To stay updated, follow us on social media and sign up for our mailing list www.autpol.net/contact. #LLM #Politicalnetworks #Russia #China

The latter may be due to an exodus of experts from the field after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when #Russia temporarily ceased to be an important security threat.👇

Who are the Russia and China experts? At the @asanews.bsky.social Annual Conference #ASA2026 in #NewYork we got the chance to present the first findings from our autpol project with Arthur McFarlane and Michael Rochlitz.👇

@dionstevers.bsky.social (with Charles Chang) presents first results from his WeChat experiment on why users chose to read pro-government content, wrapping up our 2nd #China panel at the @epssnet.bsky.social 2026 Annual Conference in #Belfast. #EPSS2026 #EPSS

The #Russia expert community is less centered on the #US than its #China expert counterpart and apparently less male-dominated. The first findings from our www.autpol.net / @expertsurvey.bsky.social project as presented at the @epssnet.bsky.social 2026 Annual Conference in #Belfast! #EPSS2026 #EPSS

Not at all #tangping (lying flat): Sungmin Rho talks with great energy about how men and women differ in their refusal to enact the scripts of social reproduction. Another great contribution to our 2nd #China panel at the @epssnet.bsky.social 2026 Annual Conference in #Belfast. #EPSS2026 #EPSS

@pierreflandry.bsky.social (with Zhang Zheng) on the importance of distinguishing the two Wang Lis when using #LLMs to build the ultimate biographical dataset of CCP officials. A great start to our 2nd #China panel at the @epssnet.bsky.social 2026 Annual Conference! #EPSS2026 #EPSS

Jérôme DOYON (withAaron Glasserman) shows how ethnic minorities remain underrepresented in the #PRC bureaucracy, and usually constrained to their specific region and specific parts of the bureaucracy. In our first #China panel at the @epssnet.bsky.social 2026 Annual Conference in #Belfast #EPSS2026

So why didn't the #CCP just repress all religious organizations when establishing the #PRC, painting this map all red? Read @chuyuliu.bsky.social and Howard Liu's working paper on the #CCP strategy of repression and cooptation to find out! @epssnet.bsky.social #EPSS2026

Xiaoyu Zhang, in joint research with @pierreflandry.bsky.social, discusses how the #PRC government secures its borders by building elaborate border posts to draw its population to these remote areas. The second paper at our #China panels at the @epssnet.bsky.social 2026 Annual Conference. #EPSS2026

Esther S. was kicking off the first of our two #China panels at the @epssnet.bsky.social 2026 Annual Conference. Get in touch with her if you want to know how the #CCP gets academics to Make #Marxism Great Again. #EPSS2026 #EPSS

Kirill Melnikov finds that #centrality in the #politicalnetwork of #Russian #elites protects them from getting dismissed in his presentation at the ecpr.bsky.social #JointSession workshop on #LLMs and #politicalnetworks.

Can a #Colombian businessperson's network prevent them getting targeted by #FARC? serayyalaz.bsky.social explores the role of #corporatenetworks in #collectiveaction to deter #rebelviolence in her PhD project presented at our ECPR.bsky.social #JointSession workshop on #LLMs and #politicalnetworks.

What do #Swiss voters find when they search for information on #Swiss political actors' stance in different #initiatives? Mykola Makhortykh presents research co-authored with Maryna Sydorova, vihangjumle.bsky.social and vikavzt.bsky.social at our ECPR.bsky.social #JointSession workshop.

Felipe Perilla Reyes presents his #python package #text2rel at our ecpr.bsky.social #JointSession workshop. Check it out if you need to extract in particular familial relationships from scanned historical documents!

Naim Bro demonstrates how you can create narratives about changing #cleavages among #politicalelites in #Chile and beyond (instead of outputs unintelligible to lay audiences) at our ecpr.bsky.social #JointSession workshop.

Our team member Ivan Fomichev is expanding #US #rollcall data back into time to construct historic #covoting networks at our ecpr.bsky.social #JointSession workshop on #LLMs and #politicalnetworks. #Americanists: what are the fun things you could do with that?

Yifei Zhu and his coauthors Songpo Yang, Jiangnan Zhu and Junyan Jiang bring AI agents to the problem of using #LLMs and extracting #politicalnetworks at our ecpr.bsky.social #JointSession workshop.

Curious about how #German #politicalelites are connected to the country's #economicelites? Check out the project of Lisa Garbe, Yuequan Guo, macartan.bsky.social, and Lennard Naumann. wzb.bsky.social

Mert Kılıç is presenting on the influence of #Turkey's far-right parties' influence on the legislative agenda during our @ecpr.bsky.social #JointSession workshop on #LLM and #politicalnetworks.

Spiral staircases, elevators and escalators: Scott Michael Hamilton presents his research on types of #revolvingdoors and their impact on careers in the defence sector and government in the #EU at our @ecpr.bsky.social #JointSession workshop.

@seraphinemaerz.bsky.social is presenting and giving a quick tutorial to the #quallmer R package at our at our @ecpr.bsky.social #JointSession workshop.

Claudia Salas Gimenez shows how parties adjust their #election campaigns on #YouTube at our @ecpr.bsky.social #JointSession workshop on #LLM and #politicalnetworks.

Qian’ge Liu, our team member, is presenting her PhD project on #corruption #networks in #Nigeria for the first time in public. A big thank you to all the participants of the #LLMs and #politicalnetworks @ecpr.bsky.social #JointSession workshop for their feedback!

@alexpiron.bsky.social and @ccrellin.bsky.social use #LLMs on #EU aid data to construct the EU's Humanitarian Aid #Network to explain aid allocation at our @ecpr.bsky.social #JointSession workshop.

Tu Ngo presents his ambitious PhD-project to extract #politicalnetworks of cabinet-level #politicalelites using #LLMs on #wikipedia and other data at our @ECPR #JointSession workshop. Will the shape of these networks constrain leaders in their decision to go to war?

Yesterday was the second day of our @ecpr.bsky.social joint session workshop on #LLMs and #politicalnetworks, again with a marvelous view. #ecprjs26 Here is a recap of yesterday’s highlights:

Jorge Quesada Velazco collects feedback after his presentation of joint work with Tina Freyburg on the #politicalnetworks between #Chinese #economicelites connected to internet providers in #Africa and internet shutdowns.

seraphinemaerz.bsky.social presents her research on how #politicalelites' #illiberal speech and its normalization co-occurs with democratic decline at our ecpr.bsky.social #JointSession workshop.

The first of several papers on #politicalnetworks in #China at our workshop: Zheng Zhang and @pierreflandry.bsky.social dig into the historical #CCP Organizational Department data to give us more fine-grained career and position data of Chinese political elites.