Why do autocracies create hybrid institutions such as Govt-Organized NGOs (GONGOs), zombie election observers, and astroturfing social movements? Examining Jordan’s youth GONGOs, Almqvist shows how clashes bw entrenched bureaucracies and changing regime objectives produce these hybrid workarounds.

Can repression help an autocrat consolidate power non-violently? Ceyhun shows that in Turkey, cracking down on Kurdish mayors strengthened the state's control over Kurdish communities by increasing its capacity to extract taxes and information, enabling more successful cooptation of the youth.

Professors Erickson and Markovitz helped launch the publishing careers of many scholars in the discipline and we hope to carry on that legacy. This will be our tribute to our exemplars, Ken and Lenny.

We are also dedicated to being a journal that fosters emerging scholars by providing a quick initial decision, high-quality feedback on papers sent out for review, and fair consideration of work submitted by all scholars regardless of their academic rank or institution.

But we are especially committed to sustaining CP’s long-standing role as an outlet for excellent qualitative research that explores ambitious theoretical questions, whether that research be rooted in comparative historical analysis, process tracing, in-depth interviews, or ethnographic field work.

Both Bellin and Smith are committed to making the journal the strongest it can be – a platform for path- breaking research in comparative politics, open to all methods.

With the approval of the editorial committee, Professors Erickson and Markovitz have passed the baton to Professors Eva Bellin and Nicholas Rush Smith who will now assume the role of Editors-in-Chief.

Thanks to their leadership, Comparative Politics is ranked as Q1 among all Political Science journals, while remaining among a handful of independent publications in the industry. We are so grateful to them.

Both Ken and Lenny, as we know them, have shown extraordinary dedication to the journal and, more generally, to the field of comparative politics. They have modeled integrity, collegiality, hard work, and a commitment to excellence. They have kept the journal strong.

After more than 45 years of service as members of the editorial committee at Comparative Politics and after 30 years of service as the journal’s Editors-in-Chief, Professors Kenneth Paul Erickson and Irving Leonard Markovitz are stepping down.

Does punishing perpetrators of mass violence reduce support for remembrance? Drawing on survey experiments and historical variation in denazification within Germany, Alexander De Juan and Julian Voß find that perceived justice does not undermine support for commemoration.

Why did some Chinese diaspora voices embrace Trump and even support overturning the 2020 election? Using ~1M tweets from 200 opinion leaders, Liu, Xia, and Zhang show that those with stronger authoritarian imprints were more likely to support Trump & reject the 2020 election outcome.

What accounts for the emergence of authoritarian capitalism in industrialized democracies, post-communist countries, and emerging market economies? @lingchenscholar.bsky.social, Xiuyu li, and Kellee Tsai identify three pathways to authoritarian capitalism.

Three recent books decidedly move our understanding of elections in the advanced democracies of Europe forward. In Tristan Klingelhöfer’s (@klingelt.bsky.social) reading, they also deal a decided blow to the idea that elections can be seen as giving genuine mandates to politicians.