At a CDDRL research seminar held on October 1, 2026, Frances Cayton, the Einstein-Moos Postdoctoral Fellow at the Stanford Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, presented research from her book project on civil society in backsliding democracies.

Her presentation centered on the democratic potential of informal, apolitical civil society groups in resisting democratic erosion. She argued that autocrats devote little attention to these groups, leaving them with greater autonomy and the ability to decide when and whether to engage with the government. At the outset, these groups often have low civic consciousness, meaning they do not recognize the social capital and civic resources they hold. However, as autocratization threatens their independence, they become more aware of those resources and more committed to defending them, which makes them more likely to mobilize democratically and across partisan divides. 

Cayton began by noting that current scholarship often focuses on two ways autocratic regimes interact with civil society. First, they work alongside and reward groups that share their views as a source of support, and second, they crack down on opponents through repression and bureaucratic pressure. What this picture overlooks, Cayton argues, are the apolitical and informal groups that make up much of civic life, such as biking clubs and mushroom hunters, who often do not consider themselves part of civil society at all. 

To account for these groups, Cayton organizes civic life into a two-by-two framework of formal and informal organizations with political and apolitical missions. Formal groups have internal structures such as membership and dues, making them easy for the state to see. Informal groups have looser arrangements, such as friends who help stray dogs in their neighborhood. Political groups have an explicit political mission, such as human rights, labor, religious, or left-and right-wing causes, while apolitical groups focus on areas like sports, education, and the arts. 

Her argument therefore suggests that the less visible nature of these informal, apolitical groups makes them an almost blind spot in the autocrat's agenda, allowing them to maintain their autonomy. Cayton hypothesizes that, relative to formal pro-regime civil society, aspiring autocrats will target formal apolitical and opposition groups more often, but will not treat informal civil society differently. 

She then tests this through the case of Poland, drawing on a panel dataset covering the universe of Polish civil society, a survey of civic organizations, and interviews. Her analysis of public funding shows that after the Law and Justice party (PiS) took power in 2015, formal apolitical and formal opposition groups lost public funding relative to formal pro-regime groups, while informal groups saw no significant change. Informal and apolitical groups also became less likely to file optional financial disclosures, which she reads as a choice to remain less visible to the state. 

In her survey experiment, Cayton reminded civic groups of government threats to civil society. Informal and apolitical groups became more open to meeting groups with different political views and hosting cross-partisan events, while showing no greater willingness to work with PiS. Together, these results suggest that the regime's pressure largely bypassed informal and apolitical groups, and that the threat to civil society strengthened their commitment to independence and pluralism. 

Ultimately, Cayton's research shows that informal, apolitical civil society is a powerful tool for democratic resilience. As one interviewee put it, these groups often "become political in order to maintain apoliticality," which leads them to defend their independence by mobilizing in support of democracy.