Nicholas Morieson

PhD in politics. Writing on populism, religion, and nationalism. Among other things.
@Deakin_ADI

[Neil Scott @MrNeilScott]

Clyde Foot Tunnel - one of the most dystopian places in Glasgow, where you have to contact the control centre to exit.

[@populismstudies @populismstudies]

📢 ECPS Interview

🎓 Professor Adam Przeworski: There Is No Worldwide Crisis of Democracy

✍️Interview by Selcuk Gultasli

🚨 In a scholarly landscape increasingly dominated by narratives of democratic decline, authoritarian resurgence, and populist disruption, Professor Adam Przeworski (@AdamPrzeworski) offers a strikingly counterintuitive perspective. In this in-depth ECPS interview , Professor Przeworski challenges the prevailing consensus: “I do not believe there is a worldwide crisis of democracy.”

📊 Rather than interpreting contemporary developments as evidence of systemic collapse, Professor Przeworski reframes democracy as a mechanism for managing conflict through elections—a system inherently characterized by dissatisfaction, contestation, and competing expectations.

⚖️ He acknowledges unprecedented transformations—including the weakening of political parties, rising polarization, and the emergence of new right-wing actors—but cautions against conflating these dynamics with democratic breakdown. Instead, he emphasizes structural continuity: “As much as half of the population is always dissatisfied with what democracy produces.”

🌍 Challenging influential datasets such as Varieties of Democracy Institute (V-Dem), Professor Przeworski questions both their empirical assumptions and interpretive frameworks. He underscores a crucial distinction:
➡️ While population-weighted measures may suggest authoritarian expansion,
➡️ the number of democratic regimes globally remains historically high.

🔍 The interview also explores:
👉 The shift from coups to incumbent-led democratic erosion
👉 The strategic dilemmas of opposition under “stealth authoritarianism”
👉 The endogenous nature of populism within democratic competition
👉 The conditions under which authoritarian regimes gain legitimacy
👉 The limits of modernization theory in explaining democratization

🛡️ Crucially, Professor Przeworski highlights democracy’s self-correcting capacity:
👉 “Attempts to usurp power through various means eventually encounter resistance.”
👉 “Small transgressions may be tolerated, but major violations of democratic rules are not.”

📌 By situating contemporary challenges within a broader theory of political conflict and institutional equilibrium, this interview offers a sobering yet cautiously optimistic reassessment of democracy’s resilience.

📕 Read the interview: https://t.co/wRv1yxqZGS

#ECPS #Populism #Democracy #AdamPrzeworski #DemocraticBacksliding #Authoritarianism #PoliticalTheory #ComparativePolitics #Vdem #Elections #DemocraticResilience #GlobalPolitics

[Mushtaq Bilal, PhD @MushtaqBilalPhD]

Academic publisher Elsevier's profit margin compared to Apple, Google, and Microsoft

Apple: 28%
Google: 25%
Microsoft: 34%

Elsevier: 37% with a revenue of $3.9 billion.

Elsevier's payment to academic authors and reviewers: $0

[Nicholas Morieson @NMorieson]

The Scandal of Woody Brown’s Upward Bound https://t.co/gpFltdJ4WI This fascinating part is that so many institutions and individuals have been willing partners in this obvious fraud, including two prestigious American colleges.

[Nicholas Morieson @NMorieson]

@Paul_Heron_ Some great ones there. The Bogarde films are excellent, especially The Servant. I'd watch him in almost anything. The Ipcress File I've seen only once, but it has remained with me. I should watch it again.

[Nicholas Morieson @NMorieson]

@DrewPavlou The words of Stephen Spender come to mind: "I gradually acquired a certain horror of the way in which my own mind worked. It was clear to me that unless I cared about every murdered child impartially, I did not really care about children being murdered at all".

[Nicholas Morieson @NMorieson]

@conor64 He is also older, and I suspect less able to regulate his emotions. But the people around him are just as bad, especially those telling him to make war on Iran, and claiming regime change would be easy.

[Nicholas Morieson @NMorieson]

@conor64 No, it wasn't a caricature. Trump was constrained by his inexperience and reliance on experienced (if bad in their own way) officials during his first term. In his second he faces no restrictions and so we see his character problem become defining.

[BBC News (World) @BBCWorld]

Sri Lanka declares Wednesdays off as Asian countries try to conserve fuel https://t.co/mIrNTajEDq

[Nicholas Morieson @NMorieson]

To say the least...

[ian bremmer @ianbremmer]

as of today, the united states has no capacity to reopen the straits of hormuz / defend tanker traffic.

if president trump is correct and there are no more targets to hit in iran, i’d say that’s a rather serious dilemma.

[Nicholas Morieson @NMorieson]

@XericDayXploit @conor64 He did, but Iran was always the dangerous exception. He was always a hawk when it came to Iran. I understand why many people are surprised by Trump attacking Iran, but if you followed his rhetoric on Iran closely you'd be less surprised.

[Nicholas Morieson @NMorieson]

@NateSilver538 It's surprising how bizarre, and yes indeed paranoid, this once sensible man has become. Looks like it's on his Substack, which makes sense as few magazines would publish such silly stuff.

[Nicholas Morieson @NMorieson]

@zaaaarbi Agreed. It's the most effective part of the film, to me, too. That dark house, the dread of knowing something terrible is going to happen.

[Nicholas Morieson @NMorieson]

@duncanreyburn Baudrillard might say that Toy Story can criticise screens all it likes, but its critique is already a kind of screen content, and its protest against screens, obsolescence of toys, is the consumer capitalist system monetising critique of the system.

[Nicholas Morieson @NMorieson]

@conor64 He is clearly not a well person. I feel sorry for him. Someone ought to intervene.

[Nicholas Morieson @NMorieson]

@AvidCommentator I saw similar ugly slogans very recently on a vandalised war memorial in the little Gippsland town of Loch.

[Nicholas Morieson @NMorieson]

@SamuelAndreyev @LinusMinimax I wholly agree with you. It's a great, powerful, film. But I do wonder what the Mulholland Drive the TV series, which is what it was intended to be, would have been like? Imagine tuning in every week for more.

[Dr Kylie Moore-Gilbert @KMooreGilbert]

@JaneCaro The fact that Australian media is only now waking up to what has already been 2 weeks of uprising and revolution is quite shocking

[Robert Horvath @RG_Horvath]

I am constantly amazed by the readiness of Western academics to accept uncritically the myth of popular support for the Putin regime and its war against Ukraine.