Great piece here by Niharika Mandhana & @joshchin.bsky.social

In Nicaragua, longtime regime loyalists have been purged, shoring up Rosario Murillo’s power, likely to help her fully take over if her husband, longtime President Daniel Ortega, resigns or dies. I spoke with Frances Robles from the @nytimes.com about the crackdown www.nytimes.com/2025/09/20/w...

'...I'll send one to Moscow. And I will not have to send a second one.'

Part of a 1949 letter from Tito to Stalin. We’ve all had to send a letter like this to a colleague at some point.

No apologies necessary! It’s an excellent book - check it out and go get yourself a copy.

A chilling piece on how transnational repression impacts students in Canada, with quotes from me.

We’re still doing it! It’s just on behalf of Bolsonaro and the like now

lol

The United States government is now systematically targeting comedians who make fun of the president.

Author copies for Dictating the Agenda: The Authoritarian Resurgence in World Politics by me & @cooleyoneurasia.bsky.social arrived today! If you re-post this by Sept 30 we'll put you in a drawing & send the winner a free signed copy anywhere they happen to be on the planet.

Out now, folks!

Author copies for Dictating the Agenda: The Authoritarian Resurgence in World Politics by me & @cooleyoneurasia.bsky.social arrived today! If you re-post this by Sept 30 we'll put you in a drawing & send the winner a free signed copy anywhere they happen to be on the planet.

haha

Interesting development.

For my American comrades: Dictating the Agenda: The Authoritarian Resurgence in World Politics Is on sale at Amazon for 22 bucks for hardcover. That’s a pretty good deal! European release in a couple weeks.

Sorry but this Irish Times piece about village elections in China has some pretty misleading claims: www.irishtimes.com/world/asia-p... If you want recent systematic research on village elections, consult this open access piece in China Quarterly instead: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

giving America serious side-eye right now

The Milk Tea Alliance: Inside Asia’s Struggle Against Autocracy and Beijing by @jwassers.bsky.social via Columbia University Press (2025) #AutumnReading

For my American comrades: Dictating the Agenda: The Authoritarian Resurgence in World Politics Is on sale at Amazon for 22 bucks for hardcover. That’s a pretty good deal! European release in a couple weeks.

We are reading Mao’s 1927 Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan for my class on Monday and I can assure everyone that I’m not trying to make anyone Maoist.

OK, but based on consultations with just over two dozen highly engaged young people.

Russia just wants peace. If only you guys could see that.

VOA, RFA, RFE/RL, the various civil society projects and media grants that have been terminated—these produce a wealth of open-source information, often about relatively hard-to-cover and niche national contexts and subjects, that will not be replicated once gone

This covers well the damage of what’s happening, and I’ll add: people outside this ecosystem underestimate how much information it produces that others rely on for their knowledge of world affairs

Apparently some people are setting fire to playgrounds in Dublin.

"The Government has never formally disclosed the names of investment and endowment beneficiaries, prompting questions about the lack of transparency in a scheme that exchanges Irish visas for money."

A good read in yesterday’s Sindo by my @ucddublin.bsky.social @ucdpolitics.bsky.social colleague @alexdukalskis.bsky.social www.independent.ie/opinion/alex... Alexander Dukalskis: Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un’s show of dictator muscle in China keeps the world on edge

If you made it to page 19 of today’s Sunday Independent you can see my analysis of the Xi-Putin-Kim bash in Beijing last week. m.independent.ie/opinion/alex...

BREAKING: Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba says he is stepping down as party leader, therefore the prime minister of Japan. www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/0...

BREAKING: Japanese PM says he has decided to quit 石破首相 総理大臣を辞任する意向を固める | NHK www3.nhk.or.jp/news/html/20...

Interesting article in the @financialtimes.com about Taiwan’s film industry & the spectre of China’s censorship

“What's behind Putin's uncompromising stance?” the fact that he wants to take over Ukraine I’d imagine

Congratulations! I highly recommend the book.

Waiting to pick up my elementary school kid today. Some kids see me and are taking among themselves. Kid A: “is that your dad?” Kid B: “no my dad is way cooler than that guy.” Honestly, that’s check mate. There’s no way to come back from that.

If only you could have done something about this when you were one of the most powerful people on the planet, structurally situated in the US political system to have influence and leverage. Instead, you chickened out.

Sure but this is like some old Soviet bs where people have to prove that their science is consistent with Lenin to be accepted as legitimate & use inconsistencies to attack enemies. It’s a sad commentary on the Republican Party that they can’t just say that vaccines work without this nonsense.

I previously posted about important research by @ucddublin.bsky.social academics on CCP propaganda & use of the term "so-called" to describe things they don't like (other governments, international bodies, concepts - and me). The authors are here! @alexdukalskis.bsky.social @linettelim.bsky.social

“Diffusion of Digital Authoritarian Practices in China’s Neighbourhood: The Cases of Iran and Pakistan.” by Galib Bashirov, Shahram Akbarzadeh, @ihsanylmz.bsky.social and Zahid Shahab Ahmed in @democratization.bsky.social (2025) #AutumnReading

My book "Contested Taiwan: Sovereignty, Social Movements, and Party Formation" is out! I am incredibly grateful for such kind endorsements from @DafyddFell , @chongjaian.bsky.social and @josephwongut.bsky.social. Pre-orders are arriving now, and it is available in the link below!

Oh good glad the world’s two most powerful dictators are discussing how to achieve immortality.

Our paper “A Supervised Machine Learning Approach for Assessing Grant Peer Review Reports” has been accepted at Quantitative Science Studies. We present a workflow and fine-tuned transformer models to analyse grant peer review reports at scale. Paper (open access): doi.org/10.1162/qss....

A different way to think about the message being sent is: "We, the hard core authoritarians of the world, have the power to disregard democracy and fight a war of aggression in your backyard and there is little you can do about it."

Strange way to frame this: "By embracing Putin and Kim so ostentatiously, Xi was sending a message to the United States and the European Union that China will make its own geopolitical choices." I mean I guess, but it's not like China was pro-US or Europe or not making its own choices before this.

Great piece today in @indexoncensorship.org by @jemimahsteinfeld.bsky.social on the "so-called" trial of Jimmy Lai with a shout-out to recent research by me & @linettelim.bsky.social in @jeas-journal.bsky.social

Thanks for reading our @jeas-journal.bsky.social research @jemimahsteinfeld.bsky.social ! The phrase was so interesting to @linettelim.bsky.social and I that we had to dig a bit deeper, which turned out to be quite revealing.

"China’s Active Defence Against Democracy Promotion: A Conceptual Analysis" by Sungmin Cho in @democratization.bsky.social ‪‪‬(2025) #AutumnReading

Thanks so much @caoilfhionn.bsky.social for reading our @jeas-journal.bsky.social research @linettelim.bsky.social and i were struck by the phrase “so-called” in China’s propaganda and are happy (academically) and discouraged (normatively) that our findings cohere with your experience.

September: the Monday of Months.