What do I mean by “authoritarian teleology”? (Thank you @kaiserkuo for the plug!) Broadly speaking, it’s a style of thinking that interprets whatever an authoritarian govt does as a “strategy” to “stay/remain/survive in power.” 1/n Since the early 2000s a research program has developed around the meta question of “how do authoritarian regimes stay in power?” It’s a question that opens many research statements. A hot topic when I was in grad school, a hot topic still. 2/n

If you can read only one thing to make sense of the protests in #China, read “Now Out of Never” by Timur Kuran. It’s one of those studies that cannot be summarized in a thread, so I won’t attempt it. Just go read it in its entirety, it’s worth it. I have a few reflections 1/7🧵 The article is best-known for the concept of “preference falsification,” the idea that people lie about supporting an authoritarianism regime. But the coolest part is in the second half, where people start to falsify their support for the revolution once it grows and succeeds 2/7

A thread about my new book The Performative State @CornellPress. I’ve published the main argument earlier in a @World_Pol article called “Performative Governance” tiny.cc/PG20. The book, I hope, offers much more than that. 1/9 Performative governance is the state's theatrical display of good governance. But what does “performative” mean? What “good governance” is being performed? Who is the performance for? If what’s performative intends to appear substantive, how to tell them apart? Intro explains 2/9