Past Participants

2022—23 (Year 7)

• 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"
• Discussants: Sarah A. Brierley (London School of Economics and Political Science), Nico Ravanilla (UC San Diego), and Miguel R. Rueda (Emory University)
  
• VWAR 72 (October 12) - Caner Simsek (Penn State University) "To Kill a Vizier: How Competency Affects Purges in Autocracies"
• Discussants: Selim Erdem Aytaç (Koç University), Edward Goldring (University of York), Jacob Nyrup (University of Oslo), and Stan Hok-Wui Wong (University of St. Thomas)
  
• VWAR 73 (October 26) - Jason Brownlee (UT Austin) "Weak Regimes, Strong Societies: Political Authority and the Limits of Foreign Intervention"
• Discussants: Eva Bellin (Brandeis University), Henry Hale (George Washington University), and Joel S. Migdal (University of Washington)
  
• 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"
• Discussants: Sarah Bush (Yale University), Allison Carnegie (Columbia University), and Matthew Winters (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
  
• VWAR 75 (November 16) - Hanzhang Liu (Pitzer College), Linan Yao (Columbia University) "Making Propaganda Sell: Decoding the Success of Patriotic Blockbusters in China"
• Discussants: Dimitar Gueorguiev (Syracuse University), Xiaoxiao Shen (Princeton University), Anton Sobolev (University of Texas at Dallas)
  
• VWAR 76 (November 30) - Haifeng Huang (University of California, Merced) "The Sound of Silence: Championing Democracy in an Authoritarian Society"
• Discussants: Yusaku Horiuchi (Dartmouth College), Hanzhang Liu (Pitzer College), and Xu Xu (Princeton University)
  
• VWAR 77 (January 18) - David Szakonyi (George Washington University) "Corruption and Cooptation in Autocracy: Evidence from Russia"
• Discussants: Jordan Gans-Morse (Northwestern University), Eddy Malesky (Duke University), and Graeme Robertson (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
  
• VWAR 78 (February 1) - Jia Li (Penn State University) "Manipulated Date and Motivated Vote: How Changing Election Dates Shapes Turnout"
• Discussants: Erica Frantz (Michigan State University), Ora John Reuter (University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee), and Stan Hok-Wui Wong (University of St. Thomas)
  
• 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"
• Discussants: Victor Shih (University of California San Diego), David Szakonyi (George Washington University), and Tongtong Zhang (Stanford University)
  
• 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?"
• Discussants: Emily Beaulieu Bacchus (University of Kentucky), Anne Meng (University of Virginia), and Burcu Savun (University of Pittsburgh)
  
• 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"
• Discussants: Horacio Larreguy (ITAM), Alper Yagçi (Boğaziçi University), and Erin York (Vanderbilt University)
  
• VWAR 82 (April 19) - Howard Liu (University of South Carolina) "Mapping State Repression: Ethnicity, Borders, and the Strategy of Massacres and Forced Resettlement"
• Discussants: Dotan Haim (Florida State University), Gary Uzonyi (University of Tennessee), and Benjamin A. Valentino (Dartmouth College)
  

2021—22 (Year 6)

• 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"
• Discussants: Jason Brownlee (UT Austin), Sabri Ciftci (Kansas State University), Henry Hale (George Washington University), and Bryn Rosenfeld (Cornell University)
  
• VWAR 59 (October 13) - Xiaoxiao Shen (Princeton University), "Do People Welcome Propaganda?"
• Discussants: Erin Baggott Carter (University of Southern California), Daniel Mattingly (Yale University), and Brendan Nyhan (Dartmouth College)
  
• VWAR 60 (October 27) - Anne Meng (University of Virginia) and Jack Paine (University of Rochester), "Autocratization."
• Discussants: Zhaotian Luo (University of Chicago), Monika Nalepa (University of Chicago), Jun Koga Sudduth (University of Strathclyde), and Josef Woldense (University of Minnesota)
  
• 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"
• Discussants: Francisco Garfias (University of California, San Diego), Scott Gehlbach (University of Chicago), and Clair Z. Yang (University of Washington)
  
• 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."
• Discussants: Erica Frantz (Michigan State University), Milan Svolik (Yale University), and Joseph Wright (Pennslyvania State University)
  
• VWAR 63 (November 17) - Masaaki Higashijima (Tohoku University), "Popular Protests and the Elite-Mass Linkage in Autocracies: Experimental and Observational Evidence from Kazakhstan."
• Discussants: Eric McGlinchey (George Mason University), Lisa Mueller (Macalester College), and Katerina Tertytchnaya (University College London)
  
• VWAR 64 (January 19) - Edward Goldring (University of York), Peter Ward (University of Vienna) "Elite Management Before Autocratic Leader Succession: Evidence from North Korea"
• Discussants: Martin Dimitrov (Tulane University), Mai Hassan (University of Michigan), and John Ishiyama (University of North Texas)
  
• VWAR 65 (February 2) - Hongshen Zhu (Duke University), "Authoritarian Delegation to Single-Minded Agents: Limitations of Political Control in Managing Policy Tradeoffs."
• Discussants: Dimitar Gueorguiev (Syracuse University), Junyan Jiang (Columbia University), and Hanzhang Liu (Pitzer College)
  
• 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."
• Discussants: Timothy Frye (Columbia University), Pauline Jones (University of Michigan), and Rory Truex (Princeton University)
  
• 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."
• Discussants: Lisa Blaydes (Stanford University), Henry Thomson (Arizona State University), and Peter Lorentzen (University of San Francisco)
  
• 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."
• Discussants: Federica Izzo (University of California San Diego), Jessica Sun (Emory University), and Scott Tyson (University of Rochester)
  
• 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."
• Discussants: Jason Brownlee (University of Texas, Austin), Elizabeth Parker-Magyar (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), and Daniel Tavana (Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse)
  
• 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."
• Discussants: Erin Baggott Carter (University of Southern California), Haifeng Huang (University of California, Merced), and Daniela Stockmann (Hertie School of Governance)
  

2020—21 (Year 5)

• VWAR 44 (September 16) - Lana Bilalova (London School of Economics), "Warfare Agenda-setting on Russian Television, 2009 - 2019."
• Discussants: Brett Carter (University of Southern California), Kelly Matush (Florida State University), Michael Rochlitz (University of Bremen)
• VWAR 45 (September 30) - Pearce Edwards (Emory University), "Religious Institutions and Resistance to Repression: The Bishops Opposed to Argentina’s Dirty War."
• Discussants: Jane Esberg (Princeton University), Anthony Gill (University of Washington), Christian Gläßel (Hertie School)
• VWAR 46 (October 7) - Daniel L. Tavana (Princeton University) and Erin York (Havard Kennedy School), "Measuring Legislative Opposition in an Authoritarian Regime."
• Discussants: Jason Brownlee (UT Austin), Paul Schuler (University of Arizona), A.Kadir Yildirim (Rice University)
• 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."
• Discussants: Evgeny Finkel (John Hopkins University), Hanzhang Liu (Pitzer College), Jason Wu (University of Indiana)
• 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."
• Discussants: Iza Ding (University of Pittsburgh), Anne Meng (University of Virginia), Yiqing Xu (Stanford University)
• 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."
• Discussants: Jan Pierskalla (The Ohio State University), Adam Scharpf (German Institute for Global and Area Studies), Hans-Joachim Voth (University of Zurich)
• VWAR 50 (January 27) - Nils Weidmann (University of Konstanz), "Human Judgement in the Coding of Cross-national Indicators"
• Discussants: Christian Houle (Michigan State University), Michael Kenwick (Rutgers University), Marcus Kurtz (Ohio State University), and Arthur Spirling (New York University)
  
• 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."
• Discussants: Xun Cao (Pennsylvania State University), Peter Lorentzen (University of San Francisco), and Emily Sellars (Yale University)
  
• VWAR 52 (February 10) - Don Grasse (Emory University), "Developmental Legacy of Mass Repression: Evidence from the Khmer Rouge."
• Discussants: Dotan Haim (Florida State University), Eddy Malesky (Duke University), Emily Myers (Duke University), Leonid Peisakhin (NYU - Abu Dhabi) and Lucy Right (Duke University)
  
• VWAR 53 (February 24) - Dimitar Gueorguiev (Syracuse University), "Counting the Costs of Academic Censorship."
• Discussants: Jennifer Pan (Stanford University), Patricia Thornton (University of Oxford), and Nils Weidmann (University of Konstanz)
  
• 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?"
• Discussants: Anna Gryzmala-Busse (Stanford University), Karrie Koesel (University of Notre Dame), and Jason Wittenberg (University of California, Berkeley)
  
• VWAR 55 (March 24) - Sarah Bush (Yale University), Daniela Donno (University of Cyprus), and Pär Zetterberg (Uppsula University), "Rewarding Women's Rights in Dictatorships."
• Discussants: Simone Dietrich (University of Geneva), Aili Mari Tripp (University of Wisconsin-Madison), and Joseph Wright (Penn State University)
  
• 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."
• Discussants: Jack Paine (University of Rochester), Milan Svolik (Yale University), and Congyi Zhou (New York University)
  
• 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."
• Discussants: Volha Charnysh (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Carlo Horz (Texas A&M University), Graeme Robertson (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), and Arturas Rozenas (New York University)
  

2019—20 (Year 4)

• VWAR 34 (October 2) - Rory Truex (Princeton University), "Personality and the Party."
• Discussants: Doug Ahler (Florida State University), Dan Chen (University of Richmond), and Jennifer Pan (Stanford University)
  
• 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."
• Discussants: Noah Buckley (Trinity College Dublin), Tomila Lankina (London School of Economics), and Zachary C. Steinert-Threlkeld (University of California, Los Angeles)
  
• VWAR 36 (October 30) - Noah Buckley (Trinity College Dublin), "Only the Best People: Loyalty, Competence, and Connections in Russian Elite Networks."
• Discussants: Quintin Beazer (Florida State University), Junyan Jiang (Chinese University of Hong Kong), and Matthew Pietryka (Florida State University)
  
• VWAR 37 (November 13) - Yuko Kasyua (Keio University) and Kota Mori (Independent Scholar), "Finding Better Cut Points for Continuous Democracy Measures."
• Discussants: Daniela Donno (University of Cyprus), Carl Henrik Knutsen (University of Oslo), and Matthew Charles Wilson (University of South Carolina)
  
• 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?"
• Discussants: Quintin Beazer (Florida State University), Erica Frantz (Michigan State University), and Lavinia Stan (St. Francis Xavier University)
  
• VWAR 39 (February 5) - Jason Brownlee (University of Texas, Austin), "Multipartyism and the Infrequency of Incumbent Takeovers."
• Discussants: Martin Dimitrov (Tulane University), Anna Lührmann (University of Gothenburg), and David Waldner (University of Virginia)
  
• VWAR 40 (February 12) - Katerina Tertytchnaya (University College London), "‘This Rally is Not Sanctioned’: Preventive Repression and Protest in Electoral Autocracies."
• Discussants: Erik S. Herron (West Virginia University), Kyle L. Marquardt (National Research University Higher School of Economics), and Rory Truex (Princeton University)
  
• VWAR 41 (February 19) - Florian Hollenbach (Texas A&M University), "Capital Endowments and Investments in Fiscal Capacity: Evidence from 19th Century Prussia."
• Discussants: Carles Boix (Princeton University), Xiaobo Lü (University of Texas at Austin), and Henry Thomson (Arizona State University)
  
• VWAR 42 (February 26) - Jennifer Pan (Stanford University) and Yingdan Lu (Stanford University), "Propaganda for Engagement: the Use of Clickbait in Chinese Government Propaganda."
• Discussants: Erin Baggott Carter (University of Southern California), Carlo M. Horz (Texas A&M University), and Daniel Mattingly (Yale University)
  
• VWAR 43 (March 25) - Daniel Mattingly (Yale) and Elaine Yao (Princeton), "How Propaganda Makes Angry Nationalists But Not Government Loyalists in China."
• Discussants: Yaoyao Dai (New York University Abu Dhabi), Jessica Teets (Middlebury College), and Xu Xu (Princeton University)
  

2018—19 (Year 3)

• VWAR 23 (September 05) - Courtney Hillebrecht (University of Nebraska, Lincoln), "Retreating from Justice: Explaining State Withdrawal from International Human Rights Tribunals."
• Discussants: Inken von Borzyskowski (Florida State University), Daniel W. Hill (University of Georgia), Yonatan Lupu (George Washington University)
  

• 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."
• Discussants: Mala Htun (University of New Mexico), Anne Meng (University of Virginia), Anja Neundorf (University of Nottingham), Joe Wright (Pennsylvania State University)
  
• VWAR 25 (September 19) - Konstantin Ash (University of Central Florida), "Take Our Democracy – Please! Explaining Participation in Protests Calling for Military Takeover."
• Discussants: Jean Lachapelle (University of Michigan), Wonjun Song (Pennsylvania State University), and Peter B. White (Auburn University)
  
• 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."
• Discussants: Noah Buckley (New York University, Abu Dhabi), Cole J. Harvey (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill), Zhaotian Luo (New York University), Katerina Tertytchnaya (University College London)
  
• 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."
• Discussants: Onur Bakiner (Seattle University), Margaret Hanson (Arizona State University), Cyanne Loyle (Indiana University), and Tesalia Rizzo (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
  
• VWAR 28 (January 30) - Jennifer Pan (Stanford University) and Alexandra A. Siegel (Stanford University), "Physical Repression and Online Dissent: Evidence from Saudi Arabia."
• Discussants: Killian Clarke (Princeton University), Elizabeth R. Nugent (Yale University), Anton Sobolev (University of California, Los Angeles), and Rory Truex (Princeton University)
  
• VWAR 29 (February 13) - Anton Sobolev (University of California, Los Angeles), "How Pro-Government 'Trolls' Influence Online Conversations in Russia."
• Discussants: Yaoyao Dai (Pennsylvania State University), Iza Ding (University of Pittsburgh), and Denis Stukal (New York University)
  
• 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."
• Discussants: Christian Houle (Michigan State University), Ryan Kennedy (University of Houston), and Natasha Lindstaedt (University of Essex)
  
• 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."
• Discussants: Quintin Beazer (Florida State University), Greg Distelhorst (University of Toronto), Jeremy Wallace (Cornell University), and Yiqing Xu (University of California, San Diego)
  
• VWAR 32 (April 10) - Killian Clarke (Princeton University), "On the Origins and Success of Counterrevolutions, 1900-2015."
• Discussants: Henry E. Hale (George Washington University), Amanda A. Licht (Binghamton University), and Jack Paine (University of Rochester)
  
• 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."
• Discussants: Melanie Manion (Duke University), Erik H. Wang (Princeton University), and Matthew S. Winters (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)
  

2017—18 (Year 2)

• VWAR 11 (September 20) — Inken von Borzyskowski (Florida State University), "Trust Us: Technical Election Assistance and Post-Election Violence."
• Discussants: S.P. Harish (College of William and Mary), Mai Hassan (University of Michigan), Aditi Malik (College of the Holy Cross)
  
• 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."
• Discussants: Anja Neundorf (University of Nottingham), George Ofosu (Washington University), Henry Thomson (Arizona State University)
  
• 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."
• Discussants: Quintin Beazer (Florida State University), Eric C. C. Chang (Michigan State University), Nathan M. Jensen (University of Texas, Austin), Matthew Charles Wilson (West Virginia University)
  
• VWAR 14 (November 1) - Yonatan Lupu (George Washington University) and Tiberiu Dragu (New York University), "Does Technology Undermine Authoritarian Regimes?"
• Discussants: Scott Gehlbach (University of Wisconsin, Madison), Andrew Little (University of California, Berkeley), David A. Siegel (Duke University), and Milan Svolik (Yale University)
  
• 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?"
• Discussants: Jonathan Hanson (University of Michigan), Carl Henrik Knutsen (University of Oslo), and Nikolay Marinov (University of Mannheim)
  
• VWAR 16 (November 29) - Wonjun Song (Pennsylvania State University), "Dictators, Personalized Security Forces, and Coups."
• Discussants: Barbara Piotrowska (University of Oxford), Espen Geelmuyden Rød (Uppsala University), and Tore Wig (Peace Research Institute Oslo)
  
• VWAR 17 (January 17) - Yuhua Wang (Harvard University), "Historical Institution, Social Esteem, and Bureaucratic Capacity in China."
• Discussants: Vicky Fouka (Stanford University), Xiaobo Lü (University of Texas at Austin), Daniel Mattingly (Yale University), and Susan H. Whiting (University of Washington)
  
• VWAR 18 (January 31) - Christopher Sullivan (Louisiana State University), "Naming, Shaming, and Taming Human Rights Abuse in Severely Repressive Regimes."
• Discussants: M. Rodwan Abouharb (University College London), Sam R. Bell (Kansas State University), Courtney Hillebrecht (University of Nebraska, Lincoln), and Amanda Murdie (University of Georgia)
  
• VWAR 19 (February 14) - Xiaobo Lü (University of Texas at Austin), "Local Governance and Political Support: Evidence from a List Experiment in China."
• Discussants: Hanzhang Liu (Columbia University), Jennifer Pan (Stanford University), Ora John Reuter (University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee), and Jason Wu (University of California, San Diego)
  
• VWAR 20 (March 21) - Jason Brownlee (University of Texas at Austin), "Smart People, Dumb War: America’s Intervention in Iraq."
• Discussants: Matthew Fuhrmann (Texas A&M University), Jean Lachapelle (University of Michigan), Lindsey A. O'Rourke (Boston College), and Michael Poznansky (University of Pittsburgh)
  
• VWAR 21 (April 11) - Martin K. Dimitrov (Tulane University), Excerpts from Book Project.
• Discussants: Jennifer Gandhi (Emory University), Mark Kramer (Harvard University), Edmund Malesky (Duke University)
  
• VWAR 22 (April 18) - Henry Thomson (Arizona State University), "Repression and Opposition under Electoral Authoritarianism: The Growth of the German Social Democratic Party."
• Discussants: Volha Charnysh (Princeton University), Carlo Horz (Institute for Advanced Study, Toulouse), Cathrin Mohr (University of Munich)
  

2016—17 (Year 1)

• VWAR 1 (September 21) — Jiyoung Ko (Yale University), "A Prelude to Violence? The Effect of Nationalism on Foreign Policy Preference"
• Discussants: Dimitar Gueorguiev (Syracuse University), Junyan Jiang (University of Pennsylvania), Geoffrey P.R. Wallace (University of Washington)
  
• VWAR 2 (October 26) — Anne Meng (University of Virginia), "Party Institutionalization in Autocracies: Concept and Measurement"
• Discussants: Jeff Conroy-Krutz (Michigan State University), John McCauley (University of Maryland), Ora John Reuter (University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee)
  
• VWAR 3 (November 16) — Masaaki Higashijima (Tohoku University), "Monetary Constraints, Spending, and the Survival of Autocrats in Dominant Party Regimes"
• Discussants: Michael K. Miller (George Washington University), Amy Pond (Texas A&M University)
  
• 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"
• Discussants: Volha Charnysh (Harvard University), Dinissa Duvanova (Lehigh University), Jens Großer (Florida State University)
• VWAR 5 (January 25) — Junyan Jiang (University of Pennsylvania), "Patronage Networks, Performance Incentives, and Economic Development in China"
• Discussants: Martin K. Dimitrov (Tulane University), Franziska Barbara Keller (Hong Kong University of Science and Technology), Victor Shih (University of California, San Diego), Yuhua Wang (Harvard University)
  
• VWAR 6 (February 1) — David Szakonyi (George Washington University), "Princelings and Political Rents"
• Discussants: Ruben Enikolopov (Universitat Pompeu Fabra), Jordan Gans-Morse (Northwestern University), Junyan Jiang (University of Pennsylvania), Rory Truex (Princeton University)
  
• VWAR 7 (February 15) — Barbara Maria Piotrowska (University of Rochester), "The Price of Cooperation: How Authoritarian States Retain Control"
• Discussants: Christopher Sullivan (Louisiana State University), Henry Thomson (University of Arizona)
• VWAR 8 (March 8) — Ji Yeon Hong (Hong Kong University of Science and Technology) and Yuhua Wang (Harvard University), "Selecting Better Autocrats"
• Discussants: Daehee Bak (Texas Tech University), Daniela Donno (University of Pittsburgh), Nam Kyu Kim (University of Nebraska, Lincoln), Anne Meng (University of Virginia)
  
• 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"
• Discussants: Peter Lorentzen (University of California, Berkeley), David Szakonyi (George Washington University), Boliang Zhu (Pennsylvania State University)
  
• VWAR 10 (April 19) — Blake Miller (University of Michigan), "The 50 Cent Party and Social Media Surveillance: Authoritarian Learning from 'Public Opinion Emergencies'"
• Discussants: Allen R. Carlson (Cornell University), William R. Hobbs (Northeastern University), Haifeng Huang (University of California, Merced)