In a CDDRL research seminar held on January 29, 2026, Zehra F. Kabasakal Arat, professor of political science at the University of Connecticut, presented her human rights theory of democracy to explain democratic backsliding. Arat’s research shows how economic and social policies have contributed to the decline of democracies worldwide since the mid-twentieth century. While democratic decline was once primarily associated with developing countries, it has now become a global concern, visible as the rise of electoral authoritarianism, hybrid regimes, illiberal democracies, and right-wing populism.

Arat’s theory upholds that democracy’s stability depends on maintaining a balance between two sets of human rights: civil and political rights and social and economic rights. Civil and political rights such as freedoms of expression, association, and assembly, as well as the rights to political participation, are critical components of democracy. Social and economic rights include the right to work, labor rights, education, healthcare, housing, food, an adequate standard of living, and social security. Arat argued that while democracies maintain relatively high levels of civil and political rights, successive governments may neglect social and economic rights, leading to the emergence of a growing gap between the two sets of rights. This imbalance leads to a legitimacy crisis. As citizens begin to question the government’s ability to respond to everyday struggles and provide basic welfare, the government or an alternative elite triggers a process that ultimately undermines democratic stability.

Arat outlined a three-phase process through which democratic decline unfolds. In the first phase, democratization begins, and civil and political rights expand rapidly, while social and economic rights remain stagnant. Although a gap exists between the two sets of rights, the expansion of political freedoms provides legitimacy to the new democratic system. In the second phase, civil and political rights stabilize while social and economic rights stagnate or decline, creating an imbalance that fuels social and political unrest. In the third phase, governments that are unwilling or unable to improve social and economic conditions respond by limiting civil and political rights, ultimately marking the decline of democracy.

Arat examined democratic decline for two major eras. During the Cold War, politics focused on class-based movements such as labor and student activism, while governments responded with authoritarian measures justified by anti-communism. Many developing countries followed uneven development models and trickle-down economics that promised rapid economic growth. However, in the post-Cold War era, the neoliberal economic paradigm, which seeks privatization, deregulation, labor flexibility, and reduced government services, spread across both developing and developed countries. Although promoted as efficient, these reforms weakened social and economic rights and increased public dissatisfaction. At the same time, political struggles and claims shifted toward identity politics.

Arat described this as a “convergence of fundamentalisms.” She referred to neoliberalism as “market fundamentalism,” which prioritizes the private sector and markets, reducing the public sector's role and resulting in declining employment, reduced social services, and growing inequality. Along with the rise of neoliberalism, religious and nationalist fundamentalisms gained strength, increasing cultural tensions around gender identity and roles, minority rights, immigration, and national identity. Furthermore, instead of addressing the social and economic rights violations caused by neoliberal policies, governments reverted to cultural politics to manage public frustration.

These cultural strategies served as a divide-and-rule approach. Political leaders frame social problems around internal and external enemies, such as minorities, immigrants, feminists, global/cosmopolitan elites, and intergovernmental organizations, redirecting anger away from economic policy failures. This populist rhetoric divides society into “victims” and “others,” while promoting strong leadership as the solution to the grievances of “authentic and legitimate” citizens. Through this process, governments are able to maintain neoliberal economic structures while simultaneously weakening civil and political rights and shrinking the democratic space.

Arat concluded that democratic decline cannot be understood without recognizing the central role of social and economic rights. While inequality is important, it would not be destabilizing by itself; the erosion of welfare systems and the government's failure to meet basic human needs create conditions of instability and loss of legitimacy. Hence, as long as neoliberal policies continue to undermine social and economic rights, democracies remain vulnerable to backsliding and authoritarianism.

At a recent REDS seminar co-hosted by the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law and The Europe Center, Andrew Michta, Professor of Strategic Studies at the Hamilton School, delivered a sobering assessment of European security in an era of renewed great power conflict. Framed around the question “Will deterrence hold?”, Michta’s talk examined the structural weaknesses of Europe’s post–Cold War security order, the evolving threat environment posed by authoritarian powers, and the limits of both U.S. and European military preparedness.

Michta argued that Europe has spent the past three decades on what he termed a “vacation from history” — a period marked by disarmament, strategic complacency, and the belief that economic integration could substitute for hard security. The post-1990 unification of Germany, the enlargement of the European Union, and the decline of territorial defense planning reinforced the assumption that major war on the continent was no longer plausible. This mindset, he contended, left Europe strategically unprepared for Russia’s gradual re-militarization and revisionism, culminating in the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

A central theme of the talk was the failure of the European Union to develop a credible, EU-centric security architecture. While EU elites pursued visions of a “United States of Europe,” Michta emphasized that political fragmentation, divergent threat perceptions, and regulatory obstacles have undermined collective defense capacity. Events such as Brexit, the 2015 migration crisis, and internal disagreements over Russia have further eroded cohesion. In Ukraine, these weaknesses have translated into a fragmented and often reactive European response.

Michta placed Europe’s challenges within a broader systemic context, highlighting the emergence of what he described as an “axis of dictatorships” linking Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea across the Eurasian landmass. Russia, he argued, is now fully mobilized for war, while China is expanding its military capabilities at unprecedented speed and scale. These dynamics are producing an “expanding battlefield” stretching from Eastern Europe to the Indo-Pacific, raising the prospect of simultaneous regional conflicts. Referencing warnings by NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe, Michta noted that a two-theater conflict by 2027 can no longer be dismissed as implausible.

The talk also addressed the constraints facing the United States and NATO. Despite unmatched global reach, U.S. forces have been reshaped by two decades of counterterrorism operations, face recruitment shortfalls, and are constrained by an industrial base ill-suited for protracted large-scale combat operations. European NATO members, with a few notable exceptions such as Poland, Finland, and the Baltic states, lack deployable forces and the industrial capacity needed for sustained deterrence.

In conclusion, Michta outlined a more pragmatic path forward centered on what he called NATO’s “Northeast Corridor” — a coalition of states in Northern, Baltic, and Central Europe that share threat perceptions and possess credible military capabilities. With continued U.S. support, particularly in nuclear deterrence, logistics, and long-range fires, this regional core could serve as the alliance’s new center of gravity. Whether deterrence ultimately holds, Michta suggested, will depend on how quickly Europe can translate recognition of risk into concrete military and political action — and on how the war in Ukraine ultimately ends.

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

On December 4, 2025, Nate Persily, the James B. McClatchy Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute, spoke about election administration in the United States during a CDDRL research seminar. Persily discussed revelations from the 2024 election and how the 2024 election can forecast the upcoming 2026 midterm election cycle. 

Persily started his talk by sharing the “Election Administrator’s Prayer”— "Oh God, whatever happens, please don't let it be close" — as close elections expose the “fragile underbelly” of the election administration system, like the 2024 election. Roughly 230,000 votes in key swing states ultimately determined Donald Trump’s Electoral College victory of 312 votes to Kamala Harris’ 226. 

Persily situated the 2024 results within the broader political trends. Traditional political science predictors — public evaluations of the incumbent administration and economic perceptions — pointed toward a Trump victory. At the same time, public confidence in the electoral system shifted. Republicans’ confidence in the national vote increased markedly compared to 2020, while Democrats’ confidence declined — a reversal Persily described as a “sore-loser” pattern, but a decline that saw greater change with Democrats than in past years. 

Persily narrowed in on the act of voting itself, and firstly covered vote-by-mail. He emphasized that vote-by-mail has a smaller partisan gap than might be assumed: states as ideologically diverse as Utah, California, and Washington rely heavily on all-mail voting. Nationwide, only about 34 percent of voters cast ballots on Election Day, reflecting a long-term move toward early in-person and mail voting. Persily emphasized that these categories themselves are increasingly fluid — voters may receive a mail ballot but choose to drop it off in person, complicating simple partisan narratives about “mail voters” versus “in-person voters.”

In 2024, states sent 67 million ballots to voters, and 72 percent were returned. About 1.2 million mail ballots were rejected, primarily due to missing or mismatched signatures — an issue concentrated among younger voters with inconsistent signatures and older voters experiencing age-related variation. Persily identified signature verification as a potential spot for further controversy, given its susceptibility to litigation, partisan pressure, and administrative inconsistency. In-person voting, by contrast, saw few changes from 2020. Approximately 1.7 million provisional ballots were cast, with 74 percent ultimately counted. 

Notably, several anticipated threats to the 2024 election did not materialize. Despite widespread discussion about AI-generated disinformation, deepfakes largely appeared in satirical contexts with little evidence of voter confusion. Fears of widespread voter suppression, election-related violence, and breakdowns in certification procedures were also less present than expected.

Persily highlighted several emerging risks that might impact the 2026 election cycle. Firstly, efforts to target overseas ballots for active military and overseas citizens (UOCAVA), particularly in Michigan, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania, have increased, as have general efforts to review and purge voter rolls, signaling a growing interest in using administrative disputes to challenge ballot eligibility. 

Another concern was the over 227 bomb threats made against polling places and election offices, which led a few polling places to temporarily close or extend hours. The concern here is not necessarily the explosives themselves, as no explosives were found. Rather, Persily warned that voters might not go to the polls for fear of violence.

Other challenges included wide variation in county-level rules for curing mail ballots, particularly in Pennsylvania, where some counties offer robust curing opportunities, and others offer none — raising equal-protection concerns reminiscent of Bush v. Gore. Persistent state-level differences in counting speed, with California as the slowest, create openings for misinformation about “late-counted” ballots. Election-official turnover continues to rise, leaving many jurisdictions with less experienced administrators heading into 2026.

Persily then turned to new sources of pressure. A recent executive order requiring documentary proof of citizenship — paired with DHS review of state voter lists — could impose significant burdens, as many U.S. citizens lack passports or have name discrepancies with their documentation. On Truth Social, President Trump has also floated eliminating mail voting entirely and even ending the use of voting machines. Since May 2024, the Department of Justice has requested voter-registration databases from at least 21 states, heightening tensions over data privacy and federal authority. Persily raised concerns about the potential deployment of federal troops or ICE at polling places, noting that such actions are illegal but still feared. 

Persily lastly outlined what he called a “nuclear option.” A constitutional loophole allows Congress’s ability to refuse to seat duly elected members on the basis of qualifications, which then proceeds to a vote to seat a new member. This loophole, if used, could result in back-and-forth objections where no one is able to claim their seat. 

Persily emphasized the need for states to commit resources to speeding up mail-ballot counting, for courts to resolve executive-order challenges before the 2026 cycle begins, for early in-person voting to be encouraged, and for the House to articulate rules about objections to member seating well before November 2026. Ultimately, Persily argued that although most Americans will experience the 2026 elections as the same as elections in past years, states with competitive congressional districts may feel the strain. 

Persily ended by saying the present tension in our voting systems does not favor centralization, and perhaps, federalism is our friend at this current moment. 

In a recent REDS (Rethinking European Security and Development) seminar co-hosted by Stanford’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) and The Europe Center (TEC), Professor Kim Lane Scheppele offered a clear and urgent account of a growing crisis inside the European Union (EU): the erosion of democracy within some of its own member states. Her central claim was that the EU now faces two different democracy deficits. The first is the traditional, institutional problem — often described as the EU being “too technocratic” and “too distant” from voters. The second, and far more dangerous, is the rise of internal democratic backsliding, where member states that were once consolidated democracies begin to dismantle their own checks and balances.

Scheppele began by explaining the older, familiar form of the democracy deficit. Many key EU institutions — the European Commission, the Council, and the European Court of Justice — are not directly elected. The EU historically justified this by assuming that democratic legitimacy flowed upward from its member states. As long as all national governments were democratically elected and accountable at home, the EU’s supranational structure remained legitimate.

But this assumption has collapsed. Over the past decade, some member states, most notably Hungary, and, until recently, Poland, have shifted away from liberal democracy while still enjoying full voting rights and benefits inside the Union. Scheppele emphasized that the EU’s treaties never anticipated a scenario in which a member might stop being a democracy yet continue to shape EU policies, budgets, and laws.

The heart of the talk outlined how Hungary under Prime Minister Viktor Orbán gradually transformed into what scholars call an “electoral authoritarian” regime — a system that holds elections but systematically tilts the playing field. Scheppele detailed how Orbán’s government captured the Constitutional Court, restricted judicial independence, took control of public media, pressured private media owners, rewrote electoral laws, weakened civil society, and used EU development funds to reward loyalists. Despite this, Hungary still nominates a European Commissioner, sends Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) elected under unfair conditions, and holds veto power in the Council of the EU.

Scheppele explained why the EU’s main disciplinary tool, Article 7 of the Treaty on European Union, proved ineffective. Article 7 is designed to sanction members that violate EU values, but the final step requires the unanimous consent of all other member states. Hungary and Poland protected each other for years, making sanctions impossible.

A major turning point came when the EU created three financial conditionality systems: the Rule-of-Law Conditionality Regulation, the Recovery and Resilience Fund, and the Common Provisions Regulation. Unlike Article 7, these tools allow the EU to freeze funds when a member state violates rule-of-law standards. Scheppele noted that these mechanisms froze €137 billion for Poland and €36 billion for Hungary — pressures that contributed to Poland’s democratic opening in 2023 and helped fuel a new political challenge to Orbán.

Still, problems remain. In late 2023, the European Commission released €10.2 billion to Hungary for geopolitical reasons, despite rule-of-law violations. Scheppele warned that such political bargaining undermines the credibility of the new system.

She ended on a cautiously optimistic note: recent EU court decisions suggest that democracy itself, not just technical legal standards, may soon become an enforceable EU obligation. Yet the ultimate question remains one of political will. The EU now has tools to defend democracy from within — but must decide whether it will use them.

In a CDDRL research seminar held on November 20, 2025, Gerhard Casper Postdoctoral Fellow Ana Paula Pellegrino presented her research on the emergence of police-led armed illicit groups (PLAIGs) in Brazil. Pellegrino defines them as illicit organizations with coercive capacity led by active-duty police officers. Her seminar explored what makes these groups distinctive, why they form, and the conditions that allow them to take shape.

As discussed by Pellegrino, unlike ordinary corruption, informal protection rackets, or gangs that employ off-duty police as security, PLAIGs are fully organized and independently governed armed groups that operate illicitly, possess their own coercive capacity, and are led by active-duty police officers who remain part of the state. Because of this unique position inside the public safety apparatus, these groups can draw on the authority and resources of the state, becoming spoilers of efforts to monopolize violence.

To better understand how these groups arise, Pellegrino examines both the motivations behind their formation and the conditions that enable them. She argues that officers create these groups primarily as a rent-extraction strategy when they perceive the costs of policing to be rising, typically in response to a growing armed threat. As violence escalates, both politicians and the police feel pressure: politicians face public demands for safety, while officers face greater personal danger on the ground. This imbalance produces frustration within the police ranks and motivates some officers to exploit their coercive capacity for profit. 

However, motivation alone is not enough, as the opportunity to form PLAIGs depends on two enabling conditions. First, police must have greater coercive capacity than the threat they face, allowing them to compete with or expel armed groups. Second, they must have sufficient discretion to use their capacity outside of official duties. Pellegrino emphasizes that this autonomy is shaped by the degree of political control over police. When oversight is strong, officers cannot use state resources to build private organizations. When oversight is weak, however, officers have both the means and the opportunity to organize. Pellegrino refers to this dynamic as the Warrior’s Paradox: the increased investment in police capacity meant to combat disorder also creates the conditions for police to generate disorder themselves.

To test her argument, Pellegrino draws on extensive process tracing and three years of fieldwork in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. Despite similar histories of police violence, only Rio developed PLAIGs. Pellegrino shows that Rio consistently expanded police coercive power while failing to impose meaningful oversight, creating the conditions for PLAIGs to flourish after the rise of the Red Command and the Third Command of the Capital, prison gangs turned drug trade organizations. São Paulo, by contrast, implemented institutional reforms in the 1990s and early 2000s that tightened accountability, standardized use-of-force rules, and constrained police discretion, even after the rise of the First Command of the Capital, an equally powerful drug trade organization. As a result, officers in São Paulo lacked the autonomy and impunity necessary to form armed organizations.

Pellegrino closed by emphasizing that PLAIGs emerge not from state weakness but from well-equipped police forces operating with insufficient oversight, enabling officers to convert state authority into private coercive power. This, she claims, illustrates how police can become actors who undermine, rather than protect, the state’s monopoly of violence.

On November 13, 2025, Hanna Folsz, a Pre-Doctoral Fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, presented her research on “Economic Retaliation and the Decline of Opposition Quality.” This CDDRL research seminar built on Folsz’s focus on authoritarianism and democratic backsliding. 

Hungary has experienced significant democratic decline, spurred by Fidesz Party leader Viktor Orbán’s rise to power in 2010. Since then, armed with a parliamentary supermajority, the Fidesz Party has taken several democratic-eroding actions: rewriting electoral rules, capturing the courts and media, and repressing independent civil society. Prior to these actions, Hungary had close elections. But after 2010 and the Fidesz Party’s changes, elections are no longer close. Illiberal populists worldwide — like Trump, Bolsonaro, Netanyahu, and Erdoğan — look to Orban’s agenda as a template on how to dismantle democracy, and how to maintain voter support while doing so. In Hungary, opposition politicians, candidates, advocates, and voters do not face violence or arrests for their political views. However, Folsz argues that there exists a pervasive fear in opposition circles stemming from the potential for economic retaliation. Folsz recalls examples of this from interviews she conducted in Hungary.

In Miskolc, a city in Northeastern Hungary, the local head of the socialist party recalled a story from 201,9 when the party was able to convince a well-respected businessman to run for a seat. However, after agreeing to become a candidate, the candidate’s wife said, “Are you out of your mind? Don’t you think about your daughter? She will lose her job if you do this!” The couple’s daughter worked at a local passport office, a state-dependent job. The candidate withdrew his candidacy. His replacement was an elderly woman who was unable to campaign. The socialist party lost the race.

Another interviewee, Tibor Zaveczki, ran as an opposition candidate. He was fired from a state-owned company for doing so. Zaveczki took the case to court, armed with secret recordings of his firing. The recording included a conversation between Zaveczki and his manager, in which his manager said: “The city leadership decided not to continue working with you in our company.” Zaveczki asked, “So, to put it plainly, was my mistake that I openly declared I was in the opposition?” His manager responded, “Of course, that matters. That’s obvious. You’re not stupid.”

Folsz identified that existing literature on democratic backsliding often focuses on the incumbent's strategy to dismantle democratic institutions and on why voters tolerate these actions. However, the role of opposition parties is rarely addressed. Folsz went into her research asking the question: Why do opposition parties struggle to challenge aspiring autocrats in elections? Folsz asserts that the main reason is that opposition parties have a growing political talent deficit in democratic declines, driven by an authoritarian strategy that Folsz calls elite economic coercion. This entails a credible threat of economic retaliation for opposition candidacy that discourages opposition political entry, reduces opposition candidate quality, and weakens opposition parties.

Folsz outlines two types of economic retaliation. The first is employment-oriented, where state-sector employees might face fear of dismissal from their job, demotions, or lack of promotions if they or a family member runs for office with the opposition party. The second is enterprise-oriented, where business owners might face a credible threat in the form of tax audits, the cancellation of state contracts, or the denial of grants, or even be blacklisted by suppliers or clients. Folsz outlines the effects of elite economic coercion, stating that the coercion leads to a higher cost of candidacy, which then leads to deterrence of political entry. This results in a lower opposition candidate quality and ultimately weakens opposition parties.

Folsz then empirically tested these three steps of the theory: retaliation, deterrence, and endogenous entry. Using tax enforcement as a proxy for economic retaliation, Folsz found a significant increase in tax enforcement in firms that had links to opposition candidates, and found the effect stronger with opposition-owned firms. Folsz also found that these firms were less likely to stay in business and decreased in their number of employees and profit compared to incumbent party-linked firms after the firm owner’s or director’s political entry. State dependence is a very central deterrent of candidacy– a survey experiment shows that state dependents are about 13 percent less likely to join opposition politics as candidates. Folsz used data on candidate background to show that the quality of opposition candidates declined compared to the incumbent Fidesz Party candidates during Hungary’s democratic decline.

Folsz concluded by stressing that the weakening of opposition parties is key to authorization, and candidate recruitment is a central challenge for opposition parties during democratic decline.

At a CDDRL seminar held on November 7, 2025, Georgetown political scientist Killian Clarke presented new research on why some revolutions consolidate into lasting political change while others are reversed through counterrevolution. His central claim is that unarmed, democratic revolutions are uniquely vulnerable to reversal, not because they lack legitimacy or popular support, but because of the kinds of power resources they rely on and later abandon. Drawing on a global dataset of 114 revolutions since 1900, Clarke showed that nearly one in three democratic revolutions is later overthrown, a rate dramatically higher than that of leftist or ethno-nationalist revolutions. Still, two-thirds of democratic revolutions do survive, raising questions about how so many of them manage to resist counterrevolution despite their weaknesses.

Clarke defines counterrevolution as the restoration of a version of the old regime after a successful revolution, whether through coups, elite realignments, or mass-backed reversals. His explanation centers on the resource asymmetries that distinguish unarmed, democratic revolutions from their violent counterparts. Whereas Marxist, nationalist, or armed uprisings build coercive capacity, external alliances, and strong organizational hierarchies, democratic revolutions typically succeed through broad, decentralized, and nonviolent mass mobilization. This allows them to topple entrenched autocrats, but leaves them without reliable security forces or disciplined party structures once in power. The feature that makes them strong during the uprising — large numbers in the streets — becomes a source of fragility once governing begins.

The mechanism Clarke traces is one of post-revolutionary demobilization. After seizing power, new democratic leaders often pivot toward institutional governance, suppressing further street mobilization in the name of stability. But this demobilization fragments the revolutionary coalition and removes the only leverage it holds over old-regime actors — societal pressure. When the coalition fractures, counterrevolutionary elites can reenter the arena with support from military, foreign patrons, or disillusioned factions of the original movement.

Egypt’s 2011 revolution illustrates this pattern. The mass uprising that ousted Hosni Mubarak briefly held the military at bay through continued mobilization. But once elected, President Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood tried to govern by appeasing the military and old regime elites, sidelining secular allies, and discouraging protest. But popular mobilization never really declined; instead, it transformed, and eventually came to be directed not in defense of the revolution but against the Morsi government, ultimately enabling the 2013 coup. Clarke emphasized that Egypt did not fall because counterrevolutionaries grew powerful, but because revolutionaries abandoned the mobilizational strategy that had given them power in the first place.

Clarke then compared Egypt's counterrevolutionary outcome to Venezuela's 1958 revolution, another unarmed, democratic revolution against a military government. By contrast, Venezuela’s 1958 democratic transition succeeded because revolutionary leaders remobilized supporters when a military countercoup emerged, bringing hundreds of thousands into the streets and forcing the generals to retreat. In Clarke’s view, Venezuela shows that democratic revolutions can survive, but only when leaders treat post-revolutionary politics as a continuation of the struggle against the old regime.

Clarke concluded by noting a long-term decline in successful counterrevolutions during the late 20th century, followed by a possible uptick in the 2010s. The return of multipolar geopolitical backing for authoritarian restoration — and the global spread of unarmed, democratic revolutions — may be recreating the conditions under which counterrevolutions thrive.

In a CDDRL research seminar held on October 30, 2025, Einstein-Moos Postdoctoral Fellow Oren Samet presented his research on how opposition parties engage internationally to challenge authoritarian regimes, focusing on the costs and benefits of a phenomenon he terms “opposition diplomacy.” This CDDRL research seminar highlighted Samet’s book project, which explores how opposition actors shape international politics and what their strategies reveal about the global landscape of democracy. 

Samet defines opposition diplomacy as the explicit efforts by political actors in the opposition to engage with international policymakers, promote their own priorities, and influence the foreign policies of external states. His research focuses on opposition diplomacy directed at Western governments in the post-Cold War era, undertaken by parties and politicians seeking to gain power through elections. 

As Samet highlighted, opposition diplomacy can take several forms, including direct lobbying, international networking, diaspora mobilization, and public relations. These efforts can shape foreign policy decisions by building coalitions of international allies with overlapping goals and with influence within foreign policy establishments, as well as by persuading policymakers that opposition parties are credible partners. This, in turn, can be beneficial, as it draws attention to repression, strengthens advocacy for democratic reform, and helps motivate external pressure, including through public statements of solidarity and specific policies such as sanctions. 

To study how these relationships operate, Samet analyzes data from party internationals – formal networks that connect political parties across countries – and their links with ideological groups represented within the European Parliament. He shows that when an opposition party from a country belonged to a party international with such links, members of the associated group in the European Parliament were more likely to raise issues about that country’s democratic deficits, indicating that these ties can increase visibility and solidarity abroad.

Samet further highlights this dynamic through the case of Cambodia, where opposition leaders have long appealed to Western governments and mobilized diaspora networks to pressure the prevailing autocratic regime. Their outreach helped bring international attention to Cambodia’s democratic backsliding and contributed to the imposition of European Union sanctions by increasing the visibility of regime abuses and helping to legitimize calls for stronger international action. 

However, Samet emphasized that the costs of opposition diplomacy can often outweigh its benefits. International engagement can expose politicians to repression or legal risks, divert financial and human resources from domestic mobilization, and enable ruling regimes to portray opposition parties as agents of foreign influence. In Cambodia, for example, opposition figures who engaged in international outreach faced arrests, restrictions, and bans on political participation, showing how consequential such engagement can be. Additionally, as Samet discussed, opposition diplomacy can sometimes produce unintended effects by giving regimes further justification to tighten control or discredit opposition leaders in the eyes of the public. Ultimately, due to these risks, opposition diplomacy is most common when domestic opportunities are scarce, leaving opposition parties with few alternatives. 

Samet closed by noting that these tradeoffs reveal the complex nature of opposition diplomacy. While opposition politicians can be influential global actors, their impact depends on how they weigh the risks and rewards of engaging abroad. Hence, the international environment for democratization is shaped not only by governments but also by the strategic choices of opposition actors themselves.

On October 16, 2025, UC Davis political scientist Lauren Young delivered a talk on the politics of electoral repression in post–Cold War autocracies. Her talk examined why authoritarian incumbents use electoral repression in some elections and not others, why they often outsource it, and why it is often not targeted at the most strategically valuable districts. She argued that cohesion in the ruling coalition shapes its organization, targeting, and effectiveness. Electoral repression refers to the use of coercive violence by ruling elites to weaken opposition forces and tilt electoral competition in their favor while still holding elections. It is a common tool of authoritarian control, with opposition harassment present in roughly one in five elections since 1990. Yet incumbents do not always rely on repression, and when they do, they frequently delegate it to paramilitary groups rather than state security forces.

Young argued that repression is both valuable and politically risky, which explains why it is sometimes but not always used. Authoritarian elites face two key problems. First, there is a control problem: the effects of repression on political behavior are unpredictable. While violence may intimidate some citizens, it can also backfire, provoking outrage or mobilization. Second, there is a power-sharing problem: delegating repression to coercive actors — police, military, or militias — can empower these groups and threaten regime stability. These risks push rulers toward patronage, propaganda, and performance, turning to repression only when these strategies fail.

The problem of authoritarian control is shaped by the fact that citizen reactions to repression are driven by psychological factors that are hard for elites to observe. These include self-efficacy — the belief in one’s ability to overcome obstacles — and risk aversion, or preference for certainty. Individuals with high self-efficacy and lower risk aversion are less likely to be deterred, increasing the uncertainty of repression’s effects. 

The talk’s focus was on elite cohesion and how it structures electoral repression. When ruling coalitions are cohesive, regimes rely on state security forces, making violence more organized and strategically targeted at competitive “swing” districts. When coalitions are fragmented, elites are more threatened by the risk that politicized state security forces will turn on them and instead outsource violence to militias, including violent interest groups, criminal organizations, and loosely organized bands of party supporters. This produces poorly targeted repression, often concentrated in strongholds, less lethal, and more prone to backfire. Internal power dynamics thus shape how electoral repression unfolds.

To illustrate this, Young drew on more than 5,000 incidents of electoral violence in Zimbabwe between 2000 and 2023. Periods of high elite cohesion, such as the 2002 presidential election, saw repression directed by state security forces in competitive districts. Periods of low cohesion, such as the 2000 legislative election and the 2008 runoff, saw militia-led violence concentrated in party strongholds, where it was less strategic and more likely to generate backlash.

By linking elite politics with these dynamics, Young’s work shows why electoral repression remains widespread but unevenly effective, and why even carefully planned repression can backfire.