Aditya Dasgupta
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adasgupta.bsky.social
Aditya Dasgupta
@adasgupta.bsky.social
Read and teach about social science, technology, agriculture, data, history and politics:
https://aditya-dasgupta.com
Reposted by Aditya Dasgupta
Do architecture and urban planning affect political behavior? Happy to share a paper that @tesaliarizzo.bsky.social and I have coming out at the APSR which uses computer vision to investigate how the built environment shapes inequalities in civic participation in Mexico: osf.io/preprints/so.... 🧵1/5
November 8, 2025 at 9:29 PM
Do architecture and urban planning affect political behavior? Happy to share a paper that @tesaliarizzo.bsky.social and I have coming out at the APSR which uses computer vision to investigate how the built environment shapes inequalities in civic participation in Mexico: osf.io/preprints/so.... 🧵1/5
November 8, 2025 at 9:29 PM
lol, also technically human extinction ought to be quite good for gdp per capita
AI could end scarcity, end humanity - or boost trend growth by 0.2 percentage points
November 7, 2025 at 2:43 PM
Reposted by Aditya Dasgupta
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 🧵
Paths to Power: A New Dataset on the Social Profile of Governments | British Journal of Political Science | Cambridge Core
Paths to Power: A New Dataset on the Social Profile of Governments - Volume 55
www.cambridge.org
October 20, 2025 at 1:52 PM
Reposted by Aditya Dasgupta
My response to the NYT’s “moderate to win” argument: The data shows the strategy is tapped out. Being seen as moderate by voters doesn’t boost votes, replacing every progressive with moderates would net 0 seats, and the graveyard of defeated D incumbents if full of moderates, not progressives.
The New York Times Argues “Moving to the Center Is the Way to Win.” But the Data Shows the Strategy Is Tapped Out.
Democrats already run moderates in nearly every swing district. It's not enough. A data-driven response to the case for centrism as a core electoral strategy.
data4democracy.substack.com
October 20, 2025 at 10:17 PM
Reposted by Aditya Dasgupta
Very happy to be able to share the polling-level dataset on Indian Parliamentary Elections 2009, 2014, 2019 that we have been working on for more than a decade. Both the data and the data descriptor are open access: rdcu.be/eujHH

@statsvitenskap.bsky.social @unioslo-svfak.bsky.social
October 8, 2025 at 9:13 AM
Reposted by Aditya Dasgupta
My book w/@profsorelle.bsky.social will be out in January! These ideas have brewed since I interned at Queens Legal Services 20 years ago. The book is for anyone who cares about people, justice, power & democracy. Much more to share more in the coming months!

press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...
Uncivil Democracy
How the civil legal system undermines the political lives of marginalized communities
press.princeton.edu
September 22, 2025 at 2:59 PM
Came across a cool paper on how false beliefs are sustained in equilibrium. In Murcia, prayers for rain appear to work - because they are timed to occur when rain is increasingly likely. Praying for rain globally is only found where rainfall is predictable with time: www.nber.org/papers/w31411
October 3, 2025 at 6:58 PM
This book is relevant to thinking about the present constitutional moment in the US. Constitutional and federal mythology aside, the US has always had some elements of extreme political centralization in the hands of the presidency that go back to a desire to create an electoral monarchy
September 18, 2025 at 6:40 PM
Reposted by Aditya Dasgupta
I will be engaging a conversation with @daliyang.bsky.social, @vicshih.bsky.social, @tompepinsky.com and Martin Dimitrov on my new book at the #APSA2025 Author Meets Critics panel on 9/14, 10:00 to 11:30am PDT. Come join us if you are still around.

www.cambridge.org/core/books/d...
Domination and Mobilization
Cambridge Core - Asian Studies - Domination and Mobilization
www.cambridge.org
September 11, 2025 at 11:23 PM
Reposted by Aditya Dasgupta
Incredible parallels in this Berinsky &
@gabelenz.bsky.social paper. Politicians didn't stand up to Joe McCarthy in large part because they incorrectly inferred McCarthy/ism was extremely popular. Not standing up to McCarthy was a kind of 1950s Popularism

gated academic.oup.com/poq/article/...
September 9, 2025 at 6:45 PM
Come check out our panel on Bureaucratic Performance in the Developing World at APSA (Thu, September 11, 12:00 to 1:30pm PDT in East Meeting Level, East 12. I'll be presenting some new work on how farmers and officials in India learned to game satellite-based environmental enforcement.....
September 10, 2025 at 5:51 PM
I wasn’t familiar with this terminology but the “missing intercept” problem seems like a good way to think about partial vs general equilibrium effects and why the latter isn’t just about adding up the former: voxdev.org/topic/method...
The ‘missing intercept’ problem with going from micro to macro
Many applied microeconomics papers conclude with a back-of-the-envelope calculation that scales their cross-sectional estimates to the aggregate level. These types of aggregate estimates are only vali...
voxdev.org
September 10, 2025 at 3:47 AM
Reposted by Aditya Dasgupta
The American Viewer: Political Consequences of Entertainment Media

The American Viewer: Political Consequences of Entertainment Media By Eunji Kim, Columbia University and Shawn Patterson Jr., University of Pennsylvania American voters consume an astounding amount of entertainment media, yet its…
The American Viewer: Political Consequences of Entertainment Media
The American Viewer: Political Consequences of Entertainment Media By Eunji Kim, Columbia University and Shawn Patterson Jr., University of Pennsylvania American voters consume an astounding amount of entertainment media, yet its political consequences are often neglected. We argue that this ostensibly apolitical content can create unique opportunities for politicians to build parasocial ties with voters. We study this question in the context of Donald Trump’s unconventional political trajectory and investigate the electoral consequences of The Apprentice. 
politicalsciencenow.com
September 8, 2025 at 6:00 PM
Reposted by Aditya Dasgupta
What a way to kick off the @ucmerced.bsky.social academic year! Political Science and CAPE hosted the inaugural Fall Kick-Off for faculty and students last week, featuring a celebration of Professor Christopher Ojeda's new book The Sad Citizen: How Politics is Depressing and Why It Matters.
September 4, 2025 at 9:35 PM
The thing about industrial policy is that it doesn’t seem to work very well unless you have a highly professionalized and relatively politically autonomous bureaucracy (think MITI in Japan vs license raj in India) that implements it. I think that’s the fundamental problem in the US spanning party
August 27, 2025 at 1:14 AM
Teaching a new class on technology and politics this fall — which tries to think about contemporary tech governance issues via the historical experience of past technological revolutions (IR, atom bomb, printing press, automobile, etc) Sharing the syllabus in case it is of interest..!
August 19, 2025 at 11:05 PM
I’m starting to think everyone needs a basic primer in what machine learning is, just like they need to know algebra/the basics of calculus. It’s just as accessible and I think important for critical thinking about the tools everyone will increasingly be using, including government
August 9, 2025 at 6:48 PM
In a polarized climate, nothing the president does is a bridge too far for co-partisans. Worth reading this article: muse.jhu.edu/article/729166
August 8, 2025 at 11:32 PM
Reposted by Aditya Dasgupta
"The Value of Clean Water: Experimental Evidence From Rural India"

static1.squarespace.com/static/558ef...
August 7, 2025 at 8:28 PM
Reposted by Aditya Dasgupta
The student newspaper.
This fell. To the student. Newspaper.
Stanford University’s student-run newspaper sued two senior Trump administration officials Wednesday, challenging Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s ability to revoke student visas and deem an individual deportable based on the content of their speech.
Stanford newspaper sues Trump administration over student deportations
The lawsuit challenges Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s ability to revoke student visas and deem an individual deportable based on the content of their speech.
wapo.st
August 7, 2025 at 2:10 AM
Reposted by Aditya Dasgupta
Peter Temin has himself written on the history of economic history at MIT here: read.dukeupress.edu/hope/article...
August 6, 2025 at 9:09 PM
The dominant framework that political scientists have to think about parties is Downsian competition — parties just fluidly adjust to what the electorate demands. In fact, parties are more like clubs, and insiders are more than happy to sink the whole ship if it means they enjoy rents for a while..
The annoying spam texts destroying the Democratic brand:

$678M raised through those spam tactics

$282M to one consulting firm: Mothership Strategies.

$11M to actual campaigns (1.6%)

The party isn’t just treating donors like marks—it’s being fleeced itself yet continues to back Mothership.
The Mothership Vortex: An Investigation Into the Firm at the Heart of the Democratic Spam Machine
How a single consulting firm extracted $282 million from a network of spam PACs while delivering just $11 million to actual campaigns.
open.substack.com
August 5, 2025 at 4:04 PM
A great review essay from Avinash Dixit on why government should not / cannot be run like a business: www.edegan.com/pdfs/Dixit%2...
August 5, 2025 at 3:58 PM
Reposted by Aditya Dasgupta
The annoying spam texts destroying the Democratic brand:

$678M raised through those spam tactics

$282M to one consulting firm: Mothership Strategies.

$11M to actual campaigns (1.6%)

The party isn’t just treating donors like marks—it’s being fleeced itself yet continues to back Mothership.
The Mothership Vortex: An Investigation Into the Firm at the Heart of the Democratic Spam Machine
How a single consulting firm extracted $282 million from a network of spam PACs while delivering just $11 million to actual campaigns.
open.substack.com
August 3, 2025 at 5:02 PM