Staffan I Lindberg /V-Dem Institute
silindberg.bsky.social
Staffan I Lindberg /V-Dem Institute
@silindberg.bsky.social

Professor & Director V-Dem Institute, Political Scientist @Univ of Gothenburg.

Staffan I. Lindberg is a Swedish political scientist and director of the V-Dem Institute at the University of Gothenburg. Lindberg's main research interests are comparative politics, democracy and democratization, Africa, political organizations, corruption and clientelism. .. more

Political science 48%
Sociology 22%
Pinned
Yes…. ”The Trump administration is descending into authoritarianism”

Autocracy in the USA: “Webloc, reportedly allows law enforcement officers to identify phones and track (...) without a warrant; Tangles (..) make dossiers on people of interest, including location information scraped from their public social media posts”
Gift article. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/04/o...
Opinion | ICE’s New Surveillance State Isn’t Tracking Only Immigrants
www.nytimes.com

Yep!

Happy to contribute
10 ways Trump attacked his enemies over last few weeks

youtube.com/shorts/GeRne...
10 ways Trump attacked his enemies in the last two weeks
YouTube video by Professor Christina Pagel
youtube.com
4️⃣ “A Framework for Understanding Regime Transformation: Introducing the ERT Dataset”.
Working Paper 113 from 2021 was the fourth most viewed (3,780 times). v-dem.net/media/public...

@acrowinghen.bsky.social‬‬‬‬‬
‪@boesevanessa.bsky.social‬‬‬‬‬
@silindberg.bsky.social
3(6)
v-dem.net

Yes.
How Tyranny Begins www.nytimes.com/2025/01/22/o...
Opinion | How Tyranny Begins
www.nytimes.com
🗺️ We carried on with Staffan I. Lindberg @silindberg.bsky.social (University of Gothenburg) discussing the the severity of democratic backsliding we see today in the world and what supports U-turns in autocratization.

Declaration of intent to go further and demolish all institutional trappings of democracy. Insurgents are defendants.

www.whitehouse.gov/j6/
January 6: A Date Which Will Live in Infamy
Discover the real January 6 story: peaceful protest turned tragedy, Deep State entrapment, media deception, and President Trump's triumphant pardons restoring justice to patriotic Americans.
www.whitehouse.gov

Yes.
Information underpins Democracy – why the BBC must be defended open.substack.com/pub/christin...
Information underpins Democracy – why the BBC must be defended
Recent events at the BBC have wide-reaching implications for our democracy - and the sooner we realise it, the better
open.substack.com
quick rundown of some classic autocratic behaviours over the past few days in America Covering attacking enemies, helping allies, cowing institutions and purging the military

All actions and more on www.trumpactiontracker.info?

youtu.be/Mx4c4JfgLeU
9th November: quick rundown of some classic autocratic behaviours over the past few days in America
YouTube video by Professor Christina Pagel
youtu.be

"Being Anti-Trump is probably illegal"

3 minutes on things that have happened in America over the weekend, concentrating on violating Democratic norms.

youtu.be/40OBi4acYYI
2 November: 'being Anti-Trump is probably illegal'
YouTube video by Professor Christina Pagel
youtu.be
Waiting for someone to explain why the announcement of a trade relationship that is worse than the one we had a year ago is received as a big success

There democracy gone in real time….
and now with added bar charts showing number of actions per month by domain. Clear massive growth in recent months in "violating democratic norms", "suppressing dissent", and "Nationalism"
and now with added bar charts showing number of actions per month by domain. Clear massive growth in recent months in "violating democratic norms", "suppressing dissent", and "Nationalism"

Now it comes….subvert the elections by legal means to ensure a hold on power. Standard tactic by autocrats over the last 25 years of ’third wave of autocratization’.

www.linkedin.com/posts/regina...
Disturbing. Election officials from nearly all 50 states gathered on a call last month with the DHS’s point person on “election integrity,” eager to hear how the woman filling a newly created 🌮… | Regina Phelps | 81 comments
Disturbing. Election officials from nearly all 50 states gathered on a call last month with the DHS’s point person on “election integrity,” eager to hear how the woman filling a newly created 🌮 position might help safeguard the vote ahead of next year’s midterms. But many of them left alarmed. Rather than offering assurances that the federal government’s election protection programs would continue uninterrupted, Heather Honey used portions of the meeting to echo rhetoric that has infused the right-wing election activist movement that emerged since 🌮 falsely claimed that his 2020 defeat was the result of widespread fraud. Honey, a leader in that movement until her appointment in August as deputy assistant secretary for election integrity, complained that her department’s cybersecurity experts tasked with combating misinformation about elections had “strayed from their mission.” The remark echoed a widespread view on the right that the agency had sought to silence supporters of 🌮’s fraud claims. Honey also repeatedly mentioned a report often cited by election conspiracists to support their claims that voting machines were rigged to favor Democrats. The ascent of Ms. Honey reflects how 🌮 and his allies, despite a clear victory last year, remain consumed with the belief that the 2020 election was stolen — and how the president is using the powers of the government to upend an electoral system that he insists helped Biden take the White House. In the past few months, 🌮 has elevated multiple proponents of his fraud claims into high-level administration jobs. Now, as government insiders, these activists could wield their newfound power to discredit future results or rekindle old claims to argue for a federal intrusion into locally administered voting systems. On a call with right-wing activists in March, before her appointment to the DHS, she suggested that the new administration could declare a “national emergency” and justify dictating new rules to state and local governments. She said this could be based on an “actual investigation” of the 2020 election if it showed there had been a “manipulation” of the vote. “And therefore, we have some additional powers that don’t exist right now,” she said in March, according to someone who joined the call, “and therefore, we can take these other steps without Congress and we can mandate that states do things and so on.” She added, “I don’t know if that’s really feasible and if the people around the president would let him test that theory.” Activist Marci McCarthy, who had spread debunked claims about voting machines in Georgia in DeKalb County, was named in May to be the director of public affairs at the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency. Nearly all of the election experts at CISA have been placed on administrative leave or reassigned this year, amid the agency's downsizing. https://lnkd.in/gBQWiZ96 | 81 comments on LinkedIn
www.linkedin.com

here it comes...heading towards pure dictatorship...

www.reuters.com/world/us/wid...
www.reuters.com
The DOJ ignoring all the other ethical violations/criming while he makes crypto gagillions isn’t enough?
Breaking News: President Trump wants $230 million from the Justice Department for investigating him, people familiar with the matter say. Any settlement might ultimately be approved by senior department officials who defended him or those in his orbit. nyti.ms/4hmIi5X
Breaking News: President Trump wants $230 million from the Justice Department for investigating him, people familiar with the matter say. Any settlement might ultimately be approved by senior department officials who defended him or those in his orbit. nyti.ms/4hmIi5X

Thanks for excellent collaboration!
📢Can free academia withstand democratic backsliding? Why some universities wither while others survive. Read the recently published article in #ISPR. Together with Katrin Kinzelbach and @silindberg.bsky.social (Open Access): doi.org/10.1177/0192...

New article out with excellent @larslott.bsky.social and @Katrin Kinzelbach. OA, online first:
journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
Sage Journals: Discover world-class research
Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.
journals.sagepub.com
📢Can free academia withstand democratic backsliding? Why some universities wither while others survive. Read the recently published article in #ISPR. Together with Katrin Kinzelbach and @silindberg.bsky.social (Open Access): doi.org/10.1177/0192...

Trump’s authoritarian regime gets tools Hitler would have dreamt of….and Xi has…

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...
Ice obtains access to Israeli-made spyware that can hack phones and encrypted apps
Trump administration contract with Paragon Solutions gives immigration agency access to one of the most powerful stealth cyberweapons
www.theguardian.com

Yes…
Chris Murphy: "This is a country that's falling apart because Trump is in the middle of an authoritarian takeover. We're not on the verge of an authoritarian takeover. We're in the middle of it ... I have no moral obligation to vote for a budget that literally funds the destruction of our democracy"

Fmr intelligence officers reort on the #USA under #Trump
open.substack.com/pub/steadyst...
Accelerating Authoritarian Dynamics: Assessment of Democratic Decline
The Steady State | October 16, 2025
open.substack.com
Chris Murphy: "This is a country that's falling apart because Trump is in the middle of an authoritarian takeover. We're not on the verge of an authoritarian takeover. We're in the middle of it ... I have no moral obligation to vote for a budget that literally funds the destruction of our democracy"

MSN
www.msn.com