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.

In a REDS Seminar co-sponsored by CDDRL, TEC, and the Hoover Institution held on March 12, 2026, Hannah S. Chapman, the Theodore Romanoff Associate Professor of Russian Studies and an Associate Professor of International and Area Studies at the University, presented a new project exploring how crises affect authoritarian regimes’ ability to gather information from their citizens. This question connects to the well-known dictator’s dilemma, which describes the challenge authoritarian leaders face in obtaining accurate information from society while maintaining political control. Chapman’s project explores how this dilemma plays out during crises, when governments may simultaneously need more information from society while also increasing repression.

Chapman studies this question in the context of Russia, specifically focusing on the presidential appeals system in which citizens can submit appeals to the Presidential Administration via online platforms, written letters, or in person. These appeals typically address everyday governance issues such as infrastructure problems, utilities, social benefits, healthcare access, or bureaucratic disputes. Importantly, appeals are not anonymous and require individuals to submit identifying information, meaning citizens must voluntarily engage with the state to raise concerns. While these systems provide the government with valuable information about societal problems, moments of crisis raise the question of whether citizens will continue to use them as repression increases. 

To explain variation in citizen appeals during crises, Chapman introduces a theory of crisis based on two key factors that shape citizen behavior. Crisis immediacy, which refers to how directly and rapidly a crisis affects people’s everyday lives, and the government’s repressive response, meaning whether the state increases repression during the crisis. Together, these two factors shape whether citizens are willing to voluntarily engage with the state despite heightened repression and risk. To evaluate these expectations, Chapman analyzes a dataset of monthly reports produced by the Russian Presidential Administration that summarize citizen appeals. The dataset includes approximately 1.7 million appeals between 2017 and 2023, covering hundreds of categories of complaints. Using these reports, the project examines four major crises in Russia during this period: the 2018 pension reform, the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, and the partial military mobilization announced in September 2022. 

Each crisis demonstrates how immediacy and repression shape citizen behavior. The 2018 pension reform represents a low-immediacy, low-repression crisis. Although the policy change was unpopular, its effects were expected to unfold gradually, and protests were not heavily suppressed. As a result, appeals about pensions increased modestly while everyday appeals continued at normal levels. The COVID-19 pandemic represents a high-immediacy, low-repression crisis because lockdowns and economic disruptions immediately affected daily life, but restrictions were largely framed as public health measures rather than political repression. During this period, crisis-related appeals increased significantly while everyday appeals remained stable. 

The 2022 invasion of Ukraine represents a low-immediacy, high-repression crisis. Although repression increased dramatically through censorship laws and arrests for criticizing the war, the conflict initially felt distant from everyday life for many Russians. As a result, both crisis-related appeals and everyday appeals remained relatively low. Finally, the mobilization announced in September 2022 represents a high-immediacy, high-repression crisis. Because hundreds of thousands of Russians faced the immediate possibility of military conscription, crisis-related appeals increased dramatically, with approximately 42.3% of appeals related to military issues, even though everyday appeals remained suppressed. 

Chapman claims that in high-urgency crises, immediacy outweighs repression, creating an urgent incentive for citizens to seek help despite the risks. As a result, there is a spike in crisis-related appeals and a sharp decline in everyday complaints. As discussed, this is significant as systems designed to gather citizen feedback depend on citizens’ willingness to communicate with the state. Consequently, when repression increases, these channels become more fragile and less effective at capturing routine issues. As a result, authoritarian governments may lose important information about everyday problems when they most need accurate information to maintain stability.

Professor James Goldgeier is a Research Affiliate at Stanford University’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) and Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC). He is also a Professor at the School of International Service at American University, where he served as Dean from 2011 to 2017. His research focuses primarily on U.S.-NATO-Russia relations since the end of the Cold War, examining how key foreign policy decisions were made and how they continue to influence relations between the United States, Europe, and Russia today.

What inspired you to pursue research in your current field? And how did your journey lead you to see your role? 

I got into this field because of my undergraduate thesis advisor, Joseph Nye, who inspired me to become a professor of international relations. When I was in college, I thought I wanted to work on political campaigns, and after graduating, my first job was managing a city council campaign in Boston. We lost by a very small margin, and afterward, I received offers to work on other campaigns. But that experience made me realize I wasn’t sure that was what I wanted to do long-term. 

I started thinking about people whose careers I admired, and Joseph Nye stood out. Before college, I had never traveled outside the United States, but he traveled extensively, wrote books, and clearly enjoyed teaching. That combination of research, writing, and teaching really appealed to me. I went to him and asked what I would need to do to pursue a similar path. He told me I would need to get a PhD. That conversation ultimately shaped my career. I went on to earn a PhD and become a professor, and I’ve always felt deeply indebted to him for helping me see that this was the path I wanted to pursue.

How did you get into the specific area of study that you ended up focusing on?

I went to U.C. Berkeley to do my PhD in international relations, and during my first year, Mikhail Gorbachev became the leader of the Soviet Union. I was taking a class on Soviet foreign policy at the time, and that really drew me in. Since the Cold War was central to U.S. foreign policy, it became clear to me that if I wanted to understand international relations, I needed to understand the Soviet Union.

I started studying Russian, taking history courses, and focusing more closely on Soviet and European security issues. Although the Soviet Union collapsed while I was finishing my dissertation, my broader interest in U.S. foreign policy remained constant. My undergraduate thesis had been on NATO nuclear policy, so over time I returned to NATO and became increasingly interested in its role in shaping the post–Cold War order. By the mid-1990s, that had become a central focus of my research.

On February 12, Stanford’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), the Europe Center, and the Hoover Institution hosted Lucan Way, Distinguished Professor of Democracy at the University of Toronto, for a seminar titled “Economic Dependence and Authoritarianism: Russia in Comparative Perspective.” The talk, part of the REDS (Rethinking European Development and Security) series, examined the structural relationship between state resource concentration and democratic outcomes, using Russia as a central case while situating it within broader comparative patterns.

Way’s core argument centered on a simple but powerful proposition: when economic resources are concentrated in the hands of the state, autocracy becomes more likely; when resources are dispersed outside the state, democracy becomes more feasible. The key mechanism linking economic structure to regime type is the strength — or weakness — of countervailing societal power. Resource concentration generates societal dependence on political leaders. Citizens dependent on public-sector employment or state benefits face high personal costs for political opposition, including loss of income or access to essential services. Similarly, business elites reliant on state licenses, contracts, or regulatory goodwill incur substantial risks if they challenge incumbents. The result is weak opposition, limited activist networks, minimal independent funding, and fragile civil society organizations.

Way situated this framework within three major literatures on authoritarianism. First, underdevelopment (Lipset 1959; Przeworski et al. 2000) remains strongly associated with autocracy: roughly 70 percent of poor countries were autocratic between 2000 and 2021. Second, oil wealth (Ross 2001; Bellin 2004) produces an even starker pattern: about 90 percent of petrostates were authoritarian in the same period. Third, statist or weak private-sector economies (Fish 2005; Greene 2007; Arriola 2013; Rosenfeld 2021) show similar tendencies, with roughly 80 percent of the most statist countries classified as autocratic. Despite their differences — very poor African states, wealthy Middle Eastern petrostates, and middle-income statist regimes — the underlying mechanism is the same: resource concentration fosters weak countervailing power.

Russia exemplifies this structural dynamic. While the 1990s appeared to feature strong countervailing forces, including powerful oligarchs credited with supporting Boris Yeltsin’s reelection, Way argued that these actors were in fact institutionally weak. Russia’s private sector relied heavily on state connections in a system with weak courts and manipulable regulatory frameworks. The imprisonment of Mikhail Khodorkovsky after he challenged Vladimir Putin underscored the vulnerability of even the wealthiest economic actors. The broader business community remained largely passive, reflecting structural dependence rather than autonomous strength.

Statism further entrenched authoritarian control. A state-dependent middle class and political parties reliant on Kremlin financing limited the development of robust opposition. In oil-rich systems, public-sector employment and distributive benefits deepen citizens' dependence, while governments remain fiscally insulated from private-sector pressures. In underdeveloped postcolonial contexts, even modestly financed states wield disproportionate leverage over fragile economies, facilitating cooptation and repression.
Preliminary statistical evidence using V-Dem measures of “resource concentration” supports these claims. State ownership or control over key sectors correlates strongly with authoritarianism, high pro-incumbent mobilization, low opposition mobilization, media control, and weak civil society. Way acknowledged complications, including endogeneity: autocrats often increase resource concentration through nationalization or expansion of public employment. Nevertheless, certain structural conditions — such as large oil reserves, extreme underdevelopment, or historically weak private sectors — make concentration more feasible ex ante.

In conclusion, Way emphasized that autocracy is not inevitable in such contexts. However, where countervailing societal power is weak, imposing authoritarian rule becomes far easier. Across diverse regimes, economic dependence constitutes a common mechanism of authoritarian control — whether through business capture of the state or state capture of business.

On January 15, 2026, Emil Kamalov, CDDRL’s 2025-26 Stanford U.S.-Russia Forum (SURF) Postdoctoral Fellow, presented his team’s research on whether autocracies can draw citizens who have emigrated back to their country of origin. Historically, episodes of autocratization create huge migration waves. In recent times, countries such as Chile, Venezuela, Iran, Belarus, and Russia have experienced waves of emigration as a result of authoritarian leadership. When skilled professionals who are crucial to their country’s functioning leave, a phenomenon known as “brain drain,” a central question arises: if and how these individuals will return. This raises two key questions: can autocracies reverse such a brain drain and bring their citizens back, or can only democracies do so?

Kamalov turns to the case of Russian migration to explore these questions more directly. For many Russians, the 2022 war with Ukraine was an initial trigger for leaving the country. Kamalov explains that autocrats use emigration as a safety valve to manage dissent at home. In doing so, autocrats rely on several tools to maintain control. These include selective “valving,” which allows some citizens to emigrate while retaining enough workers critical to industry, as well as imprisonment to punish those who attempt to leave. For those who have already emigrated, autocrats may introduce special policies, such as financial or tax benefits for critical professions, in an attempt to attract them back to the country. 

Kamalov then discussed what motivates citizens to move into and out of countries. He outlines a list of push and pull factors, including economic conditions, integration and discrimination, and satisfaction with amenities and services. He identifies a gap in the literature, noting that there is relatively little focus on politics — specifically regime change, autocracy, and democracy. From this gap, Kamalov poses several questions: can autocrats lure emigrants back with incentives, will people return if democratization occurs, and does democratic backsliding in host countries push emigrants back home? For political emigrants in particular, political liberties are non-tradable in their decisions about return.

Turning fully to the case of Russian emigration, Kamalov notes that about one million Russians have left the country since the February 24, 2022, invasion of Ukraine. This represents the largest brain drain since the collapse of the USSR. Forty-one percent work in the IT sector, and the majority of emigrants are highly skilled and educated, with many working in science, media, and the arts. This emigration represents a significant share of opposition-minded Russian citizens: most of those who left had experience with protest and civic engagement in Russia, and roughly 80 percent cite political reasons for their departure. In response, the Kremlin introduced several policies aimed at discouraging professional emigration or attracting emigrants back. These include mobilization exemptions for highly skilled workers in critical industries such as math, architecture, and engineering, as well as economic support for IT workers, including subsidized mortgages. Because of these policies, Russia serves as a useful case study for understanding whether the strategies autocracies use to entice citizens back or prevent them from leaving are actually effective.

In March 2022, Kamalov and his team launched a panel survey of Russian migrants consisting of five waves. Approximately 21,000 post-2022 Russian emigrants across around 100 countries participated. As part of the survey, respondents were asked to imagine hypothetical political scenarios in Russia and indicate whether they would return if those scenarios became reality. These scenarios ranged from highly realistic but undesirable to unrealistic but highly desirable. They included continued war with Putin in power, continued war with family mobilization exemptions, an end to the war without regime change, an end to the war with political amnesty but no regime change, and full regime change with pro-democratic forces coming to power. The team also analyzed respondents’ host countries, focusing on economic conditions, citizenship opportunities, and political environments.

The results show that having a good job or a path to citizenship in the host country reduces the likelihood of returning to Russia, while democratic backsliding in the host country increases it. Draft exemptions do not increase return at all. Ending the war alone would attract only about 5 percent of emigrants, ending the war combined with political amnesty would attract about 15 percent, while democratization is by far the most attractive scenario, drawing around 40 percent back. When looking at subgroups, all professional categories studied — culture, IT, media, science, and education — were similarly unlikely to return under non-democratic conditions. During democratization, around half would return, though those working in culture, such as artists and musicians, were somewhat less likely to do so. Younger emigrants were more likely to return than older ones.

When asked why they would not return, respondents cited high migration costs, regime volatility, and distrust of Russian society. Some believed that even with political change, Russian society would take much longer to become progressive. Those who said they would return pointed to home, family, opportunities, quality of life, migration fatigue, and, in some cases, disillusionment with democracy in host countries.

The findings of Kamalov’s team demonstrate that even removing the initial trigger for emigration cannot attract many emigrants back. Job opportunities can draw certain subgroups, even during wartime, but broader political conditions matter far more. Autocratic spillovers and cooperation also matter, as democratic backsliding in host countries can motivate return. Importantly, even those who currently cannot envision retu