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.

During the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law's (CDDRL) first Fall 2026 Research Seminar, Emily Russell, the 2026-27 Gerhard Casper Postdoctoral Fellow in Rule of Law at CDDRL, presented her research on why police selectively target certain minorities within particular regions of India. She began by situating her work within the literature on common explanations of police repression. These explanations often include crime and political dissent that the police seek to curtail, or racial and ethnic biases within policing institutions. Russell, however, argues that police may also target vulnerable groups in order to enforce an economic order and maintain and enable conditions of extraction that sustain production and hierarchy. 

Russell contextualizes this through the broader literature on coercion, taxation, extraction, and labor control. Existing work already shows how coercion can be used to restrict workers’ outside options and prevent laborers from leaving. Acemoglu and Wolitzky’s 2011 paper, for example, models coercion as force or the threat of force that employers use to influence workers’ participation decisions. Russell adds another layer to this literature by focusing on how coercion can be exercised through the state, rather than only directly by employers. 

Russell situates this argument in the context of Assam’s tea plantation economy. Plantation owners have incentives to control labor, prevent dissent, and discourage laborers from leaving. Within the plantation, they can engage in private coercion directly. Beyond the plantation, however, private coercion becomes more difficult. At that point, landowners may rely on the state, particularly the police, to exercise coercion on their behalf. This produces a clear testable implication: where plantation owners retain incentives to control labor but private coercion can no longer easily reach workers, policing should increase, particularly against the relevant labor population. This is where Assam’s plantation geography becomes useful.

Russell distinguishes between plantations themselves, plantation catchments, and more distant rural areas. Catchment areas are the residential zones surrounding plantations where laborers can still live within commuting distance while remaining beyond employers’ direct control. She then uses a spatial regression discontinuity design across plantation boundaries and catchments to estimate whether policing increases in these areas.

To measure policing and police abuse, Russell draws on GDELT-type media data to capture visible policing events, and legal and human-rights records help capture forms of abuse that may be less visible in media reporting. The broader project also incorporates qualitative evidence from more than 60 interviews.

What she finds is that policing increases sharply in plantation catchment areas relative both to plantations themselves and to more remote rural areas. This increase is especially important in areas with larger populations descended from indentured laborers (Adivasis). Measuring this population is difficult using conventional demographic data, so Russell constructs a surname-based measure based on fieldwork with interviews of elders from indentured communities and geocoded voter records. This allows her to estimate where populations historically connected to plantation labor are concentrated.

The heterogeneity result is particularly important. Policing increases with the concentration of Adivasi populations within plantation catchment areas, but not beyond that geographic zone. This matters because it helps distinguish her argument from a purely ethnic-bias explanation. If repression were driven only by generalized discrimination against Adivasis, one might expect policing to increase wherever these populations are concentrated. Instead, the increase appears specifically where these communities remain economically connected to plantation production but are beyond employers’ direct private control.

The broader point is therefore that the state can use coercion to maintain inequalities that sustain production. Police repression may not only reflect attempts to control crime, political dissent, or ethnic minorities. It can also function as a state-supplied mechanism of labor control, particularly where private coercive authority becomes insufficient.

The Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law is pleased to invite applications from pre-doctoral students at the write-up stage and from post-doctoral scholars working in any of the four program areas of democracy, development, evaluating the efficacy of democracy promotion, and rule of law. The application cycle for the 2027-2028 academic year will be open from Monday, September 21, 2026, through Monday, November 30, 2026.

Our goal is to provide an intellectually dynamic environment that fosters lively exchange among Center members and helps everyone to do excellent scholarship. Fellows will spend the academic year at Stanford University focusing on research and data analysis as they work to finalize and publish their dissertation research while connecting with resident faculty and research staff at CDDRL.

Pre-doctoral fellows must be enrolled currently in a doctoral program or equivalent through the time of intended residency at Stanford and must be at the dissertation write-up (post-coursework) phase of their doctoral program. Post-doctoral fellows must have earned their Ph.D. within 3 years of the start of the fellowship, or plan to have successfully defended their Ph.D. dissertations by July 31, 2027.

In addition to our regular call for applications, CDDRL invites applications for the following fellowships:

Gerhard Casper Fellow in Rule of Law: We welcome research on any aspect of rule of law, including judicial politics, criminal justice, and the politicization of judicial institutions. We are an interdisciplinary center; candidates from any relevant field (i.e., the social sciences, law) are welcome to apply. This is a 9-month, residential fellowship, and the Gerhard Casper Fellow will be part of CDDRL’s larger cohort of pre- and postdoctoral fellows. Please apply through the CDDRL fellowship application process and indicate that you would like to be considered for the Gerhard Casper Rule of Law Fellowship.

Jan Koum Israel Studies Program Fellow: We welcome research on any aspect of modern Israel, including Israeli politics, constitutionalism, economics, society, diplomacy, and international affairs. We are an interdisciplinary center; candidates from any relevant field (i.e., the social sciences and law) are welcome to apply. This is a 9-month, residential fellowship, and the Jan Koum Israel Studies Program Fellow will be part of CDDRL’s larger cohort of pre- and postdoctoral fellows. Please apply through the regular CDDRL fellowship application process and indicate that you would like to be considered for the Jan Koum Israel Studies Program Fellowship.

Senior leaders from the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and government officials gathered at Stanford University from August 24 to 28, 2026, for the IFC-Stanford Leadership Academy for Development Senior Level Training on Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) and Public Policy for Infrastructure. Infrastructure is a governance outcome that can bolster the legitimacy of new democracies, contribute to economic growth, and provide citizens with public goods. The five-day program was jointly organized by IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, and the Leadership Academy for Development (LAD) at Stanford's Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL). 

Drawing on nearly two decades of work with international partner organizations, LAD worked with IFC to tailor lectures and case studies to the program's learning objectives. Participants examined PPP structuring and procurement, project finance, stakeholder engagement, regulatory and political risk, project assessment and safeguards, public institution reform, and bilateral and multilateral development finance.

The cohort was taught by Stanford scholars Francis Fukuyama, Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, director of the Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy, and professor by courtesy of political science, and Michael Bennon. Prof. Fukuyama opened the first session with his Problem-Solving Framework, a method for identifying a policy problem, mapping stakeholder interests and relationships, and moving from analysis to implementation.