Enjoying watching the UK trip over own shoelaces on this...

🔝 This is the most-read story on FT right now >>

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If you’re a PhD student from or working on MENA, or if you are advising MENA students who could benefit from a supportive online working space, please reach out. We’ve had dozens of PhD students from Turkey alone finish their dissertations, apply for grants and jobs, revise article submissions.

Dictating the Agenda: The Authoritarian Resurgence in World Politics by me & @cooleyoneurasia.bsky.social is now published by OUP in the USA (rest of world soon) If you are interested in why you see so many dictatorships & illiberal leaders influencing world politics then this is the book for you.

This should be much, much bigger news in Germany. It should be a lead item on the national news. "A four-year-old Black boy died in a fire in a house in Wilhelmshaven occupied exclusively by people of recent immigration background...The public prosecutor's office is now investigating the arson."

POMEPS Call for Papers: Syria after Assad Workshop. We seek papers on topics related to understanding Syria today that will be discussed at a virtual workshop on Sept. 19th. The deadline to apply is July 21st. For more info on how to apply: pomeps.org/call-for-pap...

Exit polls and turnout figures look very promising for Nicușor Dan (and prediction markets seem to agree). But lots of uncertainty remains given the gap between exit polls and results in the first wave. Meanwhile, Simion claimed victory, setting the stage for fraud claims (and possibly violence.)

“'No one knows better than us that the Gazans have nowhere to return,' explained a commander, whose battalion was involved in the destruction of about a thousand buildings over two months in 2025. [...]'The idea was to destroy everything.'" #Gaza www.972mag.com/israel-gaza-...

Do you have any new publications or CfPs to share with the APSG community? Do you work on authoritarian politics and are in the academic market (or will soon)? Let us know!! forms.gle/wMqEnjAgJyxq...

Wrote up a similar set of results the other day if you haven’t read it already. benansell.substack.com/p/labour-is-...

The comparativists are making good sense of US politics: a great new piece by my old friend and collaborator @lmorgenbesser.bsky.social

A decline in public investments and overall austerity, however, create more breeding ground for grievances that the far right can capitalize on. If you combine this with a normalization of their anti-immigrant position, it is the ideal situation for them. This is exactly what Labour is doing.

AI free is the new organic

My latest: Trump is heading to Saudi in mid-May, chasing $1 trillion in investments He may leave disappointed The kingdom’s role in the global economy is shifting -- from an exporter of capital to a seeker of funds Full analysis on the Bloomberg terminal

Das betrifft nicht nur Journalist*innen, die für die SZ schreiben, sondern auch alle Wissenschaftler*innen. Informa (Routledge, Taylor&Francis) hat sämtliche Daten an Microsoft verkauft, ohne Zustimmung der Autor*nnen & ohne jede Vergütung. Danke für nichts. www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty...

"The data analytic tools now being used to scour social media were enhanced during the Biden administration, a former Biden administration DHS official said."

Very excited to see my PhD dissertation published! I asked who gets to imagine Edinburgh’s future. I spoke with political leaders, tech entrepreneurs and higher education officials responsible for delivering the Edinburgh City Region Deal. Open access link ⬇️

At a time when international students and scholars are turning away from America, instead of seizing this opportunity, Number 10 have a steely focus on winning the Runcorn by-election to help defend their wafer-thin majority of 174 seats.

New Publication! @fabioangiolillo.bsky.social, @felixwiebrecht.bsky.social & @staffanlindberg.bsky.social introduce the party-system democracy index (PSDI), a new global measure on regime preferences across party systems. doi.org/10.1017/S000...

Rephrasing this: While technically accurate to refer to the "Houthi-controlled" Yemeni health ministry, phrasing + skepticism about casualty numbers is uncomfortably similar to discrediting Gaza casualty the so-called "Hamas-run" Ministry of Health www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...

Back to work after a week off and wanted to belatedly share thoughts on America's Middle East policy after a trip to DC this month. The first of which is that Trump has a skeleton crew: if personnel is policy, there's almost no policy because there are almost no personnel. 🧵

Despite the facade of a united front, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar are pursuing separate paths in dealing with Trump II on the Israeli-Palestinian issue. Read our new Insight and subscribe: Undercurrents – GCC Monarchies Contend with Gaza & Trump II www.gulfnashra.com/p/insight-un...

This article by @brunofeuerheerd.bsky.social demonstrates how open social media applications allow loyalists to perform public opinion and police critical views in authoritarian systems, using original data from Saudi Arabia. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Of course, small consumer choices like this won't change fact that Europe is totally dependent on US and Asia for tech. We don't make chips, we don't make phones, and our societies would grind to a halt without Microsoft Windows. Deeper changes are needed www.bertelsmann-stiftung.de/en/our-proje...

I'm still waiting for the "Should European nations boycott the FIFA World Cup in the US in 2026" debate to kick off

Call for Applications! 📣 Das Deutsche Historische Institut London und das International History Department der London School of Economics and Political Science schreiben zum 1.9.2026 und zum 1.9.2027 jeweils für die Dauer von einem Jahr das Gerda Henkel-Visiting Professorship 1/3

This week's Digest is out! Gulf Authors Debate Hezbollah's Fate; Saudi PIF Bans Major Consultancy Firm, and Controversy Over a Saudi Ramadan TV Show. www.gulfnashra.com/p/gulf-nashr...

Taliban surveillance Inside the Taliban's surveillance network monitoring millions www.bbc.com/news/article...

To repeat: "A country so stupid it actively trashes one of things it's good at and famous for."

Four-year fellowship at the University of Cambridge for an early-career woman scholar researching social and economic development or international relations of the Global South. Restricted to citizens of the Global South or of UK or Irish nationality. Details below 👇 newn.cam.ac.uk/vacancy/marg...

Five years in the making, based on dozens of travel to Idlib under HTS control, multiple interviews with Ahmad al-Sharaa, his closest associates, other factions, ministers, dissidents, opponents, civil society, diplomats, and more www.hurstpublishers.com/book/transfo...

New publication alert! Polisky Dictatorsky @brunofeuerheerd.bsky.social (@uniofcam.bsky.social) has recently published: “Collaborative authoritarianism and its unintended consequences" in Democratization. You can read it here: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

My latest: Saudi Arabia aims to invest $600 billion in the US, crown prince tells Trump during congratulatory phone call.

After 14 months of being held hostage by the Houthis, the crew of the Galaxy Leader are finally free.

For #ECSAS2025 in Heidelberg, I'm organizing a panel on "South Asian Islam and the World: In Search for a New Paradigm" (description below). Please help spread the word &, in case you're interest, submit an abstract! Deadline: January 30, 2025. More info: ecsas2025.com

I'm thrilled to be part of this project. Please consider subscribing!

Just in time! The December issue of "Perspectives on Politics" is out today, with special sections on: *Migrant Acceptance & Inclusion *Law & Politics *Crisis & Belief Formation *Addressing Transnational Challenges And an Introduction by our entire editorial team www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Over the past 80 years, academic writing has become substantially harder to read 📉🧪 www.economist.com/science-and-... I analysed 350k PhD thesis abstracts and found that they've become more complex in every discipline, especially the humanities and social sciences

'The Pandemic Was a Global Exam, and Our Country Came in First': Autocratic Performance Legitimacy in Saudi Arabia by @brunofeuerheerd.bsky.social via @poppublicsphere.bsky.social (2024) #WinterReading

Is the GCC post-rentierism? No One more proof: Oman - Considers introducing income tax in 2020 when oil price was low - Puts the plan on hold in 2024 when oil is higher - Foreigners are taxed at a lower income threshold ($100k) than Omanis ($1 mn) www.agbi.com/analysis/tax...

I recently gave a talk at the Arab Council for the Social Sciences on optical character recognition for historical documents in Arabic. It's now available on Youtube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=gG6t...

🚨New Publication! 🚨 This is a special one for me because it’s in @chinaquarterly.bsky.social but also because it looks at the key question that motivated me to do a PhD in the first place! What’s the point of having authoritarian institutions that by design cannot constrain? A short 🧵

I have a new article out in Democratization on Saudi Arabia & MBS, personalism/personalization, and domestic policymaking -- an exploratory case study of the early years of Vision 2030, and what it can tell poli sci about policy processes in non-democracies. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Mit NDR Info habe ich heute Morgen über die massiven israelischen Angriffe auf Militäranlagen in #Syrien gesprochen - und warum #Israel dem dortigen Machtwechsel mehr als skeptisch gegenüber steht. www.ndr.de/nachrichten/...

"His warnings are about as stark as they come. “Persuasive technology is a massively underestimated and powerful force shaping the world,” he said. “It has taken control of the pen of human history, and will drive us to catastrophe if we don’t take it back.”" www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

🚨 New article alert in @democratization.bsky.social: Why do authoritarian regimes maintain access to open U.S.-owned social media platforms like Twitter - despite their subversive potential - and how do pro-government supporters use them? 👇 OA link: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... Menasky

Front pages of Saudi newspapers today leading with the fall of the Assad regime in Syria.

Arabic newspapers in the UAE ignored Syria completely, save for Sharjah-based Al Khaleej. Today's editorial warns against the consolidation of power by Islamists and the resurgence of political Islam. There's a conspiratorial undertone suggesting that Israel is feeling optimistic about all this.