As questions about democratic governance, institutional resilience, and authoritarian power become increasingly central to public life around the world, the need for rigorous, accessible scholarship has grown more urgent. Effective May 15, 2026, a new partnership between Stanford’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) and the Journal of Democracy will expand Stanford’s role in those conversations. Through the partnership, CDDRL will support the production of the Journal’s quarterly print issues and expanding digital content, while creating new opportunities for faculty, researchers, and students to contribute to its work. 

Since 1990, the Journal of Democracy has served as a major forum for scholars, policymakers, democratic reformers, and public intellectuals examining how democracy emerges, endures, and comes under strain. Widely regarded as the leading global publication on democratic theory and practice, the Journal has played a central role in shaping debates on democracy worldwide. Previously, the Journal was housed within the National Endowment for Democracy — a private, nonprofit foundation dedicated to the growth and strengthening of democratic institutions around the world. The Journal was co-founded by Larry Diamond, the Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at CDDRL within the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), who served as founding co-editor for the Journal's first 32 years. 

A natural alignment with CDDRL’s work

The partnership is a natural fit for CDDRL, which brings scholarship and practice together to examine the forces that advance or impede representative governance, human development, and the rule of law. It also builds on long-standing connections between the center and the Journal of Democracy: many CDDRL-affiliated faculty have contributed to the Journal over the years, and its focus closely aligns with the center’s research, teaching, and practitioner training programs. Moreover, CDDRL is already deeply engaged in the kinds of questions the Journal has long brought to wide audiences — whether through the Fisher Family Summer Fellows Program, which brings civil society leaders from developing and transitioning countries to Stanford for intensive training in democratic practice and reform, the Democracy Action Lab’s work on democratic resilience, or the Leadership Academy for Development’s training for leaders advancing good governance and economic development.  

More broadly, the partnership reflects CDDRL’s research and teaching agenda, which focuses on the institutions, ideas, and political forces shaping democratic resilience, authoritarianism, and governance around the world. Across its faculty, fellows, students, and training programs, the center takes an interdisciplinary approach to some of the most pressing questions in global politics — from democratic backsliding and state capacity to political reform and accountability. The Journal of Democracy offers a complementary platform where that work can reach both academic and public audiences.

Connecting research to practice

For Kathryn Stoner, Mosbacher Director of CDDRL and the Satre Family Senior Fellow at FSI, the partnership highlights how CDDRL’s work connects research to the practical challenges facing democracy.

“One of CDDRL’s core strengths is the ability to take high-quality research theories and methods and apply them to on-the-ground policy challenges,” Stoner said. “The Journal of Democracy serves a similar function in the field of political development. Our new partnership to produce the Journal enhances our global reach in both the international development policy and academic communities.”

In a CDDRL research seminar held on April 30, 2026, Anna Grzymala-Busse, the Michelle and Kevin Douglas Professor of International Studies in the Department of Political Science, senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and the director of The Europe Center, explored historic state development and fragmentation in Europe, focusing on how conceptualizations shape conclusions about state formation. She examined how scholars define both “Europe” and “the state,” comparing how different coding and measurement choices lead to different patterns of fragmentation over time. 

Grzymala-Busse first defines what counts as Europe, noting that while some scholars define Europe through Western Christianity, others rely on geographic cutoffs like west of the Don River or west of the Ural Mountains. This is significant, as including large cases like Russia or the Ottoman Empire creates the impression of growing state size over time, while excluding them makes Europe appear more fragmented. She also points out the risk of circularity, in which Europe is defined by certain institutions, and then that same group is used to explain why those institutions developed. In that sense, excluding places like Russia or the Ottoman Empire based on cultural or institutional reasons can lead to conclusions about European distinctiveness that are already built into how Europe was defined in the first place.

The second big question is how a state is defined, since historical Europe included a wide range of political units like empires, kingdoms, duchies, city-states, and trading leagues, making it hard to rely on a single clear definition based on sovereignty or centralization. This ties directly to how fragmentation is measured, since it depends on methodological choices such as which units are included and how they are counted. One of the most important choices is whether to include city-states. When excluded, the data show fewer and larger states over time, which supports the bellicist idea of consolidation. When included, Europe appears more fragmented, aligning more with revisionist arguments. Overall, this illustrates how a few key classification choices can shape broader conclusions about state development.

This issue becomes even more apparent when looking at fragmentation itself, which both bellicists and revisionists treat as central to their arguments. For bellicists, fragmentation is a starting point that declines over time, while for revisionists, it is more durable and persists across periods. The Holy Roman Empire serves as a key example: it was one of the largest political entities in Europe, yet remained highly fragmented, with overlapping authorities and no clear centralization. This highlights the importance of measurement and coding decisions, as choices such as which polities to include, whether to count borders or use concentration measures, and even the size of geographic grid cells all shape the results. 

Ultimately, Grzymala-Busse concludes that rules and definitions fundamentally shape how fragmentation appears in the data. Once these methodological choices are made clear, there is less clear evidence for the bellicist claim that states were consistently consolidated, but this does not fully confirm the revisionist argument either. Consequently, if the debate is a matter of coding rather than evidence, transparency in concepts and measures becomes even more important.

In a Rethinking European Development and Security (REDS) seminar held on April 9, 2026,  and co-hosted by CDDRL and The Europe Center, Konstantin Sonin, a John Dewey Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy, presented his research on “The Reverse Cargo Cult: Why Authoritarian Governments Lie to Their People,” offering a theoretical explanation for why regimes such as the Soviet Union would knowingly tell citizens visibly false statements. According to Sonin’s research, authoritarian propaganda is much more complex than simple misinformation or manipulation, as it is often designed not to convince people of a single claim, but to shape how they evaluate information more broadly. 

Sonin begins with a personal anecdote, reflecting on his own experience participating in Soviet elections where there was only one candidate on the ballot, despite the process being presented as a meaningful choice. Using this example, he questions why regimes like the Soviet Union invest so heavily in clearly staged elections or exaggerated portrayals of Western life, even when citizens recognize these distortions. From this, he introduces the idea that such actions are not meant to persuade citizens of a specific falsehood, but instead to influence how they interpret all incoming information. Drawing on the metaphor of a “reverse cargo cult,” he suggests that just as some communities misinterpret the source of Western goods, citizens in authoritarian systems may come to believe that institutions in other countries are equally performative or deceptive. In this sense, narratives about foreign countries become an integral tool for reinforcing domestic political stability. 

He further explores how citizens evaluate elections and the decision to replace an incumbent under uncertainty about both competence and trustworthiness. He recognizes that in these regimes, citizens are not entirely naïve and may often recognize when a leader is lying. However, Sonin shows that even obvious lies can be effective. When a domestic leader lies about conditions that citizens already know to be bad, it signals not only that the leader is untrustworthy but also raises the perceived likelihood that foreign leaders are similarly dishonest. As a result, citizens downgrade their expectations of potential replacements, concluding that alternatives may not be any better. This dynamic ultimately reduces the incentive to replace the incumbent. 

As his theory suggests, negative information about conditions abroad, or even skepticism toward foreign success, can benefit authoritarian leaders. For example, Sonin points to Soviet reactions to the American National Exhibition in Moscow, where displays of a typical American home were dismissed by officials as unrealistic or misleading. This kind of framing encouraged citizens to question whether life in the United States was truly better, reinforcing the idea that shortcomings at home were not unique. As a result, domestic failures appear less exceptional, helping explain why authoritarian propaganda frequently emphasizes criticism of other countries and why such narratives often reinforce one another. 

Sonin concludes by emphasizing that lying in this context is not primarily about persuading citizens of a particular false claim, but about shaping their broader beliefs about the reliability of information. By weakening trust in information overall, leaders can make bad conditions at home seem like the safer or more reliable option compared to the uncertainty of change.