Citizenship is conventionally understood as a source of rights and protection. It is also a source of dependency: states retain distinctive authority over passports, legal identities, civil status, and mobility that citizens need even when they live abroad. Under authoritarianism, these dependencies become instruments of political control. The study introduces extraterritorial authoritarian citizenship, a continuing relationship in which emigrants depend on origin-state institutions whose provision of nominally universal rights is politically conditional. It generates latent leverage: the capacity to impose costs without exercising it against anyone in particular. Emigrants may curb dissent even when never targeted, and transnational repression activates leverage already at work. Using a four-wave panel survey of 4,000+ Russian emigrants in over 100 countries and 500+ interviews, the authors show that what emigrants fear is the open-ended legal and administrative reach of the origin state rather than targeted violence, that this fear suppresses contentious activism specifically, and that only the protection of another state reduces it. (In collaboration with Emil Kamalov and Karolina Nugumanova).

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Ivetta Sergeeva specializes in comparative social science, focusing on political behavior, civil society, citizenship and migration. In her research, she employs a mixed-methods approach, emphasizing surveys, statistical modeling, experiments, and interviews. Apart from her research skills, she has eight years of experience supervising projects in civil society and human rights organizations within the challenging context of contemporary Russia.

Politicians who openly display anti-democratic traits can attract substantial electoral support, even among voters who value democracy. This paper argues that the very behavior that makes a politician objectionable can also reassure voters that the politician will remain independent of political elites. Voters whose preferred policies lie far from elite interests worry that the candidates they elect will be captured by elites once in office. Because capturing a politician mired in scandal is costly for elites, scandalous behavior can credibly signal that a candidate is beyond elite reach. Where elites are democratically committed, displays of anti-democratic intent become an efficient way to generate such a scandal. Voters may elect these candidates even though they are more likely to manipulate elections once in office, an outcome costly for voters and elites alike. Elites who can perfectly anticipate which politicians will subvert elections have no credible way to communicate this to voters. A reanalysis of existing experimental data is consistent with the model's central prediction. Unlike existing accounts of anti-democratic voting, this theory explains why citizens who value democracy may still elect an anti-democratic candidate, even when a democratically committed candidate offers the same policy platform.

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Alain Schläpfer is a social science research scholar at Stanford University’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), and a lecturer in Stanford’s Ford Dorsey Master’s in International Policy. His research lies at the intersection of political science and economics and focuses on cooperation, political institutions, and intergroup relations. His current work examines how cooperation can be sustained across political and social divisions, why voters support anti-democratic politicians, and how institutions and social norms shape political behavior. His research combines formal theory with experiments and observational data. He holds a PhD in Economics.

Under what conditions do pro-democracy global actors support domestic opposition actors resisting democratic backsliding, and when does such support shape public opinion? This book project develops a theory of international rhetorical pressure that examines both the supply and demand of foreign engagement in backsliding contexts. On the supply side, it argues that international actors' public attention to democratic developments abroad is shaped by both domestic political developments and geopolitical ties. On the demand side, it suggests that foreign statements can shape public opinion toward pro-democracy movements. Drawing on an original dataset of US Secretary of State speeches, survey experiments, and elite interviews, the project shows that geopolitical interests often shape when international actors publicly address democracy abroad, but that when they do, foreign messages can meaningfully shape public opinion. The project highlights the increasingly international nature of backsliding and both the opportunities and challenges international engagement creates for domestic opposition actors.

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Benjamin Yoel is the Jan Koum Israel Studies Program Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL). Benjamin studies democratic backsliding, nonviolent resistance, authoritarian politics, and the role of international factors in the context of regime change. He is particularly interested in understanding when and how international actors can help or hurt domestic opposition movements defend democracy. His book project examines the supply and demand-side of international rhetorical pressure in the context of democratic backsliding and opposition to it. Benjamin's other work examines mass public support for democratic backsliding, public willingness to support retaliatory measures by democratic governments against former backsliding leaders, and the broader challenges facing pro-democracy actors in an increasingly illiberal international system. His research has been published in Nature, the International Journal of Public Opinion Research, and American Politics Research. He received his PhD in Political Science from Michigan State University and BA and MA degrees from Reichman University.

As Russia’s war against Ukraine grinds on and debate intensifies over how to end it, what could push the conflict into a more dangerous phase of escalation? This talk examines how the Putin regime’s domestic political imperatives shape when Moscow absorbs setbacks and when it escalates. It argues that Russian behavior reflects a “pressure-cooker” dynamic: external geopolitical constraints favor restraint, while battlefield failures, war weariness, and pressure from hardliners can gradually raise the domestic costs of inaction. The result is prolonged restraint punctuated by abrupt escalation across conventional, gray-zone, and nuclear domains. Counterintuitively, the greatest danger may arise before a domestic crisis fully materializes — when wartime exhaustion or the political and economic strains of a ceasefire loom, but the Putin regime still retains the capacity to act coherently. This argument has direct implications for Western efforts to manage escalation and negotiate an end to the war without inadvertently increasing Moscow’s incentives for risk-taking.

Aleksandar Matovski is an Associate Professor in the Department of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School. His research focuses on the impact of domestic politics on the durability and strategic behavior of authoritarian regimes, with a regional emphasis on Europe and the former Soviet Union. Matovski holds a PhD and MA in Government from Cornell University, an MA in War Studies from King’s College London, and a BA in Law from Saints Cyril and Methodius University, Skopje. Prior to his academic career, he was National Security Advisor in the Government of North Macedonia and Political and Military Advisor in the North Macedonian Ministry of Defense. 

Why do some backsliding incumbents co-opt civil society while others fail? This paper introduces a theory of civic consciousness, contending that, as compared to their formal or political counterparts, informal and apolitical civil society groups often fail to recognize their civic resources. I show that government threats to associational freedom help these groups recognize their latent social capital and increase their willingness to mobilize in support of democracy. As evidence, this paper draws on original data comprising the universe of Polish civil society between 2011 and 2025, a prominent period of democratic erosion and partial recovery. I find that Poland's illiberal PiS government financially targeted formal opposition groups but spared informal, apolitical groups. Meanwhile, those groups developed increased agency, leading them to avoid optional government interactions during the backsliding period. An original civil society-level survey experiment confirms that, when facing government threats, informal and apolitical groups are more likely to engage in pro-democratic actions. Altogether, I illustrate how improved civic consciousness facilitates newfound agency and democratic commitment among previously overlooked corners of civic life.   

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Frances Cayton is the Einstein Moos Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford's Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL). Her book project, "How Civic Consciousness Shapes Democratic Resilience," examines how, why, and under what conditions civil society encourages individuals to depolarize and resist democratic erosion. Combining extensive organizational and bureaucratic data, elite and mass surveys, experiments, and interview evidence, she demonstrates how informal and apolitical subsets of civic life retain critical latent democratic potential. More broadly, her research probes the drivers and consequences of democratic engagement, primarily in Eastern Europe while also drawing comparison with other eroding democracies globally. Her research is published or forthcoming in numerous outlets, including the American Journal of Political Science and Perspectives on Politics. Her work has been supported by the US Departments of State and Education, as well as the American Political Science Association.

Cayton holds a PhD in Government from Cornell University. She earned her AM from Harvard University's Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies and a BA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.