"There is simply no way that Kara-Murza does not know how utterly disrespectful the „one people“ ideology is towards Ukrainians or the implication that killing Ukrainians is difficult for Russians."

I agree. I've had issues with the "evidence-based policy" view, but "evidence-based politics" seems even less sensible. It renders key principles like mandate, leadership, and representation void of content and does not even work in the realpolitik sense.

What an interesting piece, Ben! Could you elaborate on how positivism in our discipline is responsible for how liberal politicians behave in this moment? Democrats clearly cannot snap out of the David-Shor "evidence" mode. But why is positivism in academia responsible for how practitioners behave?

"Hitler wanted to kill me for being a Jew. Now, Putin is trying to kill me for being Ukrainian."

Roman Shvartsman, an 88-year-old Holocaust survivor from Odesa, compared Russia's military aggression against Ukraine to the barbaric crimes of the Nazis during World War II.

📹: DW

📢 Workshop Call 📢

3d Edition of the Yale-UB Historical Political Economy Workshop

Keynote: "Revolutionary Contagion" by Saumitra Jha and Steven Wilkinson

At University of Barcelona @ub.edu on June 30 and July 1, 2025

Send us your papers by Febr 28: shorturl.at/w96jk

@didacqueralt.bsky.social

What a great example of the failure to think through the general equilibrium implications of a policy. And this case is as easy as it gets.

Munger’s writing rules are legendary. I also really like Weingast’s Caltech Rules of Writing.

Cheibub was the same thing for me! We should not default to explanations we know are likely wrong on average. I don't think we have a good explanation of what happened in SK in either case.

It's amazing how fast everyone jumps into "The perils of presidentialism" when it has been credibly shown that perhaps it is rarely ever about presidentialism.

If Trump cuts aid for Ukraine, it will lead to Ukraine’s defences collapsing, which will set off a refugee crisis in Europe like we’ve never seen before (and that’s before Putin trains he guns on the Baltics). This is all avoidable if we seize the $300B of Russian reserves

Russia lost Aleppo in three days (after thinking it would take Kyiv in that same amount of time).

Is now bombing random Aleppo civilians.

There’s no strategy here - just bitterness and a contempt for life, hate for the sake of hate.

It will turn inward.