Bruno Schmidt-Feuerheerd

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Congratulations! 🥳

If you’re a PhD student from or working on MENA, or if you are advising MENA students who could benefit from a supportive online working space, please reach out.

We’ve had dozens of PhD students from Turkey alone finish their dissertations, apply for grants and jobs, revise article submissions.

Dictating the Agenda: The Authoritarian Resurgence in World Politics

by me & @cooleyoneurasia.bsky.social is now published by OUP in the USA (rest of world soon)

If you are interested in why you see so many dictatorships & illiberal leaders influencing world politics then this is the book for you.

This should be much, much bigger news in Germany. It should be a lead item on the national news.

"A four-year-old Black boy died in a fire in a house in Wilhelmshaven occupied exclusively by people of recent immigration background...The public prosecutor's office is now investigating the arson."

Call for Papers: Syria after Assad Workshop - Project on Middle East Political Science The stunning collapse of the Assad regime in December 2024 has thrown up crucial questions about the future of Syria and the Syrian people. For example, is Syria transitioning mainly from fourteen yea...

POMEPS Call for Papers: Syria after Assad Workshop. We seek papers on topics related to understanding Syria today that will be discussed at a virtual workshop on Sept. 19th. The deadline to apply is July 21st. For more info on how to apply: pomeps.org/call-for-pap...

Exit polls and turnout figures look very promising for Nicușor Dan (and prediction markets seem to agree). But lots of uncertainty remains given the gap between exit polls and results in the first wave. Meanwhile, Simion claimed victory, setting the stage for fraud claims (and possibly violence.)

“'No one knows better than us that the Gazans have nowhere to return,' explained a commander, whose battalion was involved in the destruction of about a thousand buildings over two months in 2025. [...]'The idea was to destroy everything.'" #Gaza
www.972mag.com/israel-gaza-...

Do you have any new publications or CfPs to share with the APSG community? Do you work on authoritarian politics and are in the academic market (or will soon)?
Let us know!!
forms.gle/wMqEnjAgJyxq...

Labour is Learning the Wrong Lessons Centre-left incumbents are staying in power by aggressively pushing back on populists, not by aping them

Wrote up a similar set of results the other day if you haven’t read it already.

benansell.substack.com/p/labour-is-...

They're also canceling The Middle East Journal as an academic outlet to transition it to a policy-focused format by fall 2025

Netanjahus Krieg in Gaza: Damit Deutschland nicht Komplize wird Israels Militäraktion in Gaza verfolgt kein rationales Ziel mehr. Das Vorgehen der Armee dient nur noch den politischen und ideologischen Bedürfnissen Netanjahus und seiner Koalition.

Ähnlich ein überraschend kritischer Kommentar in der FAZ von Christian Meier kürzlich: www.faz.net/aktuell/poli...

How ICE is becoming a secret police force under the Trump administration The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement meets most criteria that have defined secret police forces in authoritarian regimes. And the worst may be yet to come.

The comparativists are making good sense of US politics: a great new piece by my old friend and collaborator @lmorgenbesser.bsky.social

A decline in public investments and overall austerity, however, create more breeding ground for grievances that the far right can capitalize on.
If you combine this with a normalization of their anti-immigrant position, it is the ideal situation for them.
This is exactly what Labour is doing.

AI free is the new organic

My latest: Trump is heading to Saudi in mid-May, chasing $1 trillion in investments

He may leave disappointed

The kingdom’s role in the global economy is shifting -- from an exporter of capital to a seeker of funds

Full analysis on the Bloomberg terminal

Das betrifft nicht nur Journalist*innen, die für die SZ schreiben, sondern auch alle Wissenschaftler*innen. Informa (Routledge, Taylor&Francis) hat sämtliche Daten an Microsoft verkauft, ohne Zustimmung der Autor*nnen & ohne jede Vergütung.

Danke für nichts.

www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty...

"The data analytic tools now being used to scour social media were enhanced during the Biden administration, a former Biden administration DHS official said."

Congrats! 🥳

Envisaging Dataist Modernity Who gets to imagine datafied visions of the future city (region) and why is it important to look at universities as powerful urban stakeholders?

Very excited to see my PhD dissertation published! I asked who gets to imagine Edinburgh’s future. I spoke with political leaders, tech entrepreneurs and higher education officials responsible for delivering the Edinburgh City Region Deal. Open access link ⬇️

At a time when international students and scholars are turning away from America, instead of seizing this opportunity, Number 10 have a steely focus on winning the Runcorn by-election to help defend their wafer-thin majority of 174 seats.

New Publication!
@fabioangiolillo.bsky.social, @felixwiebrecht.bsky.social & @staffanlindberg.bsky.social introduce the party-system democracy index (PSDI), a new global measure on regime preferences across party systems.
doi.org/10.1017/S000...

"Vance responded a minute later: “Excellent.” Thirty-five minutes after that, Ratcliffe, the CIA director, wrote, “A good start,” which Waltz followed with a text containing a fist emoji, an American-flag emoji, and a fire emoji. The Houthi-run Yemeni health ministry reported that at least 53 people were killed in the strikes, a number that has not been independently verified." - from Atlantic Article linked

Rephrasing this:

While technically accurate to refer to the "Houthi-controlled" Yemeni health ministry, phrasing + skepticism about casualty numbers is uncomfortably similar to discrediting Gaza casualty the so-called "Hamas-run" Ministry of Health

www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...

Back to work after a week off and wanted to belatedly share thoughts on America's Middle East policy after a trip to DC this month. The first of which is that Trump has a skeleton crew: if personnel is policy, there's almost no policy because there are almost no personnel. 🧵

Insight: Undercurrents – GCC Monarchies Contend with Gaza & Trump II Despite the facade of a united front, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar are pursuing separate paths in dealing with Trump on the Israeli-Palestinian issue.

Despite the facade of a united front, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar are pursuing separate paths in dealing with Trump II on the Israeli-Palestinian issue.

Read our new Insight and subscribe:

Undercurrents – GCC Monarchies Contend with Gaza & Trump II

www.gulfnashra.com/p/insight-un...

Collaborative authoritarianism and its unintended consequences Why do authoritarian regimes maintain access to open U.S.-owned social media platforms like Twitter and how do pro-government supporters use them? While the literature on consultative authoritarian...

This article by @brunofeuerheerd.bsky.social demonstrates how open social media applications allow loyalists to perform public opinion and police critical views in authoritarian systems, using original data from Saudi Arabia. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Of course, small consumer choices like this won't change fact that Europe is totally dependent on US and Asia for tech. We don't make chips, we don't make phones, and our societies would grind to a halt without Microsoft Windows. Deeper changes are needed

www.bertelsmann-stiftung.de/en/our-proje...

😅 that might actually happen

I'm still waiting for the "Should European nations boycott the FIFA World Cup in the US in 2026" debate to kick off