we moved to the US in 1991 and watching this movie on a library VHS tape was one of my first core memories of America

many thanks also to Antoinette Handley, @lipscy.bsky.social, Joe Wong, and @sheenagreitens.bsky.social for serving on the committee

Isaac makes a counterintuitive argument based on months of fieldwork in Ghana - the introduction of chinese surveillance tech in the country actually sparked a counter-movement of civil resistance, contrary to typical theories of digital authoritarianism

in the bad direction

thanks! paper is currently under review and not publicly available - but of course, I'll send you the ms.

@semuhi.bsky.social and @sahibjafarov.bsky.social did much of the work on this dataset. over a quarter of all non-autocratic rulers 1989-2021 have been prosecuted, so it was a lot of work

sorry i'm picking on the dependent variable as i was trained

putin’s invasion is probably the clearest example of this, but we could bring in trump's trade wars or venezuela overtures. Also, economic coercion against personalist regimes has to focus on hitting patronage, regular sanctions don't work as well & in fact can be used by leaders to displace blame.

the academic literature is pretty clear that personalist regimes are more aggressive & conflict-prone, so a world ruled by personalist great powers means more volatility, uncertainty, and great power conflict. The belligerence of personalist rule means leaders break alliances & start dumb wars...

it seems like you may be part of the problem