[You can see my ongoing research and work in progress HERE. Book info HERE.]
Democracies Can't Blame Putin for their Disinformation Problem. Foreign Policy, April 21, 2020 [PDF]
The Weakness of the Strongman. With Adam Casey. Foreign Affairs, March 24, 2020 [PDF]
The Great Online Convergence: Digital Authoritarianism Comes to Democracies. War on the Rocks, February 19, 2020
Rival Visions of Parsimony. International Studies Quarterly 63(3): 707-16. September 2019 [PDF]
Critical Dialogue (with Daniel Ziblatt). Perspectives on Politics 17(2): 492-97, June 2019 [PDF]
Author’s Response. H-Diplo Book Roundtable Forum 20.22. January 2019 [PDF]
A Country Illegible Even to Itself. (Review of The Future Is History by Masha Gessen.) Inroads 44, December 2018
The Wilsonian Bias in the Study of US Foreign Policy. With Andrei Tsygankov. Problems of Post-Communism 65.6: 385-393. December 2018 [PDF]
Democratic Waves in Historical Perspective. Perspectives on Politics 16.3:634-651. September 2018 [PDF]
Democracy’s Future: Riding the Hegemonic Wave. The Washington Quarterly 41.2:115-135. July 2018 [PDF]
One Word to Improve US Russia Policy. The New Republic, April 27, 2018
The False Dawn of International Law. (Review of The Internationalists by Oona Hathaway and Scott Shapiro). War on the Rocks, January 15, 2018
Defining the State: It’s a Family Affair. In Comparing International Systems in World History, ISQ Online Symposium, November 28, 2017 [PDF]
The Lost Leviathan. (Review of The H-Word by Perry Anderson). The American Interest, August 24, 2017 [PDF]
These are the three reasons fascism spread in 1930s America – and might spread again today. The Monkey Cage (Washington Post), August 12, 2017
Trump and the Russian Money Trail. Duck of Minerva, July 14, 2017
What Monday’s subway bombings mean for Putin’s Russia. The Monkey Cage (Washington Post), April 6, 2017
How to unfreeze Canada’s strategy in Ukraine. The Globe and Mail, March 20, 2017
How Norms Die. With Tanisha Fazal. Political Violence @ A Glance, March 13, 2017.
OLDER PUBLICATIONS
Review of Expect Us: Online Communities and Political Mobilization by Jessica L. Beyer, Perspectives on Politics 13.3:878-9. Oct 2015.
The book is a voyage into a strange land, with the author acting as an online anthropologist—exploring the true meaning of “lulz,” decamping on dragon raids, and deciphering profanity-laden message boards like ancient hieroglyphics.
How do you measure ‘democracy’? The Monkey Cage (Washington Post), June 24, 2015.
Measures of democracy can mislead as much as they clarify. This is a problem not just for academics, but for policy-makers and anyone who cares about democracy more generally.
Social media helps dictators, not just protestors. The Monkey Cage (Washington Post), March 30, 2015.
Social media is increasingly being used to boost autocratic stability and strength, transforming it from an obstacle to government rule into another potential tool of regime resilience.
Lost in the Grey Zone: Competing Measures of Democracy in the Former Soviet Republics. In Ranking the World: Grading States as a Tool of Global Governance, edited by Alexander Cooley and Jack Snyder. Cambridge University Press, 2015
I examine measures of democracy in the former Soviet republics and find that indices often disagree about particular countries, even drawing contradictory conclusions from the same event. Measures of hybrid regimes are particularly unreliable. These differences, I argue, arise not only from incorrect specification but from the inherent tradeoffs involved in defining a highly contested concept. [PDF]
Corrupting the Cyber-Commons: Social Media as a Tool of Autocratic Resilience. Perspectives on Politics 13.1:42-54. March 2015
Autocrats have increasingly moved beyond censoring social media to co-opting it for their own purposes. Namely, social media is increasingly being used to undermine the opposition, to shape the contours of public discussion, and to cheaply gather information about falsified public preferences. I detail the recent use of these tactics in mixed and autocratic regimes, with a focus on Russia, China, and the Middle East. [PDF]
From Shocks to Waves: Hegemonic Transitions and Democratization in the Twentieth Century. International Organization 68.3:561-97. July 2014
What causes democratic waves? I argue that abrupt shifts in the distribution of power among leading states create unique and powerful incentives for sweeping cascades of domestic reforms. These “hegemonic shocks” produce windows of opportunity for external regime imposition, enable rising powers to quickly expand networks of patronage, and inspire imitators by revealing hidden information about regime effectiveness to foreign audiences. [PDF]
Complexity and Theories of Change in International Politics. International Theory 5.1:35-63. March 2013.
I examine how principles of complex systems can explain change in theories of international relations. I apply the logic of complex systems to two puzzles in international politics — the absence of change in structural realism, and failures of democratic diffusion. In both cases, complex systems serve a limited but useful role. Though not conducive to theory creation, the approach provides a useful analytical prism for studying patterns of change in global processes. [PDF]
Review of How Enemies Become Friends: The Sources of Stable Peace by Charles A. Kupchan, H-Diplo/ISSF Roundtable 4.4, October 25, 2012.
An Arab Spring in Moscow? The Monkey Cage (Washington Post), June 13, 2012
Security Dilemma. In The Encyclopedia of Power, ed. by Keith Dowding. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Press, 2011.
Review of The Right to Rule: How States Win and Lose Legitimacy by Bruce Gilley. Political Science Quarterly 125.1, Spring 2010, p. 163-5.878-9.
On Thin Ice: Water Rights and Resource Disputes in the Arctic Ocean. Journal of International Affairs 61.2, Spring 2008, p. 261-271.
Review of Insurance Against Poverty by Stefan Dercon, ed., Journal of International Affairs 59.2, Spring 2006, p. 347-50.
From Guns to Briefcases: The Evolution of Russian Organized Crime. World Policy Journal 21.1, Spring 2004, p. 68-74.
The Lessons of Chechnya in Iraq: A Realist Approach to Civilian Warfare. The National Interest, November 19, 2003.