iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Kyle Marquardt

Laurence Broers @laurencebroers.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Armenian-Azerbaijani debates have been roiling for two weeks following an incident on an Azerbaijani tour of cultural heritage sites in Karabakh. What happened and what does it tell us about the state of the peace process?

192

Reposted by Kyle Marquardt

V-Dem Institute @vdeminstitute.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

📢 Job opportunity! University of Gothenburg is recruiting 25 early-career researchers through the 𝗚𝗼𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗻𝗯𝘂𝗿𝗴 𝗚𝗹𝗼𝗯𝗮𝗹 𝗦𝗰𝗵𝗼𝗹𝗮𝗿𝘀 𝗜𝗻𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗮𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲. The Department of Political Science, home of V-Dem, is 𝗿𝗲𝗰𝗿𝘂𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝟭-𝟮 𝗔𝘀𝘀𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗳𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗼𝗿𝘀. 📅 Apply by October 30, 2026 at direc.to/pmUP #PoliticalScienceJobs

11519

Kyle Marquardt @kailmarkvart.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Anyway, this is the correct list.

Alphabetized and inarguably correct* list of ten best tv shows of the 21st century: the Americans, Atlanta, Banshee, Deadwood, the Expanse, Firefly, Game of Thrones, Justified, Slow Horses*, and 24. *Could be swapped for Parks and Recreation.

140

Reposted by Kyle Marquardt

Paul Goode @jpaulgoode.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

🚨 New publication alert (open access) 🚨 I've been working on everyday nationalism for a good portion of my career, so it was a genuine privilege to contribute to this exchange along with @davidstroup.bsky.social, Jon Fox & Cynthia Miller-Idriss, Kanchan Chandra, and @tptrost.bsky.social.

1126

Reposted by Kyle Marquardt

Russia Watcher @russiawatcher.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

🛑 Update on public opinion in Russia. We document a steady decline in approval of Vladimir Putin from roughly April through July -- consistent with polling data from other sources, including FOM and VTsIOM (meduza.io/en/news/2026...) 1/

133

Reposted by Kyle Marquardt

Bergen Global CMI/UiB @bergenglobal.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Russians 🇷🇺 are soon heading for the polls – why bother? @kailmarkvart.bsky.social, Mstislav Grivachev and Irina Anisimova explore how Russian authorities use propaganda and disinformation to shape public opinion ➡️ Thursday 17 Sept ⏰ 15:00 📍 here/zoom

bergenglobal.no

Why dictators hold elections - Bergen Global

053

Reposted by Kyle Marquardt

Dr Diana T. Kudaibergen @dianakudaibergen.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Super excited about this special issue just published OPEN ACCESS by the Central Asian Affairs Journal! Looking Back, Moving Forward: Interdisciplinary Decolonial Dialogues on Central Asia and Eastern Europe: A Special Forum, ed: Nodira Kholmatova, Olga Burlyuk and Gulnaz Sibgatullina.

brill.com

041

Reposted by Kyle Marquardt

Department of Political Science, University of Oslo @statsvitenskap.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

📣 We are hiring - please share! 👉 1-2 Postdoctoral Fellows with specialization in political data science or comparative politics as part of the ERC project “Authoritarian Threats to Scientific Knowledge” (AutoKnow)- PI Tore Wig. 📅3-4 years ⏳September 10, 2026. 🔗 www.jobbnorge.no/en/available...

jobbnorge.no

Postdoctoral Fellow  (303060) | University of Oslo

Job title: Postdoctoral Fellow  (303060), Employer: University of Oslo, Deadline: Thursday, September 10, 2026

02729

Reposted by Kyle Marquardt

Josh Zingher @zingherpolisci.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

Antivaxxers are the poster child for "everything seems like a conspiracy when you have no idea how anything works"

15212

Reposted by Kyle Marquardt

Daniel de Kadt @dandekadt.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

I have read this Response to my Comment and have written a Rejoinder, showing three things: 1. The multiverse is many correlated tests. 2. The randomization inference is wrong. 3. The trichotomous moderator reaffirms my point. I also enumerate 7 misleading claims, now in print in the APSR.

A Rejoinder to ‘Still Instrumentally Inclusive’ (Turnbull-Dugarte & López Ortega)
Daniel de KadtCornell University, Department of Governmentdekadt@cornell.edu
2026-08-01
Abstract Turnbull-Dugarte and López Ortega’s “Still Instrumentally Inclusive” (the Response) answers my replication (the Comment) of their 2024 American Political Science Review paper (the Article) with, among other things, a multiverse of 2,970 analyses based on eighteen different weighting schemes, randomization inference, and a trichotomous moderator. As I show in this rejoinder, each is undermined by bona fide errors in their code, their writing, and their interpretation. First, the multiverse is just many correlated variants of the same test. This is in large part due to the weighting schemes which suffer multiple problems (some due to code errors, some intrinsic), and are largely correlated variations on one weighting scheme. Second, due to code errors the randomization inference compares a weighted statistic against an unweighted null and, in the two heterogeneity tests, permutes the interaction column rather than treatment assignment column. Every permutation p-value the Response reports is therefore computed against the wrong reference distribution; when they are recomputed correctly, two of the five it reports as significant are no longer so, and they are the two the Response emphasizes. Third, the trichotomous moderator is erroneously described as terciles, but it is in fact based on non-tercile cutpoints. The key subgroup effect reported in the Response thus rests on comparing just thirty high-weight control respondents against thirty-one high-weight treated respondents, and ends up reaffirming my original point that the heterogeneity in study 2 is with respect to weights, and not immigration sentiment as their theory predicts. I close by documenting seven claims in the Response that are untrue or misleading.

33010

Reposted by Kyle Marquardt

Georgy Tarasenko @tarasenkogeorgy.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

🔔🔔 Russian polls have shown ~75% support for the war in Ukraine since February 2022, essentially flat. New working paper with Kirill Chmel and @nikitasavin.bsky.social shows that number is stable partly because it stopped measuring what people actually think. 🧵 ssrn.com/abstract=711...

25623

Reposted by Kyle Marquardt

Kristoffer Rees @krisrees.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

I don’t read Spanish but I won’t let that get in the way of reposting Central Asian dumpling content. 😋

193

Reposted by Kyle Marquardt

Nate Schenkkan @nateschenkkan.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

You know what's worse than competitive authoritarianism? Plain old authoritarianism

1509

Reposted by Kyle Marquardt

Eugene Finkel @efinkel.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

AN ACADEMIC JOB! We are hiring for the Wilson E. Schmidt Distinguished Professorship at the Johns Hopkins SAIS campus in Bologna. We are especially interested in those working on international affairs and technology but open to other topics as well. The main downside is having me across the hall.

apply.interfolio.com

Apply - Interfolio {{$ctrl.$state.data.pageTitle}} - Apply - Interfolio

32313

Reposted by Kyle Marquardt

Juraj Medzihorsky @medzihorsky.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

Some comparisons between today's tech sector and industrial SEOs in command economies under state socialism practically offer themselves: • bureaucratic targets with questionable economic value [see here] • soft budget constraint [see Kornai] • legitimization by value for the power of the state

A screenshot of the following text from this FT article [https://www.ft.com/content/cc03adda-7b56-4392-8f9a-e83a71a25ea1]

Some Amazon developers must be suffering whiplash about how they use AI. The technology group sets targets for most of its developers to use AI tools. This year it started monitoring consumption and posting usage figures on internal leader boards.
But after the FT wrote in May that some workers were automating non-essential tasks to improve their ranking, Amazon took the leader boards offline. “Please don’t use AI just for the sake of using AI,” Amazon senior vice-president Dave Treadwell told staff.
The shift was a sign of how employers are already changing how AI should be used and incentivised. As model providers switch from subscriptions to token-based billing, the cost of profligate usage is starting to hit home. Using leader boards and embedding token use in performance reviews is “a really stupid way to do anything”, Jacob Lauritzen, chief

222

Reposted by Kyle Marquardt

Scott Gehlbach @sgehlbach.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

Fantastic conference on “The Soviet Legacy” at UCLouvain next January. Cfp here: www.uclouvain.be/en/research-...

011

Reposted by Kyle Marquardt

Ryan Bakker @rbakker.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

Several years of data collection, 2 editorial teams and a few rounds of R&R were all well worth it to finally see this paper in print. Thanks to all the survey teams and the many experts who helped make this possible. doi.org/10.1086/736578

doi.org

University of Chicago Press Journals: Cookie absent

1319

Reposted by Kyle Marquardt

Juraj Medzihorsky @medzihorsky.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

The V-Party Dataset has a measure of anti-pluralism, also known as illiberalism, based on Linz (1978) and Levitsky and Ziblatt (2018). We found governing-party anti-pluralist rhetoric to be more informative of subsequent de-democratization than its populism: doi.org/10.1177/1354... 1/2

2143

Reposted by Kyle Marquardt

V-Dem Institute @vdeminstitute.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

In the northern hemisphere, it’s time for a summer break. 🌞 Why not use the well-earned rest to catch up with your democracy reading list? Here are some tips of recent publications from the V-Dem community. Links to the latest books, policy briefs and journal articles in the thread 🧵👇 1(4)

1198

Reposted by Kyle Marquardt

Kyle Marquardt @kailmarkvart.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

If you're in Astana on Thursday, I'll be presenting some of my ongoing research at NU!

Flyer for talk "Interethnic variation in public opinion in Russia"

Date: July 2, 2026
Time: 16:00–17:15
Location: C3 (2005)

1113

Kyle Marquardt @kailmarkvart.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

If you're in Astana on Thursday, I'll be presenting some of my ongoing research at NU!

1113

Reposted by Kyle Marquardt

Robert (Bob) Kubinec @rmkubinec.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

I have a new version of my latent variable modeling/idealstan draft online👇 Even if you're not into the idealstan type of latent variable model, I think this is the most complete discussion of time series dynamics with measurement/latent variables. So perhaps worth a read! osf.io/preprints/os...

osf.io

OSF

1112

Reposted by Kyle Marquardt

Brian Taylor @bdtaylor-su.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

1 of Putin’s closest allies for decades has been another Leningrad KGB guy, Nikolay Patrushev. Russian political analyst Andrei Kolesnikov once described him as “the one allowed to explain and clarify Putin’s thoughts.” Interview with him yesterday in official state paper. Short 🧵w/ quotes. 1/6

rg.ru

33916

Reposted by Kyle Marquardt

Daniel Tavana @danieltavana.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

How many Iranians support the Islamic Republic? In a new working paper, we answer this using a nationally representative survey of 2,000 adults in Iran—and the list experiment, a method for measuring sensitive attitudes.

2269

Reposted by Kyle Marquardt

Chris Hanretty @chanret.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

First #WorldCup game today. Democrats should be supporting South Africa against Mexico (if you like V-Dem's measure of electoral democracy) (1/n)

Chart showing levels of electoral democracy in Mexico and South Africa from the V-Dem project. Current levels: South Africa: 0.74 [CI: 0.69 - 0.81]; Mexico 0.47 [CI: 0.42 - 0.53]

4184

Reposted by Kyle Marquardt

Communist and Post-Communist Studies @cpcs.bsky.social · 30/05/2026

Congrats to Natalia Otrishchenko, Artem Kharchenko, and Valentyna Shevchenko, for winning the AAUS best article prize for their article “Ukrainian Researchers in a War Documentation Project: Intertwined Experiences and Methodologies”! (Article link in next post)

153

Reposted by Kyle Marquardt

Leiv Marsteintredet @leivm.bsky.social · 30/05/2026

Come work at the best Department that exists (yes, I am biased).

065

Reposted by Kyle Marquardt

Isabelle DeSisto @isadesisto.bsky.social · 30/05/2026

📑❗️Our article with @grigopop.bsky.social and Graeme Robertson on the effects of Ukraine’s decentralization reform on satisfaction with public services (and democracy) in Ukraine 🇺🇦 was just published in Comparative Political Studies! doi.org/10.1177/0010...

4328

Reposted by Kyle Marquardt

Department of Comparative Politics UiB @sampol.bsky.social · 28/05/2026

We are hiring! Please share 👉 💡 2 PhD positions 🇳🇴 Department of Comparative Politics, University of Bergen 🗓️ 4 years 💶 Fully funded 👩‍🏫 25 % teaching ⏳ 11 August 2026 🔗 www.jobbnorge.no/en/available...

02320

Reposted by Kyle Marquardt

Isabelle DeSisto @isadesisto.bsky.social · 26/05/2026

Excited to announce that my paper "Socioeconomic development and the uneven legacies of authoritarian repression" has been published at the Journal of Historical Political Economy. This grew out of my second year ("591") PhD paper. www.emerald.com/jhpe/article...

1207

Reposted by Kyle Marquardt

Svend-Erik Skaaning @skaaning.bsky.social · 28/05/2026

New book on democracy. #OpenAccess Seven Myths about Democracy by Jørgen Møller & Svend-Erik Skaaning, Routledge taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-mon.... Challenges (full or partial) misunderstandings about the meaning, trajectory, causes, and consequences of democracy.

taylorfrancis.com

Seven Myths about Democracy | Jørgen Møller, Svend-Erik Skaaning | Tay

This timely book challenges seven widespread misconceptions about democracy that continue to shape public and academic debates about its past, present, and

23918

Reposted by Kyle Marquardt

Petra Guasti @petraguasti.bsky.social · 18/05/2026

New open-access window (2 weeks): Erica Marat & Aizada Arystanbek, Decolonial Disruptions in Central Asia (CUP Elements series Politics and Society from Central Europe to Central Asia). Download: www.cambridge.org/core/element... #CentralAsia #DecolonialStudies #MemoryPolitics

cambridge.org

Decolonial Disruptions in Central Asia

Cambridge Core - Comparative Politics - Decolonial Disruptions in Central Asia

121

Reposted by Kyle Marquardt

Scott Gehlbach @sgehlbach.bsky.social · 17/05/2026

Either arXiv’s new policy on LLM-generated text changes nothing, or you should be asking yourself some hard questions about work with your human coauthors.

scottgehlbach.bearblog.dev

On arXiv, LLMs, and What It Means to Put Your Name on a Paper

All you have is your name.

1115

Reposted by Kyle Marquardt

Rahel Freiburghaus @rfrbrghs.bsky.social · 16/05/2026

Ok, as we are waiting for crunch time, I’m sure you absolutely want to see this rocket political science plot: The trend is clear, even if noisy: countries with higher liberal democracy scores also tend to perform better at #Eurovision #esc2026 (data: @vdeminstitute.bsky.social)

94714

Reposted by Kyle Marquardt

Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 14/05/2026

🚨New Bright Line Watch report on the rule of law in the US - joint w/@rickhasen.bsky.social's Strengthening Democracy Project at UCLA Law The most comprehensive expert survey to date - 21 federal judges, 113 elite lawyers, and 193 law profs brightlinewatch.org/erosion-of-t... 🧵 on findings below ⬇️

413873

Reposted by Kyle Marquardt

Robert (Bob) Kubinec @rmkubinec.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

Happy to share that my #rstats package for IRT/ideal point models, idealstan, is back on CRAN as v1.0! idealstan supports mixed outcomes, missing data, and time-varying methods (splines, AR(1), etc)--and latent regression \w new latent marginal effects. 😎 cran.r-project.org/web/packages...

cran.r-project.org

idealstan: Robust Measurement with 'Stan'

Offers item-response theory (IRT) ideal-point measurement modeling for diverse distributions, missing data, and over-time variation. Full and approximate Bayesian sampling with 'Stan' (<<a href="ht...

171

Reposted by Kyle Marquardt

Kyle Marquardt @kailmarkvart.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

Very excited to be giving this talk on @vdeminstitute.bsky.social methodology on Tuesday, May 12, in Ulaanbaatar - it should be a great conversation! And thanks to @mongoliafocus.bsky.social for the great discussion (and contacts) that led to it! mongoliafocus.com/2026/03/demo...

Talk "The V-Dem Approach to Measuring Democracy" to be held at 1600 on May 12, at the Open Society Forum Conference Room in Ulaanbaatar.

0205

Reposted by Kyle Marquardt

Kyle Marquardt @kailmarkvart.bsky.social · 07/05/2026

It's a good example of how the V-Dem MM deals with experts with varying reliability and different levels of DIF - since the expert diverged substantially from the other experts their contribution to the overall estimate was substantially downweighted. doi.org/10.1017/pan....

Coder-level smoothed trends in Freedom from Political Killings in four countries: Canada, Germany, Russia and Turkey. One Russia coder contends that Stalin's reign corresponded with Russia's highest level of freedom from political killings. (All other coders show trends that correspond better with history, albeit with substantial DIF).

V-Dem measurement model output for freedom from political killings in Russia 1900-2016(?). Russia is at the bottom of the scale during Stalin's reign. (The high uncertainty is due to the fact that IRT models have a hard time estimating scores at the bottom of the scale - the estimate is below the lowest threshold, but how low is not identified).

163

Reposted by Kyle Marquardt

Georg Picot @gpicot.bsky.social · 05/05/2026

Willkommene Aktion von @spd.de, @gruene.de und @die-linke.de! Bleibt zu hoffen, dass die Accounts der Bundesregierung und aller anderen demokratischen Regierungen dem Beispiel endlich folgen. Unglaublich, dass demokratische Regierungen indirekt Elon Musk unterstützen!

121

Reposted by Kyle Marquardt

Brian Taylor @bdtaylor-su.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

A few thoughts on the @istories.bsky.social story about "a report by an intelligence service of a European Union country on the real situation in the Kremlin and the condition of Vladimir Putin." 🧵 1) The basic idea that Putin is more concerned about his personal security seems plausible. 1/10

storage.googleapis.com

Vladimir Putin fears an assassination attempt and a coup, tensions among security services are rising, an EU intelligence agency says

Независимое медиа. Расследования, репортажи, интервью и истории о том, что важно

26526

Kyle Marquardt @kailmarkvart.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

0205

Reposted by Kyle Marquardt

V-Dem Institute @vdeminstitute.bsky.social · 30/04/2026

May 3rd is the #WorldPressFreedomDay. For this occasion, we use the V-Dem mapping tool to visualize the V-Dem v16 data for the Government censorship effort - media indicator in 2025. To show the differences between the last 20 years, we add a map with data for 2005. 🧵1(7) #Polisky #PolDataSky #Media

Two graphs in the form of world maps, showing the extent governments attempt to censor the print or broadcast media in 2025 and 2005 across the world. The scale ranges from 0 to 4, with 0 meaning that attempts to censor are direct and routine’ to 4 meaning that attempts to censor rarely occur, and if discovered, the responsible officials are usually punished. In 2025, in most of Asia and large parts of Africa governments more often try to censor media. Among the worst affected in 2025 are Chad, Congo, Egypt, and Eritrea in Africa, Afghanistan, China, and Myanmar in Asia, Belarus, Russia, and Turkey in Europe, and Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela in Latin America.
Some of the biggest negative changes between the years 2005 and 2025 can be seen in Afghanistan, China, Egypt, India, Mexico, Russia, Turkey, and the USA. Positive changes between the two years of comparison can be seen in for example Libya, Madagascar, and Sri Lanka.

1137

Reposted by Kyle Marquardt

Mother Jones @motherjones.com · 27/04/2026

A little more than a year ago, @paperwords.bsky.social received a letter from the US Forest Service detailing plans for a new wildfire recovery project. But a single word caught his eye—and alerted him to a secret, Big Tobacco-style campaign with ramifications for our forests.

motherjones.com

We are bombarding America’s forests with Roundup

Scientists are wary of glyphosate. MAHA loathes it. And our investigation shows California is spraying it everywhere.

471576925

Reposted by Kyle Marquardt

Juraj Medzihorsky @medzihorsky.bsky.social · 19/04/2026

Fidesz ended up winning only 10/106 single-member constituencies: • 3 with the narrowest of margins • A further 4 with small margins (at least compared to Tisza's)

A chart showing the Fidesz margins in the single-member-constituency vote in the April 2026 Hungarian parliamentary elections.

073

Reposted by Kyle Marquardt

Tom Pepinsky @tompepinsky.com · 16/04/2026

For the cost of one Harvard Professor of the Constitution Only Applies to White People, you could endow 10 professorships of any less commonly taught language at any university in the USA

12987253

Reposted by Kyle Marquardt

Jonas W. Schmid @jonaswschmid.bsky.social · 20/04/2025

Ever felt uneasy about how concepts & measures of "grey zone" autocracies are used interchangeably across the literature? Then check out my 🚨new paper🚨 in @democratization.bsky.social and get some substance to back up your gut feeling: tinyurl.com/ypdm2kna Or at least read the main points below ⬇️

tinyurl.com

Electoral autocracies, hybrid regimes, and multiparty autocracies: same, same but different?

There is a wide range of labels, such as electoral autocracy, hybrid regimes, or multiparty autocracy, and corresponding empirical measures to describe and measure political regimes that combine au...

57527