Bibliographic record
Abstract
ABSTRACT Using the theory of incremental autocratization, I illustrate in this commentary that recent developments in the United States perfectly align with this theory. In the analytical framework I use, incremental autocratization consists of six distinct step: (1) societal turmoil, (2) a proposition of radical change, (3) an electoral victory as point of departure, (4) the reconfiguration of the balance of power as well as the neutralization of checks and balances (5) securing power, and (6) limiting civil rights. I argue that as of March 2025, we are at stage 4. Mass firing in the bureaucracy, the excessive use of illegal or semi‐illegal executive orders, infringements of minority rights, attacks on academic freedom and the press, imperialism, and trade wars are all signs that Donald Trump is trying to crack down on the institutions and procedures of democracies. Of course, it is too early to say if this tendencies will succeed, but there is all reason for concern, even more so because Donald Trump has started to think about “loopholes” to stay in power beyond 2029, and has started to limit civil rights of some citizens residents.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.028 | 0.060 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.020 | 0.075 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.020 | 0.022 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.006 |
| Research integrity | 0.017 | 0.022 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".