending on threat: buff.ly/6lpO8S3 @polstudiesassoc.bsky.social @uoypolitics.bsky.social @sagepub.com

I can't decide whether Trump's Bored of Peace is: a) A joke. b) A global coalition of Bond villains and an existential threat to peace and democracy everywhere. c) A global grift operation of hitherto unseen scale. d) All of the above.

US law requires 2/3 Senate approval for international treaties

I keep returning to one passage from Trump’s Davos speech. “You need ownership to defend something,” he said. “You can’t defend it on a lease. Who the hell wants to defend a licence agreement, or a lease?” Taken seriously, this logic is devastating. 1/4

Happening right in front of us. Talking about canceling elections.

Do fiscal deficits threaten finance ministers’ survival equally across regimes? Jonas Willibald Schmid & Lasse Aaskoven argue deficits raise removal risks in democracies but not autocracies. Read OPEN ACCESS: buff.ly/ZPhKNKm @polstudiesassoc.bsky.social @uoypolitics.bsky.social @sagepub.com #polsky

In any somewhat functioning democracy this would lead to the removal of the leader

Doing Putin's bidding by pretending to be anti-Russian is peak Trump.

God morgen, Norge.

Back in 2022, we warned that letting Ru get away with anachronistic conquest would unleash other conquests but it did not cross my mind for one second that the US would be the potential perpetrator and its allies the potential victims!

A political system in which 1 person's decisions can cause trillions of dollars in losses and a decline in the quality of life for hundreds of millions around the world is simply screwed up. #US #Trump #Tarrifs fortune.com/2026/01/17/t...

Again, I’m going to keep banging the drum that the fact we are threatening the territorial sovereignty of our closest allies is not only a gross violation of our UN & NATO treaty obligations & poses a massive threat to national security & world order but also should immediately end this presidency.

The stakes are real. The choices being made in the coming weeks, months, and years will matter - maybe for the rest of our lives.

What is happening in America right now. The arbitrary power of a tyrant deployed against his political enemies.

You can find the article introducing PtP in the link below. We are always trying to improve, so if you have any suggestions for changes to the app or notice mistakes in the data, then please let us know!

Check out our easy-to-use dashboard, which allows you to draw maps, time trends, and other vizualisations on governments and cabinet ministers from across the world 👇

We have cleaned up the crime scene and blocked a local investigation and hidden the perpetrator and invaded the state and that is how you know that we are acting in good faith and that everything was the victim’s fault. www.nytimes.com/live/2026/01...

Literal propaganda for the sitting president

The Norwegian Nobel Prize committee has been forced to make a statement, declaring that the prize cannot be transferred. It's hard even to comprehend how stupid this has become

European Union Finalizes Landmark Trade Deal With South America Covering Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay, the pact highlights the EU’s push for multilateral cooperation amid a U.S. turn toward coercive international policies.