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☆ What I’m Reading: Eclectic Edition
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-15 | by ( Amanda Taub | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

“The enemy of my enemy is my friend” has long been a well-known saying, but now, thanks to this interesting new paper in the American Political Science Review, it’s also political science. The authors investigate whether hostility to immigrants, particularly Muslims, has actually helped to generate support for L.G.B.T.+ rights among otherwise conservative nativist voters. They found that citizens “strategically liberalize” their stance on L.G.B.T.+ rights when they are told that people from an ethnic out-group — for example, Muslim immigrants in Europe — oppose such protections. (Here again, Trump is a useful exemplar: Although he embraced gay rights in the Pulse speech as a cudgel against Muslims, in practice his administration dismantled L.G.BT. protections, including rolling back rules against workplace discrimination and banning transgender people from the military.)

Persons: Bethany Allen, Ebrahimian, Allen, smartly, “, ”, it’s, Donald Trump, Trump Organizations: Science Locations: Beijing, China, “ Beijing, Europe

☆ Coups Are on the Rise. Why?
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-13 | by ( Amanda Taub | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Following the news lately is enough to make one wonder if coups might be contagious. The recent surge is particularly surprising because coups, particularly successful ones, had been relatively rare in the decades following the end of the Cold War. “If you told me a decade ago that would be happening today, I would not have thought that that was a reasonable expectation,” said Erica De Bruin, a Hamilton College political scientist who wrote a book in 2020 about coup prevention. Coups are not actually “contagious” in the sense that one directly causes another, experts say. “We are seeing more coups not because of a contagion, but because of a more permissive environment,” said Naunihal Singh, a political scientist at the U.S.

Persons: ”, Erica De Bruin, Naunihal Singh Organizations: Hamilton College, U.S . Naval, College Locations: Gabon, Niger

☆ Watching ‘Barbie’ and Thinking About Death
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-08 | by ( Amanda Taub | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

I really expected to love “Barbie.” As someone with proudly lowbrow taste in movies, I normally adore a big summer popcorn blockbuster, and every millennial woman I knew seemed to consider it a pop-nostalgia masterpiece. Instead, I left unsettled and frustrated: Something about the story seemed profoundly wrong to me, but I couldn’t articulate what it was. The play is set in a fictional totalitarian regime in which plays and literature are subject to strict censorship. That’s not because the government doesn’t respect the theater, a high-ranking censor named Mr. Celik explains to Adem, a young would-be playwright. Rather, it’s because it knows the power of stories to shape how people see the world, and to help them imagine how to change it.

Persons: “ Barbie, Sam Holcroft, Celik, Adem, Rather Organizations: Almeida Theater Locations: London

☆ In Mexico, Drug Trade Flourished With the Help of the State
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-06 | by ( Amanda Taub | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

That level of collusion may be unique to the state of Guerrero, experts say, where the long history of drug trafficking and a heavily militarized state presence would have created fertile ground for such relationships. But in Mexico, the lines between trafficking organizations and the state have long been blurry, scholars say. And that has had profound consequences not just for organized crime, but for the development of the Mexican state itself. ‘Criminal state-building’“There really is no binary between the ‘bad’ cartels and the ‘good’ state,” said Alexander Aviña, an Arizona State historian who studies the drug trade in Mexico. Rather, he said, there is a long history of Mexican officials taking money from drug traffickers to fund the government, not just personal bribes.

Persons: ”, Alexander Aviña, Benjamin T, Smith Organizations: Arizona State, ”, Warwick University Locations: Guerrero, Mexico, Mexican, Arizona, Sinaloa

☆ A Shocking Soccer Kiss Demonstrates the Power of Scandal
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-30 | by ( Amanda Taub | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

By generating public outrage, scandals make inaction costly: suddenly, doing nothing risks an even greater backlash. And scandals can alter the other side of the equation, too: the powerful have less ability to retaliate if their erstwhile allies abandon them in order to avoid being tainted by the scandal themselves. The unifying power of scandalTo see how this pattern plays out, it’s helpful to look at the influence of scandal in a very different context. Politicians were reluctant to incur the costs of pursuing reforms that might provoke a backlash from police. And public opinion was often divided: while some demanded greater protections from state violence, others worried that police reforms would empower criminals.

Persons: Rubiales, ” Organizations: Spanish, Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, Police Locations: Americas, Democracy

☆ When art and money meet
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-11 | by ( Amanda Taub | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

I’ve often thought that if one was looking for niche curses to place on enemies, “May you be profiled by Patrick Radden Keefe” would be a particularly potent option. Amid such company, Larry Gagosian, the global art-market king who is the subject of Radden Keefe’s latest profile, gets off relatively lightly. I was reminded of one of my favorite exhibitions of all time, “The Steins Collect,” which I saw at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York a decade ago. Regular readers will know that I like biographies about artists, so you might have expected the Gagosian profile to send me reaching for more of those. (I wonder what Lewis, who studied art history as a Princeton undergraduate before going into finance and then journalism, would make of Gagosian.)

Persons: I’ve, “, Patrick Radden Keefe, Guzmán Loera, El, Gerry Adams, Larry Gagosian, Radden, Radden Keefe, Gagosian, Matisse, Picasso, Gertrude Stein, Michael Lewis, Lewis Organizations: New Yorker, Irish Republican, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Wall, Princeton Locations: Mexican, New York

☆ Does Information Affect Our Beliefs?
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-09 | by ( Amanda Taub | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

‘Filter bubbles’ and democracySometimes the dangerous effects of social media are clear. As a result, they mostly share and see stories from people on their own side of the political spectrum. That “filter bubble” of information supposedly exposes users to increasingly skewed versions of reality, undermining consensus and reducing their understanding of people on the opposing side. “The ‘Filter Bubble’ Explains Why Trump Won and You Didn’t See It Coming,” announced a New York Magazine article a few days after the election. Changing information doesn’t change mindsBut without rigorous testing, it’s been hard to figure out whether the filter bubble effect was real.

Persons: newsfeed, Jair Bolsonaro, Donald Trump, Trump, ”, it’s Organizations: Trump, New York Magazine, Wired Magazine, Meta, Princeton, Dartmouth, University of Pennsylvania Locations: Sri Lanka, Brazil, WhatsApp, Brasília, United States, Stanford

☆ An ‘Oppenheimer’ Reading List
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-28 | by ( Amanda Taub | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

Rhodes’s Pulitzer-winning book has been having a renaissance among people grappling with the potential destructive force of other new technologies. Writing in The Atlantic, Charlie Warzel called it “a kind of holy text for a certain type of A.I. researcher — namely, the type who believes their creations might have the power to kill us all.”Long before “Oppenheimer,” a different portrayal of atomic science captured my imagination. (I think it works best as a live play, but if you’re looking for streaming options, the BBC did make a television version starring Daniel Craig in 2002 and a radio version starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Simon Russell Beale in 2013.) But inside, readers found that the entire thing was devoted to one single article: “Hiroshima,” by John Hersey.

Persons: Rhodes’s Pulitzer, Charlie Warzel, ”, “ Oppenheimer, Michael Frayn, Werner Heisenberg, Nils Bohr, Heisenberg, Bohr, Margrethe —, Daniel Craig, Benedict Cumberbatch, Simon Russell Beale, John Hersey, Hersey, Suzanne Batchelor, “ Organizations: BBC, Yorker Locations: Copenhagen, Danish, Hiroshima, ”, Central Texas, “ Hiroshima

☆ What to Read to Understand the Unrest in France
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-21 | by ( Amanda Taub | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Severe unrest has roiled France in recent weeks, with riots in multiple cities after a police officer fatally shot Nahel Merzouk, a French teenager of Algerian and Moroccan descent, in a suburb of Paris. This is part of a longstanding pattern, my Times colleagues Catherine Porter and Constant Méheut report. And although many politicians have promised change, many French people have found meaningful change to be elusive. As always, Times coverage is the best way to understand the news. Here is an explainer on the recent unrest, and here is a story that delves into why so many people in France identified with the young man who was shot.

Persons: Nahel, Catherine Porter, Constant, “, ” Locations: France, Algerian, Paris, Marseille

☆ Global Warming Is Bringing More Change Than Just Heat
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-19 | by ( Amanda Taub | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The problem with fears about ‘climate refugees’Climate-related mass migration, and the political consequences it produces, may have profound consequences in addition to rising temperatures themselves. Refugees, under international law, are people who have been forced to flee their own countries because of persecution. That means that a lot of refugee policy debates are essentially about countries’ obligations to vulnerable foreigners. But climate change is most likely to displace people within their own countries, and drive them to seek protection from their own governments. And climate disasters can also exacerbate other causes of cross-border migration, such as violence or weak labor markets.

Persons: ”, Stephanie Schwartz, it’s Organizations: London School of Economics Locations: United States

☆ The Once and Future Climate Emergency
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-12 | by ( Amanda Taub | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

One key insight from the PEPFAR results was that efficiency isn’t enough on its own; leaders need political support to carry out policies, too. Often, the most dollar-for-dollar efficient policies aren’t the ones that excite people — especially when leaders need political momentum for quick action (and funding). But combining efficient policies and those that have strong political appeal can have a powerful effect. Treatment drew greater political support and unlocked additional funding, allowing PEPFAR to ultimately save far more lives than if it were focused only on prevention. One paper, for instance, found that voters reward politicians for delivering emergency relief for natural disasters, but not for investing in natural-disaster preparedness — even though $1 spent on preparedness was worth approximately $15 in emergency response.

Persons: PEPFAR, you’re, ”, Yotam Margalit Organizations: Tel Aviv University

☆ When Did the U.S. Become a Democracy?
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-05 | by ( Amanda Taub | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

How old were you when the United States became a democracy? The big story of the United States is that it’s always been a democracy — that democracy was the whole point of overthrowing British rule. I’m guessing most other people who grew up in the United States probably learned it too. But these days, if you speak to many experts on American history or political science, you’ll often hear something very different. “As a person who studies autocracy, there’s no way I would code the U.S. as a democracy prior to 1965, before the passing of the Voting Rights Act,” Anne Meng, a University of Virginia political scientist, told me in January.

Persons: it’s, you’ll, ” Anne Meng Organizations: University of Virginia Locations: United States

☆ A Mutiny That Showed the Stress on Putin’s System of Rule
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-26 | by ( Amanda Taub | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The events of the last few days, in which Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, the head of a notorious private army called Wagner, mounted a brief rebellion against Russia’s military leadership, are not enough to answer that question. But they do suggest that Mr. Putin’s hold over the elite coalition that keeps him in power is under stress, with unpredictable consequences. A crucial coalitionEven though authoritarian leaders may appear to rule by fiat, they all rely on coalitions of powerful elites to stay in power, analysts say. The specifics vary by country and situation: Some count on the military, others on a single ruling party, the religious authorities, or wealthy business leaders. Even when a 2011 popular uprising turned into a bloody, protracted civil war, Mr. Assad’s supporters within the military kept him in power: The benefits of loyalty, to them, far outweighed the costs.

Persons: Vladimir V, Yevgeny V, Wagner, Putin’s, Bashar al, Assad’s Locations: Ukraine, Moscow, Syria

☆ The Dark Incentives That Led to a Refugee Tragedy
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-23 | by ( Amanda Taub | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

Hundreds of people may have died last week in the Mediterranean, after a boat overloaded with migrants, including many children, capsized and sank. It was one of the deadliest migrant disasters in years. And, indeed, Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, said Greece’s border enforcement was Europe’s “shield,” because its harsh tactics prevent migrants from reaching E.U. “This border is not only a Greek border, it is also a European border,” she said after Greece used tear gas to repel hundreds of people who were trying to cross over from Turkey. The European Union has gone to even greater extremes to deter migrants.

Persons: Christina Goldbaum, Zia Ur, Rehman, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, Ursula von der Leyen, Frontex Organizations: European Union, Times, European Commission, European, Human Rights Watch Locations: Bandli, Pakistan, Kashmir, Italy, Greece, E.U, European, ”, Turkey, European Union, Libyan, Libya

☆ Reading Spy Fiction, and About Those Who Wrote It
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-16 | by ( Amanda Taub | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

A friend asked me recently how I managed to read all the things I recommend in my Friday newsletter. Was there some committee of like-minded readers who consumed a great deal of material and then sent me their recommendations? Recommendations from others don’t make it in unless I’ve actually read them. The only secret is that I love to read, I read all the time, and I do it very fast. I am not a fast writer, thinker, or runner.

Persons: I’ve

☆ Berlusconi’s Legacy Lives On Beyond Italy’s Borders
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-14 | by ( Amanda Taub | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

In Venezuela, a series of corruption scandals opened a power vacuum that Hugo Chávez easily filled with populist appeals, leading to to an authoritarian government that, by the time of his death, oversaw a country racked by crises. When the U.N.-backed group that had investigated Molina began looking into Morales as well, he expelled it from the country. The United States has not had a massive corruption scandal that sent politicians to courtrooms and jail cells and decimated faith in its political parties. That kind of institutional weakness creates an opening for outsider politicians who might once have been kept out of politics by robust political parties. In Italy, Berlusconi presided over and helped maintain decades of weak coalition governments and political turmoil, not to mention the multiple corruption scandals he landed in.

Persons: Bolsonaro, Hugo Chávez, Otto Pérez Molina, Jimmy Morales, ”, Molina, Morales, Trump, Berlusconi Organizations: United, Republican Party Locations: Venezuela, Guatemala, United States, Italy

☆ A Surprising Supreme Court Decision’s History With the American South
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-09 | by ( Amanda Taub | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Yesterday, the Supreme Court surprised many observers by issuing an opinion that effectively reaffirmed the remaining powers of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The decision was a reprieve for a law that many believed was in danger of being fatally weakened, or overruled entirely, by the conservatives on the court. The Voting Rights Act, along with the 1964 Civil Rights Act, were crucial steps in American democratization, and the laws remain an important institutional means of preserving it. And “Racial Realignment,” by Eric Schickler, shows how a bottom-up alliance of powerful trade unions and groups like the N.A.A.C.P. “South to America,” by Imani Perry, which won the 2022 National Book Award for nonfiction, explores how the history and politics of the South shaped American identity and culture.

Persons: ”, Robert Mickey, —, Eric Schickler, Imani Perry Organizations: Court, American, Democratic Party, ” Locations: America

☆ When Politics Saves Lives: a Good-News Story
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-07 | by ( Amanda Taub | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

Here is something I don’t write about very often: a situation in which unpredictable, seemingly irrational politics saved millions of the poorest and most vulnerable people on earth. The program, started by President George W. Bush, paid for antiretroviral medications for millions of H.I.V. “The conventional wisdom within health economics was that sending AIDS drugs to Africa was a waste of money,” Sandefur wrote. It wasn’t that the drugs didn’t work: Antiretroviral therapy had achieved revolutionary results in controlling H.I.V.-AIDS, and had the potential to save the lives of infected people and prevent new infections. transmission more likely, data suggested, would save more lives per dollar than treatment would.

Persons: Justin Sandefur, George W, Bush, ” Sandefur, Forbes, ” Emily Oster Organizations: Center for Global Development, Washington , D.C, AIDS Relief, Brown University Locations: Washington ,, Saharan Africa, Caribbean, Africa, H.I.V

☆ Patriarchy, Shiv and That Last-Minute ‘Succession’ Decision
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-02 | by ( Amanda Taub | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

But the benefits of those bargains were always contingent on women’s relationships to men, Kandiyoti wrote. (Now for the required warning: “Succession” spoilers appear below.) One way to view the events of “Succession” is as the story of Kendall’s tragic misapprehension of his position in the family under his father’s patriarchy. He thought that as a son — the “eldest boy,” as he yowled angrily (and incorrectly) in the final episode — he was set to inherit everything. But actually, in patriarchal terms of power and position though not actual gender, he was effectively as vulnerable as a wife or daughter trapped in Logan’s orbit.

Persons: Kandiyoti, yowled

☆ The British Monarchy’s Surprising Benefit
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-10 | by ( Amanda Taub | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

And history is full of examples of what happens when it tips too far in one direction or another. For most of history, the imperfect solution was to make power hereditary, because a ruler who expected to pass on the kingdom to their child would want to keep it healthy. But that had some obvious downsides, most glaringly that the job of king often didn’t go to the most qualified or skilled candidate around. Because there are regular elections, everyone expects their team to win some of the time and lose some of the time. But that gives the participants a reason to preserve and play by the rules: If you know you might lose, you want to know that you’ll get another chance at winning after that.

☆ A South Korean Horror Story, Long Suppressed
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-03 | by ( Amanda Taub | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

It’s only Wednesday, but for my money, the most important international article The New York Times will publish this week is this one about women in South Korea forced or tricked into violent sexual servitude as “comfort women” for foreign soldiers. The story of Korean women enslaved by the Japanese during World War II is now well known. Last September, the South Korean Supreme Court awarded 100 women a landmark judgment that found the government guilty of “justifying and encouraging” prostitution in camp towns to help South Korea maintain its military alliance with the United States and earn American dollars. But referring to it as “prostitution” drastically understates the violence and abuse involved. Some victims were kidnapped as teenagers and forced into sexual slavery.

☆ What I’m Reading: Wives and Muses Edition
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-28 | by ( Amanda Taub | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

You’ve probably noticed, if you read this column regularly, that I think a lot about the interplay between public and private interests: the ways that personal motivations and decisions affect major public events like wars and scandals, but also the ways in which public, structural constraints affect people’s private decisions, shaping their lives and careers, and sometimes their safety. That idea has informed how I write about corruption (individual decisions to commit crimes, shaped by the broader corrupt equilibrium that means that’s the only way to get ahead), coups (if individual elites believe that the way to protect their personal interests is to support the coup, then the plot often succeeds), gender equality (women’s success and participation in public life is constrained by institutions that place the burden of preventing violence and overcoming discrimination on the victims rather than the perpetrators), and more. And it is a central theme of a big project that I’ve been working on with some of my colleagues, which you’ll hear more about soon. My reading list this week has focused on the private element of that equation: the decisions people make to win respect, preserve status or maintain personal relationships, and the implications that has for society as a whole — particularly its creative and literary progress. In “Lives of the Wives,” Carmela Ciuraru dissects five literary marriages, tracing in detail how the public literary success of writers like Roald Dahl and Kingsley Amis grew out of the private support of their spouses at home.

☆ Where Were the Gatekeepers?
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-26 | by ( Amanda Taub | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

On Monday, I was having a conversation with Pavithra Suryanarayan, a political scientist at the London School of Economics, about what fuels far-right populism, when she suddenly stopped, midsentence, and gasped. She had just seen a news alert, she told me: the TV host Tucker Carlson had been fired from Fox News. The moment was an object lesson in the bigger point that she hammered home in our conversation: that to understand the rise of far-right populist politicians around the world, we need to think about institutions that did not check them. Much of Suryanaryan’s work has focused on the reasons that expanding democratic rights often produces a political backlash from groups that fear losing their status and privileges in a more equal society. (Such as the response of White Southerners in the United States during the Civil Rights era, for instance, and members of the Brahmin caste in India after the government instituted affirmative action in the 1990s.)

☆ Books to Help Understand Sudan
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-21 | by ( Amanda Taub | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The situation in Sudan remains violent and unpredictable. Fighting intensified yesterday as warplanes bombarded the center of the capital, Khartoum. It remains unclear who, if anyone, is in control of Africa’s third-largest country. Meanwhile, the Pentagon is moving troops into position in Djibouti so that they can help with a possible evacuation of the U.S. Embassy in Khartoum. However, a State Department official said that it is currently not safe to begin an evacuation because of the severe fighting at the Khartoum airport.

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