🚨 Are you or do you know a student interested in authoritarianism? I am recruiting an intern to work on authoritarian parties with me starting January '26! The position is in-person in Gothenburg, Sweden & the deadline to apply is 28 November 2025. Email your application to [email protected]

Just a few days left to apply!!

Want to read what I really think about the Trump administration and the Asia Pacific? Here you go. It’s a goddamn catastrophe for U.S. national interests and for the regional economic and diplomatic order.

@chinabooksreview.com just published my review of Yu Hua's 余华 *City of Fiction*《文城》(2021, tr. 2025). "Along with other contemporary Chinese works with such graphic violence, Yu’s novel does political work by purging the traumas of China’s bloody 20th century." chinabooksreview.com/2025/10/30/f...

In just a few days!

Send in your proposal to present your work next semester!!

Paths to Power (PtP) is out in @bjpols.bsky.social! It is a database with data on cabinet members' social profile globally from 1966-2021. This is a great team effort with @chknutsen.bsky.social, @peterla.bsky.social, @inalkristiansen.bsky.social. But many more helped us along the way 🙏 A short 🧵

Our latest @apsgworkshop.bsky.social call for papers is out 🥳 Apply and share with your PhD, postdoc, assistant professor colleagues that might be interested! Here is the link to submit your abstract: forms.gle/NTxcY7Ye2JKe... Deadline is 9 November

Every academic career is built on rejection, but we don’t show it. 
CVs list publications, grants & awards, not rejected manuscripts, unfunded proposals, or failures. 
But those invisible rejections shape us more than our successes ever do. 👉 catherineeunicedevries.substack.com/p/fail-bette... 🧵

-4 days to apply!! Come and join us in Oxford next year!

Join us next week! Anna Lia Brunetti (@univie.ac.at ) & @beluabdala.bsky.social (@unisalzburg.bsky.social) will be presenting their work on the moderating role of citizen's meanings of voting. Sarah Birch (KCL) and Carolien van Ham (@radboudpol.bsky.social) will discuss.

This is a great dataset and we will all use it a lot in the coming years!

📊 What does 2 years of global protests for #Palestine look like? Nearly 48,000 demonstrations in 137 countries have been held since Oct 2023 —accounting for 15% of all protests worldwide. Explore our new infographic as the Gaza war enters its second year: acleddata.com/infographic/...

Tomorrow!

Just a few days left to apply! Translate your work into a policy brief on authoritarianism.

Restricting visas doesn’t lead to hiring non-immigrants—it leads to hiring foreigners. For every H-1B visa rejection, multinationals add ~0.4–0.9 foreign employees, especially in R&D hubs like India, China, and Canada. via @florianederer.bsky.social

@jbeisermcgrath.bsky.social and I wrote the ‘last word’ for the latest Political Insight issue @polstudiesassoc.bsky.social. We discuss the global rise of authoritarianism, its implications for domestic and international politics, and the future of democracy. journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10....

Next Tuesday!

In just 1h we will kick off the new season - join us!

Here we go with a new series of workshops by @apsgworkshop.bsky.social 🥳 Come and join us on Tuesdays to learn more from fantastic ongoing research!

"Sweeteners can harm cognitive health equivalent to 1.6 years of ageing, study finds" Or does it? Let's take a look at this "study"... www.theguardian.com/food/2025/se...

I am honored to have been awarded an ERC Starting Grant towards my project "Governing elites since the dawn of modern democracy" (GETGOV). It allows me to continue to advance this research agenda; the goal is to build a database on governing elites from 1789 and up to today + much more. #ERCStG

Pleased to share the latest version of my paper with Arthur Spirling and @lexipalmer.bsky.social on replication using LMs We show: 1. current applications of LMs in political science research *don't* meet basic standards of reproducibility...

EPSA have announced that they will hold a conference in July 2026. 😵‍💫 We understand that there might be some confusion about EPSS and EPSA. 👉🏽 So we thought we would clarify some things. A short 🧵

🧵 When the government announces that it will fire people for producing numbers that the government doesn't like, here is how our institutions should respond. (Whether they do is another story.) 1/

The 2025 Best PhD Paper Award for the best article/chapter written by a current PhD candidate goes to... @linettelim.bsky.social PhD candidate at @ucddublin.bsky.social for her chapter "Foreign Bogeymen: The Use of Anti-Foreign Media Propaganda in China" Congratulations!! 🥳

I was interviewed by the @washingtonpost.com on who applies vs. gets selected to become member of the Chinese Communist Party, and on the reasons for young social elites not to join the party.

At midnight, Palestine Action will become a proscribed terrorist organisation. As a quoted lawyer notes, it’s the first time the UK has banned a group “which does not advocate for violence” www.bbc.com/news/article...

📢 We’re Hiring! Data Manager for the DEMSCORE Research Infrastructure and the Department of Political Science, University of Gothenburg. Apply by August 10 @ web103.reachmee.com/ext/I005/103... More below👇 #SocialScience #Polisky #PoliSciSky #PoliticalScienceData #SocialScienceData #PolDataSky

Does higher state capacity go together with lower risk of democratic breakdown? Many political scientists certainly believe so! Yet, in an article just published in @polstudies.bsky.social , David Andersen, @skaaning.bsky.social and I highlight important nuances to this general relationship.

Ci sono una serie importante (e crescente) di segnali di come la democrazia italiana sia messa a dura prova. Prendendo spunto da questo articolo di @valigiablu.it, un breve 🧵 sul come sia connesso ai livelli di democrazia. www.valigiablu.it/paragon-gior...

“The idea that taking walks, reading things unrelated to your research, and hanging out with strangers in a campus pub should be considered part of the serious process of thinking, but might well meet with skepticism in practice.” www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

🚨 Big News for European Political Science 🚨 We’re thrilled to announce the launch of the European Political Science Society (EPSS): a new, member-led, not-for-profit association built to support our scholarly community. 🔗 epssnet.org Here’s a thread with everything you need to know. 🧵

New Publication Gorazd Ordanoski and @fabioangiolillo.bsky.social have just published "Patterns of incumbents’ repression during autocratization" on how antidemocratic incumbents attack accountability measures while autocratizing and applying it to Hungary and North Macedonia doi.org/10.1080/1351...

🚨New initiative on authoritarian politics — work with us @psaautocracy.bsky.social & Westminster Foundation for Democracy on a new policy brief series!! Deadline is 3 October and here you have all the details on content and how to apply👇

AJPS announces a slightly revised policy for manuscript submissions. The page limit on supplemental materials has been increased to 25 pages, and we are also now permitting the submission of pre-registered analysis plans (PAPs). Read more: ajps.org/2025/06/11/u...

🚨New publication! By now, we know 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 democratic institutions autocratizers undermine, yet we (w/ Gorazd Ordanoski) ask: 𝑯𝒐𝒘 do they attack them? We present three sequential repressive steps: 1️⃣ legitimization rhetoric 2️⃣ legal engineering 3️⃣ coercive control 🔓🧵 www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

*DEADLINE TOMORROW!* ⚠️

The Experimental Research section of the American Political Science Association (@experimentsapsa.bsky.social) invites research proposals from post-prospectus PhD students for its Experimental Research Early-Career Fellowship program. Share this post! @apsa.bsky.social, @poscresearch.bsky.social

From March 2025 - Party Systems, Democratic Positions, and Regime Changes: Introducing the Party-System Democracy Index - cup.org/4iPyIIn - @fabioangiolillo.bsky.social, @felixwiebrecht.bsky.social & @silindberg.bsky.social #OpenAccess

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...

We did not want to start the week like this, but here we are. Yet again our chair’s inbox is filled with messages from replicators who have opened “replication” folders only to find names, Social Insurance Numbers, mental-health diagnoses and incomes of study participants. 🧵

🚨New publication! I develop an interpretative methodological framework to analyse post-truth narratives. Key findings: 1. Post-truth is a type of political discourse featuring desire. 2. Post-truth discourse can play an important role in democratisation attempts. tinyurl.com/3utbft4y A thread🧵

Join us next week to close the season with Pau Vall-Prat (UC3M) presenting "Autocratic Power Sharing and Democratic Outcomes"! @rokuppers.bsky.social (@lsemethodology.bsky.social) and Felipe González (@qmul.ac.uk) will discuss. Note this is one hour later than usual! (12pm EST, 6pm CET)

A few years ago, while working at @iaionline.bsky.social, wrote this policy brief on the complex Vatican-China relations and the compromise on bishop appointments. www.iai.it/sites/defaul... These days the topic is coming back as central with the new Conclave set to begin in two days.

We are calling for best paper and best PhD paper award at @psaautocracy.bsky.social! Not much time left as deadline is 19 May – send us your work!

After years in the making, our article is finally out in @worldpolitics.bsky.social! Main takeaway: Foreign military training does not equal foreign military training - it depends on what is taught to soldiers! This has lots of implications for potentially harmful military aid.

New Call for Papers @ APSG 📣🧨 Apply to present your work on authoritarian politics during our Fall series!!

Out now! New article "State of the world 2024: 25 years of autocratization – democracy trumped?" in Democratization. doi.org/10.1080/1351... by @marinanord.bsky.social, @fabioangiolillo.bsky.social, Ana Good God, and @silindberg.bsky.social #Polisky #PoliSciSky #PoliticalScience #USA

The written piece gets the glory, but really editing does the heavy lifting. Today I talk about the invisible craft behind strong (academic) writing. Spoiler: It’s not the idea or insight, but it’s the revision. 🧵 open.substack.com/pub/catherin...