Pavithra Suryanarayan
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pavisuri.bsky.social
Pavithra Suryanarayan
@pavisuri.bsky.social
Associate Professor, Government Department, LSE
Indian politics, state capacity, status politics, historical political economy
www.pavisuri.com
Editor at http://broadstreet.blog
Pinned
🚨My Annual Review article "Endogenous State Capacity" is now available online. I am very grateful for the rich conversations with @annagbusse.bsky.social @pberamendi.bsky.social Cathy Boone, David Stasavage, Emily Sellars, Volha Charnysh, Dann Naseemullah, Francesca Jensenius, Mai Hassan & Xiuyu Li.
Endogenous State Capacity
Canonical studies of the origins of state capacity have focused on macro-historical or structural explanations. I review recent research in historical political economy that showcases the role of politics—agents, their constraints, and their motivations—in the evolution of state capacity. Findings from both developed and developing countries emphasize how elite conflict, principal–agent dilemmas, and ethnic and racial differences have shaped agents’ preferences for capacity. These new studies demonstrate that state capacity can be strategically manipulated by political and economic elites, and that the various dimensions of state capacity—extractive, coercive, legal—do not necessarily move together. Refocusing our attention on the political drivers of state capacity has also shed light on why there are such stark subnational variations in the development of state capacity, particularly within large polities like India, China, and the United States. The findings point to the need for more nuanced conceptualization and measurement of state capacity. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Political Science, Volume 27 is June 2024. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.
tinyurl.com
Britain’s elites seem to be totally hapless in the face of Trumpism.
I wish I didn’t have to share this. But the BBC has decided to censor my first Reith Lecture.

They deleted the line in which I describe Donald Trump as “the most openly corrupt president in American history.” /1
November 25, 2025 at 4:24 PM
Great day to look at these quotes and also check out the role of women voters in the recent elections in the state of Bihar, one of the less developed Indian states. Who knew women could be their own agents?!
Today is a good day to remind you that none of the classic vote studies thought very highly of women's political competence.
November 25, 2025 at 4:10 PM
Reposted by Pavithra Suryanarayan
Opinion | The Boomers Are Protesting Trump. Where Is Gen Z?
www.nytimes.com
November 25, 2025 at 12:51 PM
Have to agree with this. Found the writing to be meh even though the film was fun. However, the unambiguously good thing to come out of Rogue One was this cool op-ed by @separkinson.bsky.social!
November 25, 2025 at 12:20 PM
At this rate, we are going to get a pretty robust presidential pair in Kelly-Warnock without the Democrats making any institutional efforts at all.
Mark Kelly: "I said something that was pretty simple and non-controversial, and that was that members of the military should follow the law. In response to that, Trump said I should be executed, I should be hanged ... it says a lot more about him than it says about me. I'm not going to be silenced."
November 25, 2025 at 8:57 AM
Reposted by Pavithra Suryanarayan
🚨 LSE Assistant Professor in Political Science 🚨

We’re hiring a tenure-track assistant professor - any area of empirical political science - to join our wonderful Government Dept @lsegovernment.bsky.social

Any questions, please reach out to me

📣 Please share! 📣

jobs.lse.ac.uk/Vacancies/W/...
November 25, 2025 at 8:38 AM
We are hiring! Please share widely!
November 25, 2025 at 7:57 AM
Today as most days confirms one thing- American politics is totally mental
November 22, 2025 at 4:09 PM
One way to understand this is that a lot of journos have made their careers betting on the reactionary far-right, hoping it will lead to them taking over institutions. That strategy failing has huge consequences for their futures and their jobs.
lmao lol Jesus Christ
November 20, 2025 at 11:57 AM
Reposted by Pavithra Suryanarayan
Take note Starmer and co
The Danish Social Democrats who have pursued far right policies on immigration and governs with the centre-right are set to lose in Copenhagen for the first time in a 100 years, while the left looks set to win a major victory today.
November 19, 2025 at 7:43 AM
Men having a normal one on the other site.
POV: you are a young woman celebrating a recent academic success
November 18, 2025 at 8:30 AM
Reposted by Pavithra Suryanarayan
Escape room where the thing you are trying to escape is reading about Olivia Nuzzi
November 18, 2025 at 2:59 AM
Reposted by Pavithra Suryanarayan
November 16, 2025 at 11:37 AM
Unfortunately, the same can't be said for Midsomer county where per capita murder rate is 10,000 per million in just November
There were 93 homicides in London last year: population 9 million

In New York - population 8.5 million - there were
391.

London's homicide figure is 6 times lower than LA, 9 times lower than Miami, 17 times lower than Chicago.

And it's falling year on year despite the population increasing
November 16, 2025 at 8:58 PM
Reposted by Pavithra Suryanarayan
And they say bluesky is not worth the time
November 14, 2025 at 9:19 AM
Reposted by Pavithra Suryanarayan
“Every single person in the Epstein emails should be removed and excluded from positions of any power forever” would be a good op-ed, but probably won’t appear in the NYT. Even more importantly, it would be a good political party platform, but that probably won’t happen either
November 13, 2025 at 4:41 PM
Reposted by Pavithra Suryanarayan
WHITE HOUSE: FEDERAL STATISTICAL SYSTEM MAY HAVE PERMANENTLY BEEN DAMAGED WHITE HOUSE: OCTOBER JOBS REPORTS LIKELY NEVER RELEASED
November 12, 2025 at 6:34 PM
Put the concerted effort by a particular newspaper over the years to platform anti-woke in context of the same paper sitting on Epstein correspondence. Staying silent is one thing, but running a info campaign to malign the social foundations of the me too movement or BLM is quite another.
November 13, 2025 at 2:21 PM
Reposted by Pavithra Suryanarayan
Maybe it’s just the Humanities professor in me, but let it be noted that events of today (ahem) have demonstrated the value of being able to assess a large volume of qualitative data and do careful textual analysis with deep attention to context.
November 13, 2025 at 12:24 AM
The BBC let got of a DG and a news editor for an editorial decision. What’s the NYT planning to do for sitting on emails for two election cycles that directly link the President to Epstein?

But her Emails!!!!
turns out the emails we should have been reading in 2016 were from the NYT
November 13, 2025 at 10:27 AM
FYI
November 12, 2025 at 3:05 PM
Reposted by Pavithra Suryanarayan
Kind of wild that while food assistance was withheld from millions of families, one Trump-supporting billionaire (Ellison) saw his net worth grow more this year than the entire SNAP budget. And the YTD gains of the other four richest men would’ve fully covered salaries for all 2M federal employees.
November 11, 2025 at 9:03 PM
This was a good read but this caught my eye and I had a hearty laugh: “Begala continued, Let me get to the heart of your question: Zohran Mamdani had the weakest win of a successful New York Democrat in 35 years.“ How are you a “political consultant” and coming up with gems like this?!!!!
Opinion | Young Voters Are the Holy Grail. Zohran Mamdani Just Showed Democrats How to Win Them.
www.nytimes.com
November 11, 2025 at 1:45 PM
Reposted by Pavithra Suryanarayan
Kyle Kingsbury is not a journalist. He is not an op-ed writer.

He is a computer safety researcher.

And he has written one of the most compelling, comprehensive accounts of the ongoing hell in Chicago that you could possibly imagine.

In under 1600 words.

aphyr.com/posts/397-i-...
November 9, 2025 at 8:49 PM
There is the angry Dem voters/base, then there is the Republican Party and its voters, and then there is the Dem Party- that continues to toil in the belief that it is the only responsible party so it just negotiates with itself. Completely unsustainable
November 10, 2025 at 7:33 AM