"We assume that radical (Knightian) uncertainty, radical dissonance and power asymmetry are inescapable properties of politics and in the marketplace. But we also argue that effective competition (even when highly imperfect or limited) among elites can help secure good enough outcomes.. "
"The Lincoln school abides by a kind of symmetry principle: don’t assume that economic and political agents are different from each other. But... we think actually existing markets and politics, especially in first past the post systems, look rather alike in their imperfections"
Eric Schliesser on democracy, its challenges, risks and imperfections, and the Lincoln school of democratic theory on the value of competition as a taming force on opportunism, corruption and a source of feedback, all under heavily imperfect conditions.
For lovers of Trump and the adf and the far right, a reminder from me :
isonomiaquarterly.com/volume-2-iss...
My scholarship from fifteen years ago on Building an Authoritarian Regime is unfortunately getting real, and the mechanism I described for managing democracy is in operation now.
"The Political Economy of Autocratization:the Case of Belarus" (2025, Communist and Post Communist Studies)
"Building an Authoritarian Regime" (2022, British Journal of Politics and International Relations)
"Is Contestability an Integral Part of the Definition of Democracy?" (2015 ,Politics)
"Clientelism and the Classification of Dominant Party Systems" (2013, Democratization)
Proud to have contributed to the debate on the future and resilience of democracy for fifteen years now.
So happy to hear in this video what my students are already saying, how much they enjoy and learn from our Politics and International Relations programmes!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vgy-... - Hollis's story - learn what it's like to study International Relations at the University of Lincoln
Democracies don't die because of citizens are polarized.
Democracies die when when the business elite is co-opted.
This is what my research has shown, unlike the existingliterature.
Let the rest of the world gain from trade with one another while Americans are trying their own bananas
"National capitalism" is the road to authoritarianism at home and war across the world
Yes, it does matter if an AI programme could later erase entire works, publications, and books, art and theories, and ideologies that a regime might deem subversive. We may reach a time where what we know about the past and present will be manicured and controlled by governments.
Trump is attacking the very institutional architecture that the US made to become hegemonic.
As a professor of politics, I never thought my paper Hayek vs. Trump: The Radical Right’s Road to Serfdom (with N Cowen) would become reality. The road to authoritarianism isn’t just populism—it’s the co-option of business. I thought we were done with this in 2020 but here it comes again. #Democracy
The problem with many current power holders is that they don't even keep up appearances anymore.
Historically, this was usually a recipe for trouble, but they simple don't care. With the available technology, they have mastered the process of manufacturing beliefs and crushing dissent
