Jason Brownlee

The limited reach of authoritarian powers

Democratization · 2017-05-15 · 91 citations

Authoritarian states often command tremendous resources, but their ability to fundamentally change regimes abroad remains in question. Proponents of an “authoritarian resurgence” have speculated that China and Russia are rolling back democracy around the world, much like fascist powers in the interwar period. By contrast, the introductory article of this special issue theorizes that current authoritarian powers are not catalyzing autocracy far afield. Rather, they are prudentially defending the…

Why Democracies Survive

Journal of democracy · 2022 · 50 citations

Experts worry that de facto single-person regimes in previous multiparty states (Russia, Turkey, Venezuela) and norm-defiance in existing democracies (Brazil, Hungary, the United States) signal a coming authoritarian age. Without examining the broader record, however, it is hard to know whether such tremors presage a global convulsion. A century's worth of evidence (1920–2019) shows that contemporary democracies are sturdier than they look. Above all, high levels of economic development continue…

Immunos-81: the misunderstood artificial immune system

Swinburne Research Bank (Swinburne University of Technology) · 2024-01-01 · 17 citations

The vertebrate immune system is a robust and powerful information process system that demonstrates features such as distributed control, parallel processing and adaptation and learning via experience. Artificial Immune Systems (AIS) are machine-learning algorithms that embody some of the principles and attempt to take advantages of the benefits of natural immune systems for use in tackling complex problem domains. The Immunos-81 is an AIS technique designed for classification problem domains. It…

Cognitive Shortcuts and Public Support for Intervention

Journal of Conflict Resolution · 2019-06-21 · 13 citations

Scholars of public opinion on military intervention agree that survey respondents make judgments from limited information. Yet researchers still question whether ordinary Americans reflect elite attitudes or instead reach their own “pretty prudent” conclusions from the stated principal policy objective (PPO). This article adjudicates the debate while incorporating lessons from the study of bounded rationality. Evidence comes from an original data set of aggregate US public opinion, covering 1,08…

Populations of interacting immune systems: evolution and immunization

Swinburne Research Bank (Swinburne University of Technology) · 2024-01-01 · 7 citations

The acquired immune system of mammals (such as humans, mice, rats, and cattle) is the most studied immune system. Taking a quick look at the ‘tree of life’ reveals that this intensely studied system belongs to a very small minority of taxa, the jawed vertebrates, raising the question: why did this system evolve when all other plants and animals survive without it? This work reviews some of the ways in which immune systems may interact with each other in the context of evolution, and in terms of…