osamet.bsky.social
Opposition parties, authoritarianism, and democratization in Southeast Asia and beyond. PhD candidate @ UC Berkeley orensamet.com
47 posts
677 followers
102 following
Regular Contributor
Active Commenter
comment in response to
post
I agree with you on this. But competitiveness is only one concern. A scenario that I think is currently underrated is that a close election victory by the opposition is disputed and used as a pretext to cling to power. Low prob but extremely high cost. Purges of security forces is crucial
comment in response to
post
They have cited conspiracy theories boosted by crackpots as justification. But the bottom line is that impoundment is occurring even without formal executive authorization. And that could happen to any institution that falls out of favor with the current regime
comment in response to
post
Another important thing here is the role of Pete Marocco in all of this. It’s not just Musk/DOGE. This is a reactionary guy with a personal vendetta on a mission. And he’s not distracted destroying a bunch of other departments
www.nytimes.com/2025/02/18/u...
comment in response to
post
Agreed. I think the ideological crusade is actually more central to the attack on USAID. Driven by the information environment Musk and those around him operate in. But these people aren’t idiots and they know how to wield power (at least toward destructive ends)
comment in response to
post
From this article:
comment in response to
post
comment in response to
post
I was under the impression that the foreign aid pause was separate from the OMB memo. And that Rubio had followed up on that EO with a stop work order across all programming. I know PEPFAR and a few other programs have since been allowed to proceed. But the stop work remains in effect, I think?
comment in response to
post
Does the u-turn here apply to the foreign aid freeze too? I thought it was only the broader order on federal grant aid to domestic programs
comment in response to
post
And have its powers limited by an overzealous GOP legislature all while moving to overturn a Supreme Court race that the GOP-aligned candidate lost. But even that is beside the point, I think. The key is the uncertainty (plus the coder bias, but we’re not a different point now 😅)
comment in response to
post
Also the determination of which oppositions “can” or “can’t” retake power is highly subjective and often obscured in advance. I’m wary of claims of impossibility (or certain possibility) amidst a potentially imbalanced playing field
comment in response to
post
Yeah, I tend to agree with you on the merits (though capture of the courts plus recent NC power grab example give me some pause). My point was more about coder bias in Regimes of the World. The coding is subjective.
comment in response to
post
Also should note that the “Regimes of the World” measure that employs those categories is considerably more controversial than V-Dem’s more standard Electoral Democracy Index, which doesn’t
comment in response to
post
Depends if you also use V-Dem’s approach to classifying countries under those headings. India is an “electoral autocracy” according to V-Dem. Why not the US?
comment in response to
post
100% agree. And that may be Democrats’ saving grace in the long run. The question is can Republicans consolidate enough advantages in the meantime to push the US toward competitive authoritarianism and ensconce their position even w/o Trump on the ballot (see: NC now)
comment in response to
post
Unfortunately US politics is structured in such a way that pro vs anti-Trump polarization is actually not distinct from Dems vs Reps anymore, I’d say. A function of a weak Republican Party allowing its wholesale capture by the forces of Trumpism
comment in response to
post
Been thinking about this too. A key difference is that the scale of the GOP victory in 2024 is nothing like the BJP in and allies in 2014. Makes sweeping legislative change far more difficult and perhaps buys time. But a lot will hinge on the pliancy of the courts
comment in response to
post
Here's the piece that's referenced. Nearly a decade old and it's only gotten more relevant since... carnegieendowment.org/research/201...
comment in response to
post
There is also an important distinction between social media being able to drive attention and being able to shift/shape attitudes. Lots more evidence of the former than of the latter, including in the Romanian case, so far. Thanks for reading and engaging!
comment in response to
post
A lot of unanswered questions remain, of course. But the Myanmar case was frequently pointed to as prima facie evidence that social media could make people more intolerant. Those kinds of assumptions require more scrutiny, despite the existence of manipulation by nefarious actors...
comment in response to
post
A lot more details in the article itself (which is Open Access!), including about the Myanmar context, the specific questions about tolerance we asked, and what this all means for assessing Facebook’s place in a changing world
Read more here: tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
15/END
comment in response to
post
Important to note that our findings do NOT absolve Facebook for harms it *has* caused through failures of moderation and safety.
But if we’re going to respond to problems effectively, it’s critical we understand *how* those harms manifest – not rest on assumptions
14/15
comment in response to
post
Our findings complicate prevailing narratives about the origin and activation of intolerance in Myanmar (and possibly elsewhere). They suggest that the centrality of Facebook to negative political and social developments might be overstated
13/15
comment in response to
post
This adds to the growing body of research exploring the effects of platforms like Facebook, incl recent experimental evidence that found relatively limited capacity to drive polarization. See here: nature.com/articles/s41...
12/15
comment in response to
post
But the positive relationship holds even controlling for demographic characteristics generally associated with tolerance. It suggests that Facebook’s power to dramatically reshape attitudes might be more limited than we’d expect
11/15
comment in response to
post
We’re dealing with descriptive data here, so we can’t establish a clear causal relationship. We expect that this is driven largely by selection effects - more tolerant people are the ones more likely to use Facebook
10/15
comment in response to
post
The findings upend some conventional wisdom: Facebook users express significantly *more* tolerant attitudes than Myanmar citizens who do *not* use the platform
9/15
comment in response to
post
Specifically, we look at how acceptable respondents view inter-ethnic and inter-religious interaction to be: Is it acceptable/unacceptable to work with / live near / marry someone from a different ethnicity or religion?
8/15
comment in response to
post
To do so, we draw on nationally representative survey data collected in 2018 (before Myanmar’s 2021 coup), and compare attitudes toward ethnic and religious outgroups among Facebook users and non-users
7/15
comment in response to
post
This is particularly important as it relates to the causal story about Facebook’s role in events like the Rohingya genocide
In our article, we examine the plausibility of the idea that Facebook constituted a primary instigator of hate among the wider public
6/15
comment in response to
post
It’s not clear, however, that this extends to a capacity to reshape public attitudes toward greater intolerance of ethnic and religious outgroups
After all, Facebook wasn’t the only place hate speech spread and people don’t necessarily believe everything they read online
5/15