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Roman-Gabriel Olar @rgolar23.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

The paper is open access (thanks to @dculibrary.bsky.social ) so make sure to check out all the details of our analysis. Read, share and cite :)

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Roman-Gabriel Olar @rgolar23.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

We also show that the life-period during which indiviuduals experience these types of conflicts (violent vs nonviolent) matters differently for their support for democracy, and does their conflict experience "profile" (no spoilers here).

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Roman-Gabriel Olar @rgolar23.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

from 91 countries between 1994 and 2019. We find that violent conflict exposure increases individuals' appetite for democracy. Surprisingly their support is dampened after experiences of large-scale nonviolent conflict.

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Roman-Gabriel Olar @rgolar23.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

with democratization and democratic survival: individuals exposed to nonviolence become more supportive of democracy. We test these theoretical expectations by combining information on historical conflict episodes between 1900 and 2019 with global survey data covering over 600,000 respondents

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Roman-Gabriel Olar @rgolar23.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

We build on the political socialization literature to test the (ambiguous) expectations about the effect of violent conflict on democratic attitudes. Moreover, we also provide the first large, cross-national test of a largely untested explanation (and causal pathway) of why nonviolence is associated

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Reposted by Roman-Gabriel Olar

World Politics @worldpolitics.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

How do #autocrats ensure their survival? Do they dismiss #elites altogether or reshuffle them? Using novel measures from #autocratic #regimes and #communist #politburos, Alexander Baturo & @rgolar23.bsky.social answer these questions in their April WP article. doi.org/10.1353/wp.2...

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Roman-Gabriel Olar @rgolar23.bsky.social · 16/04/2026

There's a lot of really cool stuff in the paper so I urge you to check it out. Please get in touch if you cannot get around the paywall and I am happy to share a version of the paper with you. Of course, read, cite and share!

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Roman-Gabriel Olar @rgolar23.bsky.social · 16/04/2026

with a short case study of elite management strategies under Putin in Russia.

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Roman-Gabriel Olar @rgolar23.bsky.social · 16/04/2026

power. In turn, reshuffles prevent elite coordination and ensure their stake in the survival of the regime. We use novel measures of dismissals and reshuffles from two different datasets to test our theoretical observations (including the mechanisms). We also illustrate the logic of our argument...

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Roman-Gabriel Olar @rgolar23.bsky.social · 16/04/2026

elite management strategies affect their survival. We propose that that these strategies alter the information environment and elites' incentives in supporting the leader. Thus, dismissals reduce elites' power, while they increase intraregime conflict and uncertainty about elites' access to ...

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Roman-Gabriel Olar @rgolar23.bsky.social · 16/04/2026

Super excited to see this paper - with the all-time great Alex Baturo - published in World Politics. We conceptualized dictators as human resource managers to provide a unified theoretical explanation on how vertical (i.e. dismissals) and horizontal (i.e. reshuffles)... dx.doi.org/10.1353/wp.2...

dx.doi.org

Project MUSE -- Verification required!

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Reposted by Roman-Gabriel Olar

𝙅𝙖𝙘🍩𝙗 𝙉𝙮𝙧𝙪𝙥 @jacobnyrup.bsky.social · 20/10/2025

We are hiring PhDs and postdocs to work on the ERC project GETGOV, where I am the PI. We will investigate governing elites since 1789. I am sure that it will be a lot of fun and result in great research! Postdocs: www.jobbnorge.no/en/available... PhDs: www.jobbnorge.no/en/available...

jobbnorge.no

Postdoctoral Fellow in Political Science (3-4 years) (288628) | University of Oslo

Job title: Postdoctoral Fellow in Political Science (3-4 years) (288628), Employer: University of Oslo, Deadline: Monday, November 17, 2025

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Anja Neundorf @anjaneundorf.bsky.social · 28/08/2025

🚨 New in Journal of Politics! 🚨 Do radical right parties need to cut ties with old dictatorships to succeed? 👉 @sergipardos.bsky.social and my study of Spain’s VOX says: ❌ Not necessarily.

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EPSS @epssnet.bsky.social · 07/08/2025

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 🧵

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EPSS @epssnet.bsky.social · 26/06/2025

🚨 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. 🧵

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𝙅𝙖𝙘🍩𝙗 𝙉𝙮𝙧𝙪𝙥 @jacobnyrup.bsky.social · 11/04/2025

Democratization = new people in the political elite? Nope, in many cases not. This great new article shows that members of the autocratic government very often make it back to government after democratization.

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Roman-Gabriel Olar @rgolar23.bsky.social · 11/04/2025

Thank you, Jacob! You played a big part in helping me get this to the finish line. I really appreciate it!

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Roman-Gabriel Olar @rgolar23.bsky.social · 11/04/2025

Selecting on the dependent variable here, but I want to give a shoutout to the four reviewers that provided really good comments that made the paper so much better. Whoever you are, I appreciate your insights and comments! Also, the editorial staff @poppublicsphere.bsky.social was fantastic.

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Roman-Gabriel Olar @rgolar23.bsky.social · 11/04/2025

of autocratic revolving doors. The paper also has additional analyses showing some of these relationships are conditional, but that's for the reader to discover. And yes, I run numerous robustness tests to rule out observed and unobserved confounders.

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Roman-Gabriel Olar @rgolar23.bsky.social · 11/04/2025

core autocratic elites and those that held more prestigious portfolios are more likely to return to democratic cabinet. A longer time spent in an autocratic cabinet is not particularly useful for elites attempting a comeback under democracy. I also use two short case studies to illustrate the logic

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Roman-Gabriel Olar @rgolar23.bsky.social · 11/04/2025

The theoretical expectations are tested using a novel measure of autocratic revolving doors at the elite-level comprising 12,949 former autocratic cabinet members from 68 new democracies across 91 different democratic spells between 1966 and 2020. The results indicate that...

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Roman-Gabriel Olar @rgolar23.bsky.social · 11/04/2025

Thus, I propose that the variation in political experience that elites gained under autocracy and the characteristics of the cabinet positions they held under autocracy allows us to explain the demand and supply logic that drives autocratic revolving doors in new democracies.

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Roman-Gabriel Olar @rgolar23.bsky.social · 11/04/2025

On the supply side, cabinet leaders can/need to select from a pool of former autocratic elites that have the policy and political experience to run state institutions, and that can signal to autocratic elites networks that their interests will be protected under democracy.

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Roman-Gabriel Olar @rgolar23.bsky.social · 11/04/2025

Autocratic revolving doors is explained by a demand and supply logic of (political) cabinet formation. On the demand side, they need to provide public goods, reward political allies and appease surviving networks of autocratic elites since these (autocratic) networks can derail democracy.

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Roman-Gabriel Olar @rgolar23.bsky.social · 11/04/2025

Autocratic revolving doors is the norm in new democracies as former autocratic elites return to cabinet in 68 (out of 72) new democracies between 1966 and 2020. They occupy these positions for an average of (almost) 4 years.

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Roman-Gabriel Olar @rgolar23.bsky.social · 11/04/2025

Your weekend reading (and my new article) is out today @poppublicsphere.bsky.social. In this article I develop a novel theory of autocratic revolving doors - the phenomenon of autocratic elites returning to a cabinet position under democracy. doi.org/10.1017/S153...

doi.org

Autocratic Revolving Doors: The Return of Authoritarian Elites to Democratic Cabinets | Perspectives on Politics | Cambridge Core

Autocratic Revolving Doors: The Return of Authoritarian Elites to Democratic Cabinets

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david i. backer @schooldaves.bsky.social · 24/03/2025

“when we reason, we don’t have to generate text that expresses our solution and then generate another one and then generated another one, and then among the ones we produce, pick the one that is good...” “And this is what we yet cannot reproduce with machines.”

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Roman-Gabriel Olar @rgolar23.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

Thanks! Just sent you a DM about this

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Roman-Gabriel Olar @rgolar23.bsky.social · 05/02/2025

The paper is open access courtesy of @dculibrary.bsky.social @dublincityuni.bsky.social. Check it out for more details and share it with your network.

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Roman-Gabriel Olar @rgolar23.bsky.social · 05/02/2025

The results show that returning autocratic elite reduce human rights treaty commitment by new democracies, particularly when the Ministry of Justice portfolio is held by a former autocrat.

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Roman-Gabriel Olar @rgolar23.bsky.social · 05/02/2025

Moreover, I illustrate the logic of the theoretical argument with two short, stylised case studies (of Brazil and Argentina) and an instrumental variable approach to reduce potential endogeneity due to reverse causality.

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Roman-Gabriel Olar @rgolar23.bsky.social · 05/02/2025

Building on this, I develop novel theoretical expectations of the effect of returning autocratic elites on human rights commitment. These are tested in timeseries cross-sectional research design using novel measures of autocratic influence in democratic cabinets between 1966 and 2010.

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Roman-Gabriel Olar @rgolar23.bsky.social · 05/02/2025

More often than not, politics in new democracies is a continuation of autocratic politics by new (democratic) rules of power-sharing in which former autocratic elites aim to maintain political influence and protect their interests.

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Roman-Gabriel Olar @rgolar23.bsky.social · 05/02/2025

Specifically, the literature assumes that new democracies are a blank slate in which all societal actors are committed to democracy and want to lock-in democracy. This contradicts the findings of the comparative democratization literature which shows that this is not the case.

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Roman-Gabriel Olar @rgolar23.bsky.social · 05/02/2025

focusing on other treaties or international organizations with human rights provisions. I propose that these mixed findings are driven by a misguided theoretical assumption about democratization which leads to bias due to measurement error and reverse causality.

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Roman-Gabriel Olar @rgolar23.bsky.social · 05/02/2025

This thesis was first proposed by Andrew Moravcsik and was followed by numerous empirical tests that expanded the scope of the initial case study of the European Court of Human Rights. However, this thesis received mixed support in empirical analyses...

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Roman-Gabriel Olar @rgolar23.bsky.social · 05/02/2025

Existing explanations focus on the logic of the democratic lock-in: cabinet elites in new democracies want stronger international human rights commitments to lock-in the newly won democratic freedoms and rights against future illiberal threats.

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Roman-Gabriel Olar @rgolar23.bsky.social · 15/12/2024

The second part is out. The cancelled election was a missed maturity test for Romanian democracy, one that won’t save it. www.thejournal.ie/readme/roman...

thejournal.ie

Romanian vote: Can democracy be saved by cancelling an election?

Roman-Gabriel Olar asks if last week’s decision is the right one for Romania’s democratic future.

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Roman-Gabriel Olar @rgolar23.bsky.social · 06/12/2024

some reports put it close to that level

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Roman-Gabriel Olar @rgolar23.bsky.social · 06/12/2024

I wrote a short piece on Romania's (recently cancelled) presidential election and it's implications for democracy. The decision to cancel the second round will do even more damage to an already fragile democracy. There will be follow up piece next week. www.thejournal.ie/readme/roman...

thejournal.ie

Opinion: Romania’s democracy is in real danger – and so is Eastern Europe’s peace and stability

DCU’s Roman-Gabriel Olar looks at the tense second run off of presidential elections in Romania this weekend.

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Authoritarian Political Systems Group @apsgworkshop.bsky.social · 05/11/2024

Polisky Dictatorsky Join us today! @vladsurdea.bsky.social (Central European University) will present "The Repression-Dissent Nexus in High-Threat Environments: Evidence from Communist Romania" @anjaneundorf.bsky.social (Glasgow) @rgolar23.bsky.social (DCU) and Eugenia Nazrullaeva (LSE) will discuss

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