Deng Xiaoping is Not Who You Think He is. Joseph Torigian on Leadership Transitions in China and the Soviet Union

Joseph Torigian is a Research Fellow at the Stanford Hoover History Lab. Previously he was an assistant professor at the School of International Service at American University in Washington and a Global Fellow at the Wilson Center. He is the author of Prestige, Manipulation, and Coercion: Elite Power Struggles in the Soviet Union and China... Continue Reading →

Sergei Guriev Revisits Spin Dictators

Sergei Guriev is a professor of Economics at Sciences Po in Paris. He was a former chief economist at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the former rector of the New Economic School in Moscow. He is the coauthor (along with Daniel Treisman) of Spin Dictators: The Changing Face of Tyranny in the... Continue Reading →

Revisiting the Original Cold War

A Review of The Twilight Struggle: What the Cold War Teaches Us about Great-Power Rivalry Today by Hal Brands Review By Justin Kempf A New Cold War On May 1st, 1960 the Soviet Union shot down an American spy plane known as the U-2. The United States used the U-2 for aerial reconnaissance because it... Continue Reading →

Recommended Reading: In Isolation

A Review of In Isolation: Dispatches from Occupied Donbas by Stanislav Aseyev Review By Justin Kempf In Isolation Many of us recognize the Russo-Ukrainian War began in 2014 in the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts. However, few of us know much about the conflict before 2022. For so long it was a distant affair in what... Continue Reading →

Olivier Zunz on Alexis de Tocqueville

Olivier Zunz is the James Madison Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Virginia. He is among the foremost scholars of Alexis de Tocqueville and the author of The Man who Knew Democracy: The Life of Alexis de Tocqueville.   Become a Patron! Make a one-time Donation to Democracy Paradox. Tocqueville’s Democracy in America... Continue Reading →

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