SS: A mass youth-led protests in Delhi began over exam irregularities and have widened into a fight over electoral integrity, after India’s Election Commission tagged roughly 130 million names for removal from voter rolls. The protesters are demanding the chief election commissioner’s resignation and blaming Modi directly, while the government has responded with heavy policing and detentions.

Foreign Affairs argues Modi is in no danger of falling, but that open defiance from a cross-caste, cross-religion generation has dented his image of unquestioned authority, with the outcome likely to hinge on whether the contest opens democratic space or deepens repression. How can citizens defend the institutions of a democracy's credibility when they come under assault by authoritarian drift? Can protests alone be relied upon?

Guillaume Attia, for Liberal Currents, draws on Steve Tsang and Olivia Cheung’s China’s Global Strategy Under Xi Jinping and Minxin Pei’s The Sentinel State to argue that Xi’s vision of a Chinese-led order is a world made safe for autocracy, not a more respectful alternative to American hegemony. At home, that means pre-emptive surveillance and the repression of even Marxist labour organizing and ethnic minorities, as in Xinjiang and the proposed ethnic unity law. Abroad, China works from within institutions like the UN to dilute human rights norms and shield states from scrutiny. For liberals, this makes the case that China’s growing global influence threatens human rights architecture itself, and that this should matter well beyond security concerns over Taiwan or the South China Sea.

SS: Reaching back a couple years to do some theory-posting on housing economics.

California YIMBY summarizes a Swedish study that uses full-population microdata (1990-2017) to test “filtering,” the idea that new market-rate housing eventually frees up older, cheaper homes. It finds that moving chains reach households earning 60% of average income by the third move, that filtering works fastest in rental apartments, and that new supply gives every income group access to newer, larger housing. Without new construction, older homes can instead become more expensive.

The findings offer empirical support for a market-based, supply-side approach to housing affordability, a critical political and economic issue in modern urban governance.