New article by me, @eortizospina.bsky.social, and @lcsrg.me! How elections spread, voting rights expanded, and political competition developed over the last 200 years — and billions of people won more of a say in the important decisions that affect their lives. ourworldindata.org/the-rise-of-...

The rise of electoral democracy

How elections spread, voting rights expanded, and political competition developed around the world over the last two centuries.

ourworldindata.org

📝 New article on Our World in Data: The rise of electoral democracy. Most people around the world think democracy is a good way to run a country, but they are often dissatisfied with how it is working in practice and are concerned about where it is heading.

As aid budgets shrink, @rglenner.bsky.social and Dean Karlan argue it's time to radically simplify aid. Focus on a small number of interventions rigorously proven to work, deliver them at scale, and avoid layering projects with multiple untested objectives. go.cgdev.org/3RPtsN6

We Advised Different Governments on Aid Spending. Now We’re Calling for Radical Simplification

Smarter aid won’t undo the damage of cuts. Improving service delivery won’t solve the macroeconomic constraints to inclusive growth. But if we focus on what works and keep it simple, we can still make...

cgdev.org

📄 New pre-print on SSRN New evidence on a timely question: Does holding anti-democratic leaders legally accountable produce democratic backlash? Contrary to widespread concerns, I find no evidence that accountability increased affective polarisation or reduced support for democracy. 🧵👇

In certain tech circles, it has become low-status to suggest that AGI won't automatically solve everything. I think models will continue to get smarter, but intelligence is often not the main bottleneck to physical world change. More 👇 www.writingruxandrabio.com/p/intelligen...

Intelligence is not the main bottleneck

Confessions of a naive hamster: why the smartest people in the room keep missing that intelligence is often not the main bottleneck in the real world

writingruxandrabio.com

What are the largest cities in the world? That's a question that isn't easy to answer, because countries define "city" quite differently. But now there is new data from the European Commission that uses satellites to make countries comparable. Turns out the largest city in the world is Jakarta!

New working paper w/ @denis-cohen.bsky.social @rantuna.bsky.social & @turnbulldugarte.com! *Does publicly refusing to cooperate with the far right only strengthen it?* A widespread belief says yes. In this paper, we test it based on a natural experiment from Spain. tinyurl.com/5azkfnas [1/6]

Spent the past two weeks making graphics about sweltering night-time temperatures while struggling to sleep because of those same hot nights... NEW: Tropical nights come to Europe w @attractamooney.bsky.social and @nassosstylianou.bsky.social as.ft.com/r/4929ae6c-e...

Until the middle of the 20th century, few countries had political leaders that were women. These were monarchs, who rose to their positions because of their royal lineage.

I was surprised to see that China has only 1.6 million immigrants. That's close to the number of immigrants in Ireland or New Zealand. And those countries' entire populations are less than 1% of China's. Even Japan (which in my mind was the big low-immigration country) has more than twice as many.

In recent years, much of the most popular music and TV in many countries has been made at home, and not in the US: www.economist.com/briefing/202...

Forget the World Cup. Culture is becoming more fragmented

Farewell to the monoculture

economist.com

New in the Annual Review of Political Science (2026), with @kathrynbaragwanath.bsky.social : "Democracy and the Environment." We survey decades of work asking whether democracy produces better environmental outcomes. Link to open access paper: doi.org/10.1146/annu...

Democracy and the Environment

We survey research on the relationship between democracy and the environment. The first part of our review examines how democratic systems influence environmental outcomes. Scholars have found, at bes...

doi.org

@dziblatt.bsky.social and I in @foreignaffairs.com on the real lessons from Hungary www.foreignaffairs.com/hungary/how-...

How to Beat an Autocrat

The real lessons of Orban’s defeat.

foreignaffairs.com

Governments around most of the world are, on average, getting older. The trend is starkest in Africa, but it is also clear in the Americas and Asia. The exception is Europe, where we saw a drop after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and then stabilization at just above 50 years of age.

We've gotten used to technology being democratizing but, unfortunately, it seems unlikely AI will be a leapfrog miracle story. New post out now on why: newsletter.deenamousa.com/p/ai-wont-b...

How can we measure the state of democracy around the world? Measuring democracy is challenging. It has many dimensions, and researchers assess them in different ways. No single source of data captures the full picture, so we present data from several of them.

Many maps offer snapshots of how the world looked at one point in time. But few track changes over time. That’s why I like the CShapes data so much: it identifies all independent states, their dependent territories, borders, and capitals for each year between 1886 and 2019.

I agree with @charlesjkenny.bsky.social, @ianmitchell1.bsky.social, and Euan Ritchie that the OECD should not expand its eligibility for foreign aid to some high-income countries, and should instead target aid to poorer countries, where it’s needed most: www.cgdev.org/blog/when-co...

When Is a Country Too Rich for Aid? Rethinking ODA Eligibility

The OECD’s Development Assistance Committee is discussing changes to the rules on which countries are eligible to receive ODA. Any line that the OECD picks will be arbitrary, because there is no clear...

cgdev.org

New paper out in the @thejop.bsky.social (w/ @christinagahn.bsky.social) Do opinion polls shape election results? Using both cross-national data and a survey experiment, the answer we find is yes - though it depends on how we communicate polling results. www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

🚨 What happens with voters when politicians use simpler language? New @thejop.bsky.social paper with @rsenninger.bsky.social: simple language changes not just what citizens understand, but who they think politicians are. www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

Can Simple Language Affect Voters’ Political Knowledge and Their Beliefs About Politicians? | The Journal of Politics: Vol 0, No 0

How does the level of sophistication in political messages affect citizens? While research has examined how politicians use this element to distinguish themselves, little is known about how it resonat...

journals.uchicago.edu

What happened after the USAID shutdown? New GODAD paper by Marcella Nicolini and Fabio Sabatini: exposed African regions saw falling nightlights and rising acute food insecurity, especially where vulnerability was high and institutions weaker. godad.me godad.uni-goettingen.de/uploads/GODA...

Fabio Sabatini@fabiosabatini.bsky.social · 3mo ago

The impact of the USAID shutdown on Africa, as seen from space and on the ground. M. Nicolini and I study the effects of the aid cuts by linking GODAD data on USAID projects to satellite-based measures of economic activity and IPC food insecurity indicators. 👉 papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.... 1/11

What's the best chart making the case for democracy? The one below is a strong contender for me: there have been very few famines under democratic rule. But I would be curious to hear about others!

This is a very nice article that shows that in recent cases of democratic erosion, people were often still able to stop it through elections: www.journalofdemocracy.org/online-exclu...

How Aspiring Autocrats Exit | Journal of Democracy

Viktor Orbán election defeat last month stunned many people. But in truth it’s not uncommon for would-be autocrats to lose at the ballot box. It’s a more hopeful picture than many people realize.

journalofdemocracy.org

I'm working on a project on cross-national young gender gap that shows dif patterns. The below w ESS & CSES data show 1. Dif in ideology (id=standardized by country) btwn young men & women, where x is year & y is standard deviations 2. Young men & women ideology relative to other age-gender groups

Seva@seva.bsky.social · 3mo ago

I've now seen four separate pieces accusing John Burn-Murdoch (Financial Times, you've seen his stuff before) of messing with his data on four separate occasions: 1. isitcredible.com/cases 2. unherd.com/newsroom/the... 3. github.com/James-Traina... 4. blog.albertkuo.me/post/2024-01...

A great overview of the accommodation question by Hanno Hilbig, worth your time!

Patrick Dunleavy@patrickdunleavy.bsky.social · 3mo ago

open.substack.com/pub/alexande...

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.

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

taylorfrancis.com

1/ With the DR Congo facing another Ebola outbreak, I’ve been reflecting on research I published on the 2018–2020 outbreak, one of the most violent public health emergencies for healthcare workers. Key lesson: Public health emergencies become far more dangerous when they are politicized.

Although conquests of entire countries declined after WWII, conquest remained prevalent because attempts to conquer parts of countries did not decline. And the international community rarely intervened to defeat these conquest attempts.

It's often assumed that government ideology matters only in rich democracies. My new article suggests that's not the case: in a global analysis, leftist governments intervene more in markets than rightist governments. Who governs really matters, also in other parts of the world. shorturl.at/vAloy

Without reliable data, it can be difficult to make political decisions. But while rich countries have up-to-date surveys on poverty, health, etc., those in poorer countries are years, if not decades, old. And that's where the data is especially needed. data360.worldbank.org/en/int/atlas...