Roman-Gabriel Olar

Postdoctoral Fellow in Political Science (3-4 years) (288628) | University of Oslo Job title: Postdoctoral Fellow in Political Science (3-4 years) (288628), Employer: University of Oslo, Deadline: Monday, November 17, 2025

We are hiring PhDs and postdocs to work on the ERC project GETGOV, where I am the PI.

We will investigate governing elites since 1789. I am sure that it will be a lot of fun and result in great research!

Postdocs: www.jobbnorge.no/en/available...

PhDs: www.jobbnorge.no/en/available...

🚨 New in Journal of Politics! 🚨
Do radical right parties need to cut ties with old dictatorships to succeed?
👉 @sergipardos.bsky.social and my study of Spain’s VOX says: ❌ Not necessarily.

EPSA have announced that they will hold a conference in July 2026.

😵‍💫 We understand that there might be some confusion about EPSS and EPSA.

👉🏽 So we thought we would clarify some things.

A short 🧵

The populist spiral: How populist rhetoric spreads within party systems - Vlad Surdea-Hernea, 2025 This paper investigates whether populism, independent of its substantive policy correlates, diffuses within party systems as a rhetorical strategy. Building on ...

Populism is contagious: when parties are exposed to populist rhetoric from their rivals, they adopt populist rhetoric in future elections journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

🚨 Big News for European Political Science 🚨

We’re thrilled to announce the launch of the European Political Science Society (EPSS): a new, member-led, not-for-profit association built to support our scholarly community.

🔗 epssnet.org

Here’s a thread with everything you need to know.

🧵

Democratization = new people in the political elite? Nope, in many cases not. This great new article shows that members of the autocratic government very often make it back to government after democratization.

Thank you, Jacob! You played a big part in helping me get this to the finish line. I really appreciate it!

The paper is open access courtesy of @dculibrary.bsky.social @dublincityuni.bsky.social

Selecting on the dependent variable here, but I want to give a shoutout to the four reviewers that provided really good comments that made the paper so much better. Whoever you are, I appreciate your insights and comments! Also, the editorial staff @poppublicsphere.bsky.social was fantastic.

This paper benefitted of generous feedback from some great scholars such @mikealbertus.bsky.social @jacobnyrup.bsky.social @chknutsen.bsky.social @monikanalepa.bsky.social @ehernandez.bsky.social @austinsmatthews.bsky.social. Thank you!

of autocratic revolving doors. The paper also has additional analyses showing some of these relationships are conditional, but that's for the reader to discover. And yes, I run numerous robustness tests to rule out observed and unobserved confounders.

core autocratic elites and those that held more prestigious portfolios are more likely to return to democratic cabinet. A longer time spent in an autocratic cabinet is not particularly useful for elites attempting a comeback under democracy. I also use two short case studies to illustrate the logic

The theoretical expectations are tested using a novel measure of autocratic revolving doors at the elite-level comprising 12,949 former autocratic cabinet members from 68 new democracies across 91 different democratic spells between 1966 and 2020. The results indicate that...

Thus, I propose that the variation in political experience that elites gained under autocracy and the characteristics of the cabinet positions they held under autocracy allows us to explain the demand and supply logic that drives autocratic revolving doors in new democracies.

On the supply side, cabinet leaders can/need to select from a pool of former autocratic elites that have the policy and political experience to run state institutions, and that can signal to autocratic elites networks that their interests will be protected under democracy.

Autocratic revolving doors is explained by a demand and supply logic of (political) cabinet formation. On the demand side, they need to provide public goods, reward political allies and appease surviving networks of autocratic elites since these (autocratic) networks can derail democracy.

Autocratic revolving doors is the norm in new democracies as former autocratic elites return to cabinet in 68 (out of 72) new democracies between 1966 and 2020. They occupy these positions for an average of (almost) 4 years.

Your weekend reading (and my new article) is out today @poppublicsphere.bsky.social.

In this article I develop a novel theory of autocratic revolving doors - the phenomenon of autocratic elites returning to a cabinet position under democracy.

doi.org/10.1017/S153...

“when we reason, we don’t have to generate text that expresses our solution and then generate another one and then generated another one, and then among the ones we produce, pick the one that is good...”

“And this is what we yet cannot reproduce with machines.”

Thanks! Just sent you a DM about this

The paper is open access courtesy of @dculibrary.bsky.social @dublincityuni.bsky.social.
Check it out for more details and share it with your network.

The results show that returning autocratic elite reduce human rights treaty commitment by new democracies, particularly when the Ministry of Justice portfolio is held by a former autocrat.

Moreover, I illustrate the logic of the theoretical argument with two short, stylised case studies (of Brazil and Argentina) and an instrumental variable approach to reduce potential endogeneity due to reverse causality.

Building on this, I develop novel theoretical expectations of the effect of returning autocratic elites on human rights commitment. These are tested in timeseries cross-sectional research design using novel measures of autocratic influence in democratic cabinets between 1966 and 2010.

More often than not, politics in new democracies is a continuation of autocratic politics by new (democratic) rules of power-sharing in which former autocratic elites aim to maintain political influence and protect their interests.

Specifically, the literature assumes that new democracies are a blank slate in which all societal actors are committed to democracy and want to lock-in democracy. This contradicts the findings of the comparative democratization literature which shows that this is not the case.

focusing on other treaties or international organizations with human rights provisions. I propose that these mixed findings are driven by a misguided theoretical assumption about democratization which leads to bias due to measurement error and reverse causality.

This thesis was first proposed by Andrew Moravcsik and was followed by numerous empirical tests that expanded the scope of the initial case study of the European Court of Human Rights. However, this thesis received mixed support in empirical analyses...

Existing explanations focus on the logic of the democratic lock-in: cabinet elites in new democracies want stronger international human rights commitments to lock-in the newly won democratic freedoms and rights against future illiberal threats.

Locking in democracy? Transitions, returning autocratic elites, and human rights treaty commitment - The Review of International Organizations Under what conditions are new democracies more committed to human rights? Existing explanations focus on the logic of the democratic lock-in as elites in new democracies commit their countries to inte...

New publication alert @the-peio.bsky.social
Under what conditions are new democracies more committed to human rights? More specifically, what role do former autocratic elites play in shaping ratification of international human rights treaties?

link.springer.com/article/10.1...