Salvatore Babones

Salvatore Babones (born October 5, 1969) is an American sociologist, and an associate professor at the University of Sydney.

Biography

He received PhD from Johns Hopkins University in 2003. From 2003 to 2008 he has been a professor of sociology at the University of Pittsburgh; since 2008 at the University of Sydney. He has also been a visiting associate professor at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore (2015) and a visiting scholar at Academia Sinica in Taipei (2015).Biography on official homepage
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He has been associated with or written for the Institute for Policy Studies (Washington), the Russian International Affairs Council (Moscow), and the Centre for Independent Studies (Sydney).

Work and views

His research into Australian universities' dependence on international (particularly Chinese) students has driven international education debates in the country.

United States and Trump

In 2018, Babones published ''The New Authoritarianism: Trump, Populism, and the Tyranny of Experts'' on Donald Trump and his administration. Lacking in sources and notes, he did not intend it to be an academic monograph but rather a political screed. Babones welcomed Trump's populist approach to governance as a dissent against the usual "tyranny of unelected authoritarian experts" in liberal democracies. Rejecting allegations of authoritarianism, he found Trump's administration effective and credited Trump with strengthening democratic ideals by returning power to the electorate. On the overall, populism was a legitmate political position in liberal democracy.

Markus Heide of Uppsala University found Babones' "apolegetic approach" to ignore the anti-democratic rhetoric of Trump and his supporters. Dan Glazebrook, reviewing for The Morning Star, found the work to be an exercise in Trumpian obfuscation. However, the book was favorably received in conservative media: Janet Albrechtsen, reviewing for The Australian, commended Babones for an "overdue .corrective about populism"; it went on to feature in the ‘Best ookson Politics 2018’ by the ''Wall Street Journal.''

Babones has since held the January 6 United States Capitol attack to be a "mostly peaceful protest"; he argued that Joe Biden was ''still'' a bigger threat to democracy on account of being supported by the press.

India

In September 2022, Babones criticized the democracy indices by Freedom House, V-Dem Institute, and Economist Intelligence Unit for their decision to downgrade India while under Narendra Modi's premiership and called for a retraction; noting their evidence to be flawed and "wildly disproprortionate", he blamed the intellectuals who were surveyed for not being objective in their evaluations. Two months later, in a conclave arranged by India Today, speaking on the same locus, Babones accused the Indian intellectuals of being "anti-India and anti-Modi as a class" in remarks that were widely shared in the social media.

Books

*Babones, S. (2009). ''The International Structure of Income: Its Implications for Economic Growth''. Saarbruecken: VDM Verlag Dr Muller.
*Esteva, G., Babones, S., Babcicky, P. (2013). ''The Future of Development: A Radical Manifesto''. Bristol, UK: Policy Press.
*Babones, S. (2014). ''Methods for Quantitative Macro-Comparative Research''. Los Angeles: Sage Publications.
*Babones, S. (2015). ''Sixteen for '16: A progressive Agenda for a Better America''. Bristol, UK: Policy Press.
*Elsenhans, H., and Babones, S. (2017). ''BRICS or Bust? Escaping the Middle-Income Trap''. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
*Babones, S. (2017). ''American Tianxia: Chinese Money, American Power, and the End of History''. Bristol, UK: Policy Press.
*Babones, S. (2018). ''The New Authoritarianism: Trump, Populism, and the Tyranny of Experts''. Cambridge, UK: Polity.

References

External links

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Babones, Salvatore
American sociologists
1969 births
American expatriate academics
American expatriates in Australia
University of Sydney faculty
University of Pittsburgh faculty
Johns Hopkins University alumni
Living people