Ruling Reality
The limits of AI for authoritarian control
Eddie Yang
American Journal of Political Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
An emerging literature suggests that artificial intelligence (AI) can greatly enhance autocrats' repressive capabilities. This paper argues that while AI presents a powerful new tool for authoritarian control, its effectiveness is constrained by the very repressive institutions it is designed to serve. This constraint stems from what I term the "authoritarian data problem": citizens' strategic behavior under repression diminishes the amount of useful information in the data for training AI. The more repression there is, the less information exists in AI's training data, and the worse the AI performs. I illustrate this argument using an AI experiment and censorship data in China. I show that AI's accuracy in censorship decreases with increasing repression, especially during times of political crisis. I further show that this problem cannot be easily fixed with more data. Ironically, international data — especially data from less repressive settings — can help improve AI's ability to censor.
What Can the State of Nature Justify?
Arthur (Hongyang) Yang
Philosophy & Public Affairs, forthcoming
Abstract:
Social contract theory is one of the most popular approaches to political justification. While the state of nature account in social contract theory is generally invoked to justify the state's authority, I argue in this paper that no extant account succeeds in doing so. The primary reason, I argue, is that extant state of nature theories fail to capture an empirically plausible account of human life under stateless conditions. This failure undermines the justificatory force of these theories. Instead, I argue that extant state of nature accounts are best understood as attempts to justify morality or authority in general.
The royal touch
Vladimir Maltsev & Alicia Plemmons
Public Choice, January 2026, Pages 199-220
Abstract:
This paper examines the royal touch, a thaumaturgic healing ritual in which the monarchs of medieval-early modern England and France attempted to cure scrofula through physical contact with the afflicted. Using rational choice theory, we explain how this esoteric practice endured for so long. Monarchs engaged in the royal touch to secure political legitimacy and popular support by projecting divine favor and Christian benevolence, especially in times of instability or dynastic uncertainty. Meanwhile, patients willingly participated in the royal touch as it was a cheap and non-invasive procedure that was consistent with their belief in the efficacy of miracles. This belief was reinforced by scrofula's self-limiting nature and by the monarchs' strategic selection of likely-to-recover individuals. The practice ultimately faded with the spread of secularism, disillusionment in monarchy as a viable form of governance, and advancements in medical science. Our key finding is that mystical healing rituals persist when both patients and monarchs perceive them as net beneficial within their specific institutional and historical contexts.
The Empty Quest for Muslim Democracy
Ramazan Kilinc, Turan Kayaoglu & Etga Ugur
Journal of Democracy, January 2026, Pages 134-149
Abstract:
The article reassesses early-2000s optimism about "Muslim democracy," arguing that Islamist participation and pragmatism have not produced stable democratization. Drawing on the cases of Turkey, Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Pakistan, and others, the authors show that without a genuine normative commitment to pluralism, civil liberties, and institutional checks, Islamist parties often instrumentalize elections and slide into authoritarian or majoritarian rule. Structural legacies of secular authoritarianism, regional counterrevolution (notably Gulf monarchies), inconsistent Western "linkage and leverage," and a global wave of populist authoritarianism further constrain democratization. The authors conclude that durable democracy in Muslim-majority states requires stronger institutions, engaged civil society, and sustained international support.
Unmaking the State: Succession Conflicts, State Building, and Long-Run Political Development
Daniel Lowery
Harvard Working Paper, October 2025
Abstract:
Internal conflicts impede long-run state development. This paper argues that succession conflicts -- violent struggles over the throne -- fractured elite coalitions, disrupted bureaucratic expansion, and undermined the state's ability to monopolize violence or wage external war. These conflicts over the transfer of power had persistent effects. States with more frequent historical succession conflicts exhibit persistently lower fiscal capacity, less effective governments, and more neopatrimonial governance. Using original data on over 2,300 reigns across 115 monarchies from 1000 to 1800, I construct a measure of historical succession conflict exposure and link it to modern outcomes via spatial crosswalks. Instrumental variable estimates in early modern Europe suggest a plausibly causal relationship. The results reveal how the universal problem of succession generated institutional breakdown and help explain durable cross-national variation in state capacity today.
A Few Bad Apples? Academic Dishonesty, Political Selection, and Institutional Performance in China
Zhuang Liu, Wenwei Peng & Shaoda Wang
NBER Working Paper, January 2026
Abstract:
Honesty is perceived as fundamental to societal functioning, motivating education systems worldwide to enforce strict oversight and heavy penalties for dishonest behavior. Yet much academic misconduct remains unexposed, and its broader consequences are further obscured by the sorting of individuals into careers based on probity. Applying advanced plagiarism-detection algorithms to half a million publicly available graduate dissertations in China, we uncover hidden misconduct and validate it against incentivized measures of honesty. Linking plagiarism records to rich administrative data, we document four main findings. First, plagiarism is pervasive and predicts adverse political selection: plagiarists are more likely to enter and advance in the public sector. Second, plagiarists perform worse when holding power: focusing on the judiciary and exploiting quasi-random case assignments, we find that judges with plagiarism histories issue more preferential rulings and attract a greater number of appeals -- effects partly mitigated by trial livestreaming. Third, plagiarizing judges generate spillovers onto other judges and lawyers. Fourth, exploiting the staggered adoption of detection tools, we demonstrate that enforcing academic integrity leads to modest improvements in future professional conduct.
Antebellum School Funds: How Elites Encouraged Non-slaveholding Whites' Cooperation in Repressing Enslaved Americans
Trellace Marie Lawrimore
Studies in American Political Development, forthcoming
Abstract:
Elites in the antebellum U.S. South faced persistent protest by enslaved Americans. Elites sought to quell that threat through policing, but success relied on the participation of non-slaveholding Whites. I hypothesize that elites encouraged non-slaveholders' compliance by offering policy concessions, specifically, school funding. Novel data from North Carolina show that the state distributed more school funds to counties where more enslaved people lived, and that elites in those counties raised more school taxes. I then proxy for slave escape with the location of escape routes and find that elites also raised more taxes in densely enslaved counties containing escape routes. Alternative explanations rooted in electoral incentives or education preferences cannot account for the funding patterns, and data from the 1850 U.S. census suggest that the theory may extend to the rest of the South. The paper illustrates how elites can leverage public funds to preserve power in ethnically diverse settings.