Lars Lott

Übers Teilen würden wir uns freuen: @nilsweidmann.bsky.social @humanrights-fau.bsky.social @alicja-plkwcz.bsky.social @krajewskimarkus.bsky.social @argohdes.bsky.social

Werde Teil unseres internationalen Teams und profitiere von interdisziplinären Austausch, u.a. am Exzellenzcluster „Transforming Human Rights".

Auf der Suche nach einer Postdoc-Stelle im Bereich der empirischen Menschenrechtsforschung? An der @fau.de suchen wir eine*n Postdoc für 3+3 Jahre für unser Team. tinyurl.com/4d3w3th6

A chart showing a summary of the Academic Freedom Index in 2008, 2015, and 2024.

The global retrenchment of academic freedom, as estimated by V-Dem and FAU:

2008-2015: mostly at the lower part of the scale
2015-2024: the upper part of the scale moves as well

More by FAU at: academic-freedom-index.net

@vdeminstitute.bsky.social

Is research performance related to academic freedom? A preprint co-authored with @lutzb.bsky.social conducts a large-scale empirical analysis on the national level to this question. osf.io/2mh8f #academicfreedom #AcademicFreedomIndex Short 🧵

We find an average treatment effect of a 20% decline in research performance when academic freedom declines substantially. But we do not find any statistically significant effect on the top 10% or top 1% publications, as measured by citation counts in their subject category and publication year. 8/

However, we also explored the effect of academic freedom decline episodes on national performance. We thereby tested whether the current global crisis in academic freedom affects research performance. 7/

Results can be summarized as follows: Whereas differences between countries in enabling AF are related to differences in their national performance, changes in enabling AF within a country are not reflected in annual performance differences to that extent as the differences between the countries. 6/

We found a positive and statistically significant effect of the ‘between AF’ variance on bibliometric indicators with a pooled effect size of 1.7969 (95%-CI = 1.4647; 2.1290]). ‘within AF’ has a positive pooled effect size of 0.0266 but is statistically not significant at conventional levels. 5/

We applied three different identification strategies, namely two-way fixed effects regressions, within-between random effects regression, and difference-in-differences estimators, and used different bibliometric indicators to calculate the effect of AF on national performance. 4/

To determine whether China is an exception and to explore the relationship between academic freedom (AF) and national knowledge production, our study examines the association between an index measuring national AF and bibliometric indicators, such as publication counts. 3/

The remarkable increase in publications from China over the past two decades raises questions about the assumed dependence of effective science production on academic freedom, which is supposed to protect science from external influences. 2/

Is research performance related to academic freedom? A preprint co-authored with @lutzb.bsky.social conducts a large-scale empirical analysis on the national level to this question. osf.io/2mh8f #academicfreedom #AcademicFreedomIndex Short 🧵

Results can be summarized as follows: Whereas differences between countries in enabling AF are related to differences in their national performance, changes in enabling AF within a country are not reflected in annual performance differences to that extent as the differences between the countries. 6/

We found a positive and statistically significant effect of the ‘between AF’ variance on bibliometric indicators with a pooled effect size of 1.7969 (95%-CI = 1.4647; 2.1290]). ‘within AF’ has a positive pooled effect size of 0.0266 but is statistically not significant at conventional levels. 5/

We applied three different identification strategies, namely two-way fixed effects regressions, within-between random effects regression, and difference-in-differences estimators, and used different bibliometric indicators to calculate the effect of AF on national performance. 4/

To determine whether China is an exception and to explore the relationship between academic freedom (AF) and national knowledge production, our study examines the association between an index measuring national AF and bibliometric indicators, such as publication counts. 3/

The remarkable increase in publications from China over the past two decades raises questions about the assumed dependence of effective science production on academic freedom, which is supposed to protect science from external influences. 2/

Warnings From Weimar Why bargaining with authoritarians fails.

A new piece I wrote appearing in FOREIGN AFFAIRS today

www.foreignaffairs.com/germany/warn...

F.B.I. Plans to Lower Recruiting Standards, Alarming Agents

Lowering recruitment standards in police organizations is standard authoritarian practice. It makes it easier to hire people who will do the regimes bidding "no matter what it is". They have worse outside options and are hired for their loyalty, not their competence.

How can resilience of democratic procedures, processes & principles be improved? Aurel Croissant & @larslott.bsky.social present a novel conceptualization & measurements of democratic resilience: buff.ly/Z7psEZm (OPEN ACCESS)

@vdeminstitute.bsky.social @fau @polstudiesassoc.bsky.social @sagepub.com

How can resilience of democratic procedures, processes & principles be improved? Aurel Croissant & @larslott.bsky.social present a novel conceptualization & measurements of democratic resilience: buff.ly/Z7psEZm (OPEN ACCESS)

@vdeminstitute.bsky.social @fau @polstudiesassoc.bsky.social @sagepub.com

Does higher state capacity go together with lower risk of democratic breakdown? Many political scientists certainly believe so!

Yet, in an article just published in @polstudies.bsky.social , David Andersen, @skaaning.bsky.social and I highlight important nuances to this general relationship.

Democratic Resilience in the Twenty-First Century: Search for an Analytical Framework and Explorative Analysis - Aurel Croissant, Lars Lott, 2025 Why are some democracies more resilient than others? How can their resilience be improved? Answering these questions requires valid conceptualization and reliab...

Why are some democracies more resilient than others? How can their resilience be improved? Together with Aurel Croissant, I’ve developed a conceptualization of democratic resilience as resilience performance and resilience capacity.
Read the full article here (Open Access): doi.org/10.1177/0032...

Democratic Resilience in the Twenty-First Century: Search for an Analytical Framework and Explorative Analysis - Aurel Croissant, Lars Lott, 2025 Why are some democracies more resilient than others? How can their resilience be improved? Answering these questions requires valid conceptualization and reliab...

Not convinced by every word but figure 4 captures the American predicament: strong civil society & civic culture combined with cratering trust, institutional dysfunction, intense polarization and one autocratizing party. That’s why it’s so hard to predict the US future.

🧵5/5 This paper was originally published as V-Dem Working Paper No. 149 v-dem.net/media/public... but has been significantly improved through peer review and revised considerably compared to the working paper version.

🧵4/5 Unfortunately, the resolution of images printed in the PDF is poor, but all figures are available in the reproduction package and on CodeOcean for direct download.

🧵3/5 The data is openly available across several platforms.
Harvard Dataverse: doi.org/10.7910/DVN/...
Zenodo: zenodo.org/records/1551...
CodeOcean: codeocean.com/capsule/2766...
The DRC Index is also available on my Github for further research: github.com/LarsLott/Dem...

🧵2/5 In our article, we introduce the Democratic Resilience Capacity (DRC) Index and provide some evidence on the resilience capacity of different democracies. @vdeminstitute.bsky.social @fau.de #democraticresilience #democracy #autocratization

Democratic Resilience in the Twenty-First Century: Search for an Analytical Framework and Explorative Analysis - Aurel Croissant, Lars Lott, 2025 Why are some democracies more resilient than others? How can their resilience be improved? Answering these questions requires valid conceptualization and reliab...

Why are some democracies more resilient than others? How can their resilience be improved? Together with Aurel Croissant, I’ve developed a conceptualization of democratic resilience as resilience performance and resilience capacity.
Read the full article here (Open Access): doi.org/10.1177/0032...