Comparative Politics · Political Theory
Jeromey Sims
I study how democracies erode from within: the attitudes, movements, and ideas that let far-right politics reshape democratic institutions while keeping their outward form.
Ph.D. Candidate, Political Science, University of North Texas.
Degree expected 2027 · On the 2026–27 academic job market
About
Jeromey Sims is a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at the University of North Texas, where he passed comprehensive examinations in comparative politics and political theory. His research asks how contemporary far-right movements change democracies from the inside while disavowing the overt violence of interwar fascism.
His work joins democratic theory to cross-national survey research. He measures post-fascist attitudes across the world's democracies with data from Wave 7 of the World Values Survey, using latent class models and Response Item Network (ResIN) analysis, a recent method that maps which survey answers people tend to give together. A second line of research, with John Ishiyama, examines Christian nationalism and support for political violence around the world.
Sims came to the academy after three decades in information technology, and he remains co-owner of Texedo Technologies. He was a candidate for the Texas House of Representatives in 2018 and 2020. He lives in Biddeford, Maine.
Research
Dissertation
Post-Fascism and the Far Right in 21st Century Democracies
Far-right leaders in the 21st century run in elections, win them, and then reshape democratic institutions while insisting that they are defending democracy. The resemblance to fascism is real: nationalism, scapegoating, and the cult of the leader all return. Yet these movements operate inside democratic institutions and disclaim overt violence, and neither the literature on classical fascism nor the literature on democratic backsliding fully accounts for them.
The dissertation argues that post-fascism is a mutation of fascism. It erodes universal citizenship through procedure, discourse, and symbol, and it preserves the formal shell of democracy. Its empirical signature is the subtraction of overt violence: classical fascism recruited violence, and post-fascism replaces it with exclusionary political substance. The project develops a conceptualization and measurement strategy that makes this argument testable and then applies it in two settings.
- Concept and measurementDefines post-fascism against classical fascism and adjacent constructs such as populism, democratic backsliding, and right-wing authoritarianism, and builds an instrument to measure it.
- Mass publicsMeasures post-fascist attitudes in national publics across the world's democracies with World Values Survey Wave 7 data.
- MovementsExamines the global relationship between Christian nationalism and support for political violence.
Job market paper
“Who Are the Fascists? Who Are the Post-Fascists? Mass Attitudinal Correlates in Wave 7 of the World Values Survey”
Best Graduate Student Paper Award, Southwestern Political Science Association, 2026 Most Outstanding Graduate Paper, UNT Political Science, 2026Summed attitude scales can give two respondents the same score for opposite reasons. A respondent who favors social hierarchy and supports democracy can look identical to one who favors hierarchy and rejects democracy. This paper measures post-fascist attitudes as configurations of answers, which keeps that distinction visible, and traces how those configurations are distributed across democratic publics in World Values Survey Wave 7.
Work in progress
“Christian Nationalism and Support for Political Violence: A Global Analysis” (with John Ishiyama)
Examines whether and where Christian nationalism, the belief that national identity and political authority should be defined by Christianity, is associated with support for political violence, using cross-national survey data.
Method
Response Item Network analysis. Conventional belief network analysis treats each survey question as a node. ResIN treats each answer as a node, so “strongly agree” and “strongly disagree” on the same question become separate points, and links them by how often respondents give them together. Answers are then placed along a latent attitude dimension estimated with item response theory, a family of models that locate answers and respondents on an underlying scale. The result shows asymmetric and non-linear attitude structures that question-level correlations average away.
Teaching
“My courses are built backward from capacities rather than coverage.”From my teaching statement
- Fall 2026Instructor of record, PSCI 2306, U.S. and Texas Constitutions and Institutions (online), University of North Texas
Asynchronous online section enrolling 300 students. Adapted the departmental syllabus for online delivery and developing an original final examination.
- Summer 2026Course Development Assistant, PSCI 2306 flipped-classroom redesign, with Dr. Gloria Cox
Built the Canvas implementation of course materials authored by Dr. Cox. The design is now in use across all in-person sections of PSCI 2306 at UNT.
- 2023–2026Teaching assistant, American government, political behavior, and art history survey courses
Most Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award, UNT Department of Political Science, 2025–26.
Prepared to teach
Comparative
- Introduction to Comparative Politics
- Democratic Backsliding and the Far Right
- Religion and Politics
- Political Behavior and Public Opinion
- Quantitative Research Methods
Theory
- Introduction to Political Theory
- Ancient and Modern Political Thought
- Democratic Theory
- Marxism and Critical Theory
- Fascism and Anti-Fascism
American
- U.S. and Texas Government and Politics
Contact
I welcome conversations about my research, teaching, and open positions.