Matthew Wills

3 days ago | daily.jstor.org | Matthew Wills

The icon indicates free access to the linked research on JSTOR. What goes up must come down, for the immutable law of gravity does tend to suck. Most of the space junk in Earth orbit burns up on reentry into the atmosphere. But some of it makes it to the planetary surface, including to countries with no ability to launch things into space in the first place.

1 week ago | daily.jstor.org | Matthew Wills

The icon indicates free access to the linked research on JSTOR. “If you want to change the world, the objective chance that you will prevail is probably bleak,” write the political scientists Eric Beerbohm and Ryan W. Davis of citizen mobilization efforts.

1 week ago | daily.jstor.org | Matthew Wills

The icon indicates free access to the linked research on JSTOR. Dateline: BALTIMORE, MARYLAND, 1875. A white police officer kills an unarmed Black man while responding to a complaint of a noisy house party. The police officer claims self-defense. Seventeen witnesses call those claims lies.

2 weeks ago | daily.jstor.org | Matthew Wills

The icon indicates free access to the linked research on JSTOR. By 2020, “more countries had been classified as authoritarian regimes (‘autocracies’) than were transitioning to democracy,” writes political scientist Julian G. Waller, citing data from V-Dem, the Swedish research center that studies the varieties of democracy. So, is democracy on the ropes in the aftermath of post-Cold War American hegemony?

3 weeks ago | daily.jstor.org | Matthew Wills

The icon indicates free access to the linked research on JSTOR. “Democratic backsliding,” writes political scientist Javier Corrales, is the term for “the process whereby existing democracies become less democratic.” This backsliding is one of the ways autocratization, the processes that move a country towards autocracy, occurs. Autocratization through coups and revolutions/insurrections are well-known phenomena.