Isabelle DeSisto 🇺🇦
@isadesisto
PhD candidate @PUPolitics via @HarvardGovernm1 @DCRES_Harvard @Dept_of_POLIS | East European politics (esp. 🇲🇩🇺🇦🇷🇺) | @russia_watcher
Just published in @goodauth: my piece on what I call “authoritarian backscratching” - quid-pro-quo policies between dictators - and how it helps authoritarian regimes survive. goodauthority.org/news/what-is-a…
After twelve years with HURI, our director, Serhii Plokhii, is stepping down! We wish him all the best. Please enjoy his farewell message! Dear Friends and Colleagues, Today is my last day as Director of the Ukrainian Research Institute. (Message continues in the thread-)
🚨Nasz zarejestrowany raport "Borderline Democracy?" został przyjęty do publikacji w The Journal of Politics @The_JOP! Na przykładzie stanu wyjątkowego na granicy polsko-białoruskiej 🇵🇱🇧🇾, wraz z @armenon_memorie pytamy: Czy wyborcy karzą rządy za ograniczanie swobód…
Instrumental variables is a false-positive machine! We’ve known this forever, but journals continue to publish them. Somehow 2SLS estimates are often larger than OLS, especially when the first stage is weak. Researchers are so good at explaining away that tell-tale pattern.
Excited that our (@Apoorva__Lal, @xuyiqing, @zu_gary) paper won the Political Analysis' 2024 Editor's Choice award! It was really a lot of work (we started this in 2018!), so nice to see we've had some impact on the field. It's also open access. cambridge.org/core/journals/…
Perhaps I should use this in my lecture about communist regimes in the intro to comparative politics course.
Ukrainian anti-corruption agencies NABU and SAP say that new legislation submitted by Zelensky to parliament fully restores their independence, urge swift passage next week. This comes after a wave of protests triggered by parliament and Zelensky two days ago putting these…
Another meeting that could have been an email... (it lasted 30mins)
⚡️⚡️JUST IN : THE THIRD ROUND OF DIRECT NEGOTIATIONS BETWEEN UKRAINE AND RUSSIA HAS STARTED IN ISTANBUL
Could be part of a tv series: Moldovan runaway oligarch Plahotniuc was detained by Interpol Greece on his way to Dubai while accompanied by former Miss Moldova Elisaveta Kuznețova & former MP & kickboxer Constantin Țuțu deschide.md/articole/noi-d…
The reason why Ukrainians are free to protest peacefully in Kyiv (in this case about a law just passed by parliament) is because they haven’t “ended the war” by surrendering to Putin and abolishing their democracy.
Huge protests erupt in Kyiv against Ukrainian President Zelensky as he is a dictator and refuses to make a peace deal and end the war. Good for the Ukrainian people! Throw him out of office! And America must STOP funding and sending weapons!!!
Vietnamese people seem particularly supportive of Chisinau’s mayor Ion Ceban, who has just been banned entry to Romania and the Schengen area due to security concerns 😂
Former presidential candidates Natalia Morari (hello, New York Times) and Vasile Tarlev are the other two political figures banned entry to Romania and the Schengen area for security reasons according to deschide.md sources deschide.md/articole/break…
Big news: Chisinau mayor Ion Ceban is banned entry to Romania and the Schengen area due to security concerns Ceban says he is now pro-European despite protesting against Moldova’s EU Association Agreement in Bruxelles in 2014 1/2
Approval of Donald Trump among Russians is now at the lowest level since fall 2024. After major upticks in approval in early February and early May, approval of the US president has been steadily eroding.
Approval of Donald Trump in Russia has been climbing since the US president's inauguration in late January. When Trump took office a plurality of Russians (>30%) said they "strongly disapprove" of his actions. Now strong disapproval is only ~20% of respondents. 1/
Finally picked up my copy of @paulaerizanu’s new book about Moldovan history based on many interviews with people who have lived through the major events and changes of the last century. Can’t wait to read it!!
My latest piece in @goodauth about how targeting international students is bad not just for the U.S. economy & innovation, but also 🇺🇸 reputation globally. goodauthority.org/news/targeting…
How do Russians view the economic effects of the war against 🇺🇦? On the one hand, people have become increasingly dissatisfied w/ their personal financial situations in the last 2 months. On the other hand, worry about the economic consequences of the war hasn't changed much.
New paper. @DidacQueralt and I published “The Political Legacy of Elite Repression” in CPS: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00…. We show that repression of elites forces ordinary community members to circle the wagons in defense of group identity and to change how they vote.
My story about a newish phenomenon of deportations from the occupied areas of Ukraine. Russia tells people they are banned from “Russia” for 40/50 years, drives them 20 hours under guard to the border with Georgia and pushes them across theguardian.com/world/2025/jun…