Yay!! The section is in great hands! Thanks for taking over @scottrw630.bsky.social! 👑

To all DC, MD and VA scholars: Submit your paper to the first annual DMV-WEPS by 9/22! And please repost to spread the word @gvisconti.bsky.social @acooperman.bsky.social

yay!!! Congrats!!!!

@pward89.bsky.social and I were delighted to win the Best Article Award from APSA’s Democracy and Autocracy section for our @worldpolitics.bsky.social article “Elite Management Before Autocratic Leader Succession: Evidence from North Korea.” muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/articl...

So young but so politically savvy!

I was coding some stuff and I realized that I have "lived through" a coup!! Thailand, February 1991. I wish I could remember it. All I can remember is having a birthday party at McDonalds around that time.

New workshop in DC! Now taking submissions 👇

So impactful that I'm even using her tennis rackets tonight!

EITM was one of the most fun and impactful experience I had in grad school. Highly encourage grad students to apply!! What's better than nerd summer camp?? 🏕️

Even without looking at success rates, attempts themselves are coming from almost all non-democracies! It would be interesting to look at margins, especially since we've identified it as an important variable for predicting candidate behavior :)

Link here: www.annemeng.com/research.html

The original article, "The Law and Politics of Presidential Term Limit Evasion," and replication data can be found on my website. Thanks for reading! /end

Summary table here /7

The last two options don't seem feasible in the US. One is to write a new constitution (Blank Slate strategy) and the other strategy is to cancel or delay elections. Even in autocracies, these strategies are rarely used, although they have a high success rate (probably bc these are autocracies). /6

A Placeholder strategy is another option - this is what Putin did by allowing an associate to become the President and then run again. Depending on the how the rule is written, this may be legal. But this strategy introduces Crown Prince concerns, which is probably why it's rarely used (6 cases) /5

A second kind of strategy (used in 9 cases) is to use the Courts to "reinterpret" term limits. The Courts strategy has an 83% success rate, compared to the Amendment strategy, which has a 60% success rate. /4

By far the most popular strategy (68% of cases) was to try to pass a constitutional amendment removing or changing the term limit rule. This strategy is most successful when the incumbent's ruling party dominates the legislature. In the US, passing a constitutional amendment is very difficult. /3

We collected data on all incumbents who faced constitutional term limits from 2000-2018 (including democracies and autocracies). Out of 231 observations, 23% of incumbents made some kind of attempt to circumvent term limits. Figure 1 above summarizes the 5 main strategies. /2

In light of Trump making the 3rd term comments on Sunday, I thought it would be interesting to revisit the broader data on term limit evasion attempts. In 2020, Mila Versteeg (UVA Law) and I worked with some law students to collect data on strategies incumbents use to circumvent term limits /1

NEW: Family of Mahmoud Khalil just released footage of his arrest

“Stop resisting”
“He’s not resisting”

Agents seen continuing to ignore Mahmoud’s wife as she asks basic questions

New paper! @annemeng.bsky.social's thread lays out the key findings, but the v short version is (1) concessions are rising, (2) but primarily for unfair elections, (3) incumbents concede much more and this is probably causal, (4) weak evidence for conceding being a norm osf.io/preprints/os...

The only downside is that this paper doesn't come with a 300 page codebook ;)

See our closely related Bright Line Watch report on concession timing in the 2020 and 2022 Congressional elections brightlinewatch.org/refusing-to-...

This feels like a weather event warning hahah