Dr. Semuhi Sinanoglu
The Work wall

Publications

The full corpus in one place: peer-reviewed articles, working and discussion papers, datasets, policy briefs, and op-eds.

Selected work
Peer-reviewed · 2025

Can capitalism save democracy?

Journal of Democracy 36(3) · with Way & Levitsky

A strong, autonomous private sector underwrites democratic resilience; state capture of business is the more direct threat.

Peer-reviewed · 2025

Autocrats and their business allies: informal politics of defection and co-optation

Government and Opposition 60(4)

Even without power-sharing, material quid pro quo can keep autocrats' business allies loyal; the effect runs partly through state control of the media.

Op-ed · 2025

Prosecuting the powerful: prosecuting political leaders is healthy for democracies

Foreign Policy · with Gunitsky & Jafarov

Why prosecuting political leaders for crimes is healthy for democracies.

Policy brief · 2026

Reality check on donor expectations: do GovTech initiatives help autocrats?

IDOS Policy Brief 17/2026 · with von Schiller

Efficiency-enhancing GovTech tools, when paired with sophisticated regime communication, can durably entrench autocratic rule.

Working paper · dataset · 2025

Tracking autocratization transparently: an event-level dataset (DERTT)

with Way, Levitsky & Talebirad

An LLM-extracted, reproducible event-level dataset of democratic erosion: 76,792 unique incidents across 197 countries, 2000 to 2023.

Working paper · 2025

Sultanist and militarist soft propaganda, and support for security operations

with Donnelly

How sultanist and militarist soft propaganda on state-funded TV shifts support for security operations at home and abroad.

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