Past Participants
2022—23 (Year 7)
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VWAR 71 (September 21) - Lisa Mueller (Macalester College) and Moumouni Goungoubane (Universite d'Abomey-Calavi) "More than Vote Buying and Turnout Buying? Voter Persuasion in Clientelist Systems"
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VWAR 72 (October 12) - Caner Simsek (Penn State University) "To Kill a Vizier: How Competency Affects Purges in Autocracies"
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VWAR 73 (October 26) - Jason Brownlee (UT Austin) "Weak Regimes, Strong Societies: Political Authority and the Limits of Foreign Intervention"
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VWAR 74 (November 2) - Simone Dietrich (University of Geneva), Daniela Donno (University of Cyprus),
Alice Iannantuoni (University of Geneva), and Katharina Fleiner (University of Geneva)
"Targeting Gender Equality through Foreign Aid"
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VWAR 75 (November 16) - Hanzhang Liu (Pitzer College), Linan Yao (Columbia University) "Making Propaganda Sell: Decoding the Success of Patriotic Blockbusters in China"
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VWAR 76 (November 30) - Haifeng Huang (University of California, Merced) "The Sound of Silence: Championing Democracy in an Authoritarian Society"
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VWAR 77 (January 18) - David Szakonyi (George Washington University) "Corruption and Cooptation in Autocracy: Evidence from Russia"
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VWAR 78 (February 1) - Jia Li (Penn State University) "Manipulated Date and Motivated Vote: How Changing Election Dates Shapes Turnout"
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VWAR 79 (February 15) - Li Hongbin (Stanford University), Lin Lin (Remin University), Junjian Yi (Peking University), and Congyi Zhou (New York University) "Does the Chinese Communist Party Still Attract Young People? Evidence from the Labor Market"
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VWAR 80 (March 1) - Sarah Bush (Yale University), Christina Cottiero (University of Utah), and Lauren Prather (University of California - San Diego) "Who Invites Zombies Monitors to Their Elections?"
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VWAR 81 (March 22) - Aykut Öztürk (University of Glasgow), Steven Finkel (University of Pittsburgh), Anja Neundorf (University of Glasgow), and Ericka Rascón Ramírez (Middlesex University) "Civic Education and Regime Support Under Authoritarian Regimes"
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VWAR 82 (April 19) - Howard Liu (University of South Carolina) "Mapping State Repression: Ethnicity, Borders, and the Strategy of Massacres and Forced Resettlement"
2021—22 (Year 6)
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VWAR 58 (September 22) - Anja Neundorf (University of Glasgow), Aykut Öztürk (University of Glasgow), Katerina Tertytchnaya (University College London), Ksenia Northmore-Ball (QMUL), Johannes Gerschewski (Wissenschaftzentrum Berlin) "A Loyal Base? Authoritarian System Support in Times of Crisis: The Case of Turkey"
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VWAR 59 (October 13) - Xiaoxiao Shen (Princeton University), "Do People Welcome Propaganda?"
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VWAR 60 (October 27) - Anne Meng (University of Virginia) and Jack Paine (University of Rochester), "Autocratization."
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VWAR 61 (November 3) - Joy Chen (Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business), Erik H. Wang (IAS in Toulouse and Australian National University), and Xiaoming Zhang (University of Hong Kong) "Leviathan's Offer: State-Building with Elite Compensation in Early Medieval China"
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VWAR 62 (November 10) - Ashley Anderson (University of North Carolina), Jason Brownlee (University of Texas, Austin), and Killian Clarke (Georgetown University), "Authoritarianism: A Substantive Approach."
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VWAR 63 (November 17) - Masaaki Higashijima (Tohoku University), "Popular Protests and the Elite-Mass Linkage in Autocracies: Experimental and Observational Evidence from Kazakhstan."
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VWAR 64 (January 19) - Edward Goldring (University of York), Peter Ward (University of Vienna) "Elite Management Before Autocratic Leader Succession:
Evidence from North Korea"
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VWAR 65 (February 2) - Hongshen Zhu (Duke University), "Authoritarian Delegation to Single-Minded Agents: Limitations of Political Control in Managing Policy Tradeoffs."
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VWAR 66 (February 16) - Graeme Robertson (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), Grigore Pop-Eleches (Princeton University), Bryn Rosenfeld (Cornell University), and Samuel Greene (King's College London) "Covid, Anxiety and Information: Lessons from Russia."
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VWAR 67 (March 2) - Erin Baggott Carter (University of Southern California), Jonghyuk Lee (Nanyang Technological University), and Victor Shih (University of California San Diego) "Terrifyingly Normal: How Bureaucratic Incentives Shape Repression in China."
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VWAR 68 (March 23) - Carlo Horz (Texas A&M University) and Korhan Kocak (New York University - Abu Dhabi), "How To Keep Citizens Disengaged: Propaganda and Causal Misperceptions."
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VWAR 69 (April 13) - Anita Gohdes (Hertie School) and Zachary C. Steinert-Threlkeld (University of California, Los Angeles), "Civilian Activity on Social Media During Civil War."
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VWAR 70 (April 20) - Yingdan Lu (Stanford University), Jennifer Pan (Stanford University), Xu Xu (Princeton University), and Yiqing Xu (University of California, San Diego), "The Evolution of Propaganda in the Digital Age."
2020—21 (Year 5)
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VWAR 44 (September 16) - Lana Bilalova (London School of Economics), "Warfare Agenda-setting on Russian Television, 2009 - 2019."
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Discussants: Brett Carter (University of Southern California), Kelly Matush (Florida State University), Michael Rochlitz (University of Bremen)
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VWAR 45 (September 30) - Pearce Edwards (Emory University), "Religious Institutions and Resistance to Repression: The Bishops Opposed to Argentina’s Dirty War."
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VWAR 46 (October 7) - Daniel L. Tavana (Princeton University) and Erin York (Havard Kennedy School), "Measuring Legislative Opposition in an Authoritarian Regime."
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VWAR 47 (October 14) - Jiarui Cao (Central University of Finance and Economics), Yiqing Xu (Stanford University), and Chuanchuan Zhang (Zhejiang University), "Clans and Calamity: How Social Capital Saved Lives during China’s Great Famine."
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VWAR 48 (October 28) - Eddy Malesky (Duke University), Jason Douglas Todd (Duke Kunshan University), and Ahn Tran (Indiana University), "Testing Mechanisms of Legislator Responsiveness in Single-Party Regimes: A Follow-up Experiment in the Vietnamese National Assembly."
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VWAR 49 (November 18) - Evgeny Finkel (Johns Hopkins University) and David Szakonyi (George Washington University), "Flying with the Stars: Performance, Loyalty, and Promotion in the Soviet Air Force during WWII."
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VWAR 50 (January 27) - Nils Weidmann (University of Konstanz), "Human Judgement in the Coding of Cross-national Indicators"
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VWAR 51 (February 3) - Lynette Ong (University of Toronto), Xiaobo Lü (University of Texas at Austin), and Wenhui Yang (University of Texas at Austin), "Land Taking, Windfall Revenue, and Social Unrest: Evidence from China."
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VWAR 52 (February 10) - Don Grasse (Emory University), "Developmental Legacy of Mass Repression: Evidence from the Khmer Rouge."
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VWAR 53 (February 24) - Dimitar Gueorguiev (Syracuse University), "Counting the Costs of Academic Censorship."
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VWAR 54 (March 10) - Brett Carter (University of Southern California) and Erin Baggott Carter (University of Southern California), "How does Religion Shape Political Dissent in Autocracies?"
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VWAR 55 (March 24) - Sarah Bush (Yale University), Daniela Donno (University of Cyprus), and Pär Zetterberg (Uppsula University), "Rewarding Women's Rights in Dictatorships."
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VWAR 56 (April 7) - Scott Gehlbach (University of Chicago), Zhaotian Luo (University of Chicago), Dmitriy Vorobyev (Ural Federal University), and Anton Shirikov (University of Wisconsin - Madison), "A Model of Censorship and Propaganda."
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VWAR 57 (April 21) - Bruno Caprettini (University of Zurich), Hans-Joachim Voth (University of Zurich and CEPR), and David Yanagizawa-Drott (University of Zurich and NBER), "Contagious Extremism: Nazi Marches and Radical Voting."
2019—20 (Year 4)
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VWAR 34 (October 2) - Rory Truex (Princeton University), "Personality and the Party."
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VWAR 35 (October 16) - Denis Stukal (New York University), Sergey Sanovich (Stanford University), Richard Bonneau (New York University), and Joshua A. Tucker (New York University), "Artificial Intelligence for Autocrats:
How Government-Sponsored Bots Fight Opposition in Russia."
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VWAR 36 (October 30) - Noah Buckley (Trinity College Dublin), "Only the Best People: Loyalty, Competence, and Connections in Russian Elite Networks."
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VWAR 37 (November 13) - Yuko Kasyua (Keio University) and Kota Mori (Independent Scholar), "Finding Better Cut Points for Continuous Democracy Measures."
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VWAR 38 (January 15) - Genevieve Bates (University of Chicago), Ipek Cinar (University of Chicago), Monika Nalepa (University of Chicago), and Evgenia Olimpieva (University of Chicago), "What is the Effect of Personnel Transitional Justice on Crime?"
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VWAR 39 (February 5) - Jason Brownlee (University of Texas, Austin), "Multipartyism and the Infrequency of Incumbent Takeovers."
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VWAR 40 (February 12) - Katerina Tertytchnaya (University College London), "‘This Rally is Not Sanctioned’: Preventive Repression and Protest in Electoral Autocracies."
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VWAR 41 (February 19) - Florian Hollenbach (Texas A&M University), "Capital Endowments and Investments in Fiscal Capacity: Evidence from 19th Century Prussia."
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VWAR 42 (February 26) - Jennifer Pan (Stanford University) and Yingdan Lu (Stanford University), "Propaganda for Engagement: the Use of Clickbait in Chinese Government Propaganda."
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VWAR 43 (March 25) - Daniel Mattingly (Yale) and Elaine Yao (Princeton), "How Propaganda Makes Angry Nationalists But Not Government Loyalists in China."
2018—19 (Year 3)
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VWAR 23 (September 05) - Courtney Hillebrecht (University of Nebraska, Lincoln), "Retreating from Justice: Explaining State Withdrawal from International Human Rights Tribunals."
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VWAR 24 (September 12) - Daniela Donno (University of Pittsburgh), Sara Fox (University of Pittsburgh), and Joshua I. Kaasik
, "Compliance or Camouflage? International Incentives for Women’s Rights in Dictatorships."
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VWAR 25 (September 19) - Konstantin Ash (University of Central Florida), "Take Our Democracy – Please! Explaining Participation in Protests Calling for Military Takeover."
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VWAR 26 (September 26) - Maxim Ananyev (University of California, Los Angeles), and Michael Poyker (University of California, Los Angeles), "Information Acquisition and Projecting Invincibility in Authoritarian Elections."
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VWAR 27 (October 17) - Milena Ang (University of Chicago), Genevieve Bates (University of Chicago), and Monika Nalepa (University of Chicago), "Identifying the Effect of Personnel Transitional Justice on the Quality of Democratic Representation."
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VWAR 28 (January 30) - Jennifer Pan (Stanford University) and Alexandra A. Siegel (Stanford University), "Physical Repression and Online Dissent: Evidence from Saudi Arabia."
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VWAR 29 (February 13) - Anton Sobolev (University of California, Los Angeles), "How Pro-Government 'Trolls' Influence Online
Conversations in Russia."
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VWAR 30 (February 27) - Vilde Lunnan Djuve (Aarhus University), Carl Henrik Knutsen (University of Oslo), and Tore Wig (University of Oslo), "Patterns of Regime Breakdown since the French
Revolution."
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VWAR 31 (March 13) - Ling Chen (Johns Hopkins SAIS) and Hao Zhang (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), "The Political Incentives of Strategic Taxation in China: Evidence from Cities and Firms."
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VWAR 32 (April 10) - Killian Clarke (Princeton University), "On the Origins and Success of Counterrevolutions, 1900-2015."
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VWAR 33 (April 24) - Junyan Jiang (Chinese University of Hong Kong), Zijie Shao (Sun Yat-Sen University), and Zhiyuan Zhang (Chinese University of Hong Kong), "The Price of Probity: Anti-Corruption and Adverse Selection in the Chinese Bureaucracy."
2017—18 (Year 2)
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VWAR 11 (September 20) — Inken von Borzyskowski (Florida State University), "Trust Us: Technical Election Assistance and Post-Election Violence."
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VWAR 12 (October 4) - Volha Charnysh (Princeton University) and Daniel Ziblatt (Harvard University), "Past Experience with Elections and Democratic Stability: Voting in Imperial and Weimar Germany."
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VWAR 13 (October 18) - Paul Schuler (University of Arizona) and Chad Westerland (University of Arizona), "Authoritarian Legislatures and Property Rights Protection: Revisiting the Rubber Stamp Thesis with Bayesian Qualitative Analysis."
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VWAR 14 (November 1) - Yonatan Lupu (George Washington University) and Tiberiu Dragu (New York University), "Does Technology Undermine Authoritarian Regimes?"
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VWAR 15 (November 15) - Anja Neundorf (University of Nottingham), Johannes Gerschewski (Humboldt University Berlin), Roman-Gabriel Olar (University of Essex), "Inclusionary and Exclusionary Autocracies: How Dictators Win the Hearts and Minds of Citizens?"
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VWAR 16 (November 29) - Wonjun Song (Pennsylvania State University), "Dictators, Personalized Security Forces, and Coups."
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VWAR 17 (January 17) - Yuhua Wang (Harvard University), "Historical Institution, Social Esteem, and Bureaucratic Capacity in China."
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VWAR 18 (January 31) - Christopher Sullivan (Louisiana State University), "Naming, Shaming, and Taming Human Rights Abuse in Severely Repressive Regimes."
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VWAR 19 (February 14) - Xiaobo Lü (University of Texas at Austin), "Local Governance and Political Support: Evidence from a List Experiment in China."
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VWAR 20 (March 21) - Jason Brownlee (University of Texas at Austin), "Smart People, Dumb War: America’s Intervention in Iraq."
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VWAR 21 (April 11) - Martin K. Dimitrov (Tulane University), Excerpts from Book Project.
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VWAR 22 (April 18) - Henry Thomson (Arizona State University), "Repression and Opposition under Electoral Authoritarianism: The Growth of the German Social Democratic Party."
2016—17 (Year 1)
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VWAR 1 (September 21) — Jiyoung Ko (Yale University), "A Prelude to Violence? The Effect of Nationalism on Foreign Policy Preference"
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VWAR 2 (October 26) — Anne Meng (University of Virginia), "Party Institutionalization in Autocracies: Concept and Measurement"
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VWAR 3 (November 16) — Masaaki Higashijima (Tohoku University), "Monetary Constraints, Spending, and the Survival of Autocrats in Dominant Party Regimes"
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VWAR 4 (November 30) — Jordan Gans-Morse (Northwestern University) and Alexander Kalgin (Higher School of Economics, Moscow), "Motivations for Public Service in Post-Soviet Russia"
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VWAR 5 (January 25) — Junyan Jiang (University of Pennsylvania), "Patronage Networks, Performance Incentives, and Economic Development in China"
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VWAR 6 (February 1) — David Szakonyi (George Washington University), "Princelings and Political Rents"
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VWAR 7 (February 15) — Barbara Maria Piotrowska (University of Rochester), "The Price of Cooperation: How Authoritarian States Retain Control"
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Discussants: Christopher Sullivan (Louisiana State University), Henry Thomson (University of Arizona)
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VWAR 8 (March 8) — Ji Yeon Hong (Hong Kong University of Science and Technology) and Yuhua Wang (Harvard University), "Selecting Better Autocrats"
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VWAR 9 (March 29) — Jennifer Pan (Stanford University) and Tongtong Zhang (Stanford University), "The Economic Consequences of Symbolic Politics: An Experimental Study of the Value of Ideological Loyalty in China’s Labor Market"
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VWAR 10 (April 19) — Blake Miller (University of Michigan), "The 50 Cent Party and Social Media Surveillance: Authoritarian Learning from 'Public Opinion Emergencies'"