Sharing my opinion piece published in @elpais.com on the rule of law in the USA based on work with @pedrotrivin.bsky.social elpais.com/opinion/2026...
Excited to share my new paper on “Subnational life expectancy disparities in low and middle-income countries”, recently published in Health Economics Review at link.springer.com/article/10.1...
Subnational life expectancy disparities in low and middle-income countries: measurement and determinants - Health Economics Review
Background Relatively little is known about subnational life expectancy disparities in low and middle-income countries (LMICs). We construct indicators of subnational disparities in life expectancy, o...
link.springer.com
Populism and the rule of law: The importance of institutional legacies by Andreas Kyriacou and Pedro Trivin is now available in Early View. @andreaspkyriacou.bsky.social @pedrotrivin.bsky.social ajps.org/2025/01/21/p...
Bottom line: Populists are most dangerous to the rule of law in societies where legal institutions are already fragile. In countries like the U.S., with stronger traditions, institutions can limit the damage—but the impact remains non-negligible. 7/7
While we don’t directly test how populists dismantle institutions, we do not observe that populists are more likely to reform the constitutions, but they are more likely to replace it in contexts with weak rule of law. 6/7
iii) Populists attack the rule of law broadly: - Judicial independence weakens. - Access to justice erodes. - Corruption increases. 5/7
Empirically, we use Synthetic Control Methods to analyze a cross-country sample including 51 populist events, we find that: i) Populist governments cause a substantial and persistent decline in the rule of law—an 11.4 percentage-point drop after 15 years. 3/7
Core Idea: Populists’ ability to undermine the rule of law depends on a country’s institutional legacies and societal norms. When respect for the law is ingrained as expected behavior, populists face stronger resistance—and institutions hold up better. 2/7
Thrilled to kick off my Bluesky account by sharing that our paper, "Populism and the Rule of Law: The Importance of Institutional Legacies" (with @andreaspkyriacou.bsky.social ), is now published in the AJPS (@ajpseditor.bsky.social)! Here’s what we found. 👇 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
American Journal of Political Science | MPSA Journal | Wiley Online Library
Existing work sees populist governments undermining the rule of law because they seek to dismantle institutional constraints on their personalistic plebiscitarian rule. We argue that populist rulers ...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com