Shelley Liu

After 10 years of doing research in Historical Political Economy, this fall I’ll finally get a chance to teach a survey course on the field & I’m really looking forward to it! 😊

I thought this would be an opportunity to create a syllabus with many essential contributions to this growing field.

Happy to see this paper finally out! :)

Opinion | Trump’s Assault on the Systems That Keep Americans Safe Is Dangerous Eviscerating modern state institutions almost always clears a path for a different political order, built on loyalties and connections to the ruler.

Hanson and Kopstein get it. The new right is neither libertarian nor populist: it is corporatist, statist, and it understands Weber's definition of the state as the compulsory organization with a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence within a given territory

www.nytimes.com/2024/12/31/o...

What if they just periodically had to sit in their office closets while someone simulated being a shooter in the corridor, like my grade school children do?

Ugh this is so sad. Maybe not her most powerful, but to me, her most moving poem is this one

It is pretty crazy how bad US democracy looks right now in comparison with South Korea, or Brazil for that matter. Remember, folks: it’s not the coup attempt, it’s how you respond to it…

Now have two complete starter packs for "Africa News, Policy, Business, Econ & History". Starting a thread of all of my Africa starter packs, including more specific ones like, country/region, journalists, academics, media orgs, etc.

Here's the first Africa starter pack: go.bsky.app/BNYnWSJ

Second Africa Starter Pack
go.bsky.app/LgaSjF9

IMO one of the most significant findings in CP/IR over the last 15 years is that you can either have 1) a coercive apparatus that can repress but not be able to remove the leader or 2) win on the battlefield and be able to remove the leader

But you can't have both

New paper in @apsrjournal.bsky.social with @andreasbeerli.bsky.social, Dominik Hangartner, and Dalston Ward about #immigration and voting for the #FarRight in #Switzerland

PhD workshop - call for papers — Conflict & Change

It's that time of year again... The call for our UCL Conflict & Change PhD Workshop is out! We invite ECRs working on IR, conflict and contentious politics to apply by 8 December. We look forward to having you in London 24-25 February, 2025. Apply here: conflictandchange.org/phdworkshop2025

Full paper now available here! doi.org/10.1086/729947

Re-upping this recent International Security piece about civil war stabilization in a world of much more restricted international peacekeeping for the many new people on here:

The Harry Frank Guggenheim Emerging Scholar Award, for graduate students in their final year, is now open. It's a $25,000 award to facilitate diss write-up. All projects that focus on the causes and/or control of violence welcome. Applications accepted from 1 Nov to 1 Feb 2025.

Details: www.hfg.org

Started a working list of researchers, journalists, and practitioners working on humanitarian aid, peacebuilding/peacekeeping, and development in fragile and conflict-affected settings, please let me know if I missed you or anyone else who should be added! go.bsky.app/BWQc97A

Here is a public policy starter list. Mostly people who are studying the social safety net.

go.bsky.app/6W6j6oS

That US debate focuses more on distant European precedents rather than institutionally and culturally closer forms of Latin American authoritarianism or state failure also indicates which aspects of global history are given more space in US education and which are not.

Two things can be true at the same time:

1. Many people will suffer much pain in the coming years.

2. The election results are not the end of democracy, and it's a political mistake to announce they are (since then, nothing matters). Dems should prepare for a fight to win back the House in 2026.

thank you!! 😊

So excited to get a copy. Congrats @shelleyliu.bsky.social!

Coming soon...

Thank you!! And I just saw your new book coming out, congrats as well, excited to read it 😄

My paper with @karinkitchens.bsky.social, “Explaining Variation in Political Leadership by Marginalized Groups: Black Officeholding and 'Contraband Camps'" is now forthcoming @thejop.bsky.social. Abstract is below, and you can read it in full here: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

A brief summary:

Thanks! 😊

Thank you!!! 🙏

Huge thanks to Scott Straus, @meganastewart.bsky.social, Zachariah Mampilly, and Sarah Daly, whose work have all inspired this project, for their generous words!

I'll write a longer thread about it when the book is officially out. In the meantime, a synopsis: shelleyxliu.com/book-project.

Book cover for "Governing After War: Rebel Victories and Post-war Statebuilding" by Shelley X. Liu, published by Oxford University Press.

📚🚨 My book, "Governing After War: Rebel Victories and Post-war Statebuilding", will be out on Feb 22 and avail for pre-order! bit.ly/govafterwar

❓: how does rebel governance & social control shape rebel victors' post-war strategies for consolidating power?

Counterinsurgency is a bloody, costly business By Paul Staniland The current conventional wisdom on counterinsurgency (COIN) focuses on simultaneously building a strong state and creating mass legitimacy for the government. Gen.…

I've always liked this by @pstaniland.bsky.social. It's about lessons from S. Asia for US in Afghanistan. But it is helpful for thinking about the Gaza war and the deep political contradictions of a democracy engaging in state/nation building in the 21st century.

foreignpolicy.com/2009/11/24/c...

New issue of Perspectives on Politics out, including my (open access) article w/Asfandyar Mir and Tamar Mitts on using social media to identify murky patterns of elite competition and alignment, with evidence from around the 2018 Pakistani general election:
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...