CDDRL Research Seminar Series
Explore Past Seminars
Alice Siu, Associate Director of CDDRL’s Deliberative Democracy Lab, demonstrates the wide-ranging effects of deliberation on democracy.
Using data from the World Values Survey and Turkish Election Studies, CDDRL Visiting Scholar Ali Çarkoğlu explores the rise of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the enduring influence of cultural divides on Turkey’s political landscape.
FSI Senior Fellow Alberto Díaz-Cayeros explores how demographic collapse, epidemic disease, and colonial rent extraction were interconnected in Tepetlaoztoc, a city-state in the Acolhua Kingdom of the Aztec Empire.
CDDRL Postdoctoral Fellow Alex Mierke-Zatwarnicki explores how identity politics — strategies of political mobilization based on group identity — shape the development of new political parties, particularly those trying to establish themselves in a competitive environment.
Marc Lynch, Professor of Political Science at George Washington University and the Director of the Project on Middle East Political Science, applies a framework of “Warscape Theory” to better understand patterns of state failures, recurrent conflict, and authoritarian rule across the region.
Cornell Assistant Professor of Political Science Bryn Rosenfeld’s work explains why ordinary citizens — those without activist ties — sometimes take extraordinary risks to stand up to authoritarian regimes.
Previous works paint three broad challenges with the parole system: material hardship, negative social networks, and carceral governance. Gillian Slee, Gerhard Casper Postdoctoral Fellow in Rule of Law at CDDRL, proposes a crucial fourth explanation for why re-entry fails: socioemotional dynamics.
While many have argued that America has witnessed a shift from disagreements on redistribution to disagreements on culture, Klaus Desmet’s findings indicate otherwise.
UVA Associate Professor of Politics Anne Meng’s research seeks to fill a gap of systematic data on post-election concessions worldwide by presenting a comprehensive dataset tracking presidential election concessions from 1980 to 2020 across 107 countries.
In her new book, "When Left Moves Right: The Decline of the Left and the Rise of the Populist Right," Maria Snegovaya unpacks the puzzling dynamic between left- and right-wing parties across the post-communist states in Eastern Europe.
James Fearon probes how authoritarian elites safeguard their power through autocratic constitutions, focusing on Myanmar, one of the longest-lived military regimes in the post-WWII era.
Research by CDDRL’s Einstein-Moos Postdoctoral Fellow Julieta Casas underscores how firing practices within patronage systems significantly shaped divergent trajectories of bureaucratic development across the Americas.
Michael C. Kimmage discussed his recently published book, "Collisions: The War in Ukraine and the Origins of the New Global Instability" (Oxford University Press, 2024), which argues that the war in Ukraine is not a singular conflict; it has three separate axes, making it a series of collisions.
Bruce Cain argues that the federalist nature of the U.S., along with regional history and idiosyncratic human behavior, have made resolving collective action problems uniquely difficult.
Salma Mousa shares her research findings evaluating the effectiveness of a waste sorting intervention in Lebanon.
Amanda Kennard and Brandon de la Cuesta share their research on the effects of climate shocks on political trust, employing innovative machine learning methods.
Tomila Lankina’s award-winning book, “The Estate Origins of Democracy in Russia: From Imperial Bourgeoisie to Post-Communist Middle Class” (Cambridge University Press, 2022), challenges the assumption that the 1917 revolution succeeded in leveling old estate hierarchies, arguing that these social structures persist today.
While some observers have claimed that Ukraine’s corruption renders it unprepared for EU accession, Maria Popova’s research suggests otherwise.
Christopher Walker, Vice President for Studies and Analysis at the National Endowment for Democracy, and Will Dobson, co-editor of the Journal of Democracy, discussed their new book, “Defending Democracy in an Age of Sharp Power” (Johns Hopkins University Press 2023).
According to Eugene Finkel, the Kenneth H. Keller Associate Professor of International Affairs at Johns Hopkins University, Russia’s recurrent attacks against Ukraine can be traced to issues of identity and security.
Beatriz Magaloni, the Graham H. Stuart Professor of International Relations, presented her latest research during a CDDRL seminar talk.
Harvard University Professor of Government Alisha Holland explains how the advent of public-private partnerships has shifted politicians’ orientation toward infrastructure projects.
Why have democracies failed in curtailing Xi Jinping’s human rights abuses? And how can they better insulate themselves from Beijing's transnational threats? CDDRL Visiting Scholar and former China Director at Human Rights Watch Sophie Richardson presented her research on the Chinese government’s deteriorating human rights record.
Political Scientist Larry Bartels argues that democratic erosion in Europe has been driven primarily by elite behavior, not shifting popular sentiments.
How do democracies arise, and what conditions promote their survival? In a CDDRL seminar series talk, Professor of Political Science and Classics Josiah Ober addressed this question, drawing on his latest book, “The Civic Bargain: How Democracy Survives” (Princeton University Press), co-authored with Brook Manville.