Introduction and Contribution:

Most people move for economic or personal reasons, such as attending college, starting a new job, or being closer to family. Accordingly, residential moves are often beneficial for movers: they can improve life satisfaction, offer movers new economic opportunities, and increase long-term earnings. However, what is often little acknowledged is that moving can generate significant political costs: movers may have to learn about the political issues salient in their new place of residence while simultaneously facing the daunting task of settling into a new place of residence. It is because of these challenges that moving can change the extent to which someone engages in politics.

In “The local costs of moving,” Hans Lueders proposes that to understand how moving affects political engagement, we need to distinguish between national and local engagement. Studying political engagement among movers in Germany, he finds that German movers remain similarly engaged in national politics but become considerably less engaged in local politics. Lueders argues that national engagement is unlikely to change much after a move because the political context remains the same. Intuitively, the same political candidates run for national office no matter where one lives, and the country’s most pressing political issues remain the same as well. By contrast, the political context changes significantly when it comes to local engagement: living in a new place means that movers have less political knowledge (e.g., of local political candidates or salient issues), limited social networks to facilitate local engagement, and a weaker sense of civic duty to engage. Lueders finds no evidence that movers adopt new norms or political ideas — mainly because Germans tend to move to places that are socially and politically similar.

Lueders draws our attention to how moving — and the disengagement it generates — can undermine local democratic accountability. Indeed, when movers cannot communicate their preferences to local leaders, what follows is “representational inequality” between movers and “stayers.” That domestic migration can add or remove 5-10% of a county’s population over a decade, thus has serious consequences for the quality of democracy.

Importantly, Lueders broadens the geographic scope of research on political engagement. Social science research on moving has been heavily informed by data from the US, where “strict voter registration requirements…have been described as more costly than the act of voting itself.” Indeed, the US’s unique — and uniquely burdensome — voting regime has been shown to weaken both local and national engagement for movers. Lueders’s research suggests that these findings do not travel beyond the US. In Germany and much of the Western democratic world, movers are legally required to register their new address with local authorities, and are then automatically added to the electoral rolls. This removes a key barrier to political engagement, at least at the national level. American readers may rightfully ask which interests are advanced or undermined by the current status quo.

Engagement Before and After Moving:

Lueders introduces two competing accounts of how moving affects political engagement. On the first account, moving imposes serious epistemological and social costs: movers must learn new information about politics, form new social networks, and come to see themselves as members of a new community. Not only does all of this take time, but movers usually prioritize more urgent personal matters — e.g., finding housing or childcare — such that politics takes a back seat. 

Weakened social ties mean that movers interact less often with people who could inform them about local issues, candidates, or initiatives — which are hard enough for longtime residents to grasp. Members of social networks also enforce norms of participation on each other; movers who lack social ties will thus be more content to abstain from voting or volunteering for campaigns. It could be inferred from this account that the further away one moves, the less engaged one will be with one's new home: candidates and issues seem even more novel, while social networks become even more fractured.

A second account highlights how the context of a new place can change engagement, as movers are exposed to new political ideas or norms around participation. This may be because movers are persuaded to approach politics differently, or for more instrumental reasons (e.g., if one’s preferred party already wins by large margins in the new place, engagement will seem less pressing). The contextual account assumes that moving entails a big change in one’s political environment.

Methods and Findings:

Lueders uses German household panel data collected between 1984 and 2020, which totals over 500,000 “respondent-year observations.” By comparing how engagement varies over time between movers and stayers, he can home in on the changes in engagement caused by moving itself, accounting for any baseline differences caused by the kinds of people who choose to move or stay. National engagement is measured by self-reported levels of national political interest, whether respondents voted in the last national election, and whether they plan to vote in the upcoming one. Local engagement is measured by self-reported attachments to one’s place of residence, how frequently they participate in local political and citizen initiatives, and their frequency of volunteering in local associations and organizations. 

Lueders’ findings are consistent with the first account, in which local engagement declines due to lower-quality information and weaker social ties. He finds no evidence that Germans’ levels of national engagement change, regardless of the distance of one’s move.

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Figure 2. Changes in engagement around moves of varying distances. This figure explores whether movers’ engagement in national (top panel) and local engagement (bottom panel) changes around moves of varying distance. Each coefficient reflects the estimated change in engagement among movers compared to the baseline (all stayers plus movers six or more years before a move). Vertical bars are 95% confidence intervals. Data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (Goebel et al., 2019).
 

By contrast, the V-shaped patterns in the lower panel show that local engagement changes significantly, declining in the lead-up (around five years) before a move, reaching its lowest point in the year of a move, and then slowly returning to pre-move levels in subsequent years, but without fully recovering. Importantly, engagement declines with distance, as the most local moves (i.e., within the same town or county) leave engagement largely unchanged.
 

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Figure 1. Changes in engagement before and after a move. This figure explores whether movers’ engagement in national (top panel) and local engagement (bottom panel) changes around a move. Each coefficient reflects the extent to which movers depart from the overall trend in engagement in a particular year before or after their move. Vertical bars are 95% confidence intervals. Data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (Goebel et al., 2019).
 

Against the “contextual” account, Lueders finds that the majority of German moves occur over short distances, which makes it unlikely that contexts differ dramatically. And indeed, most of the places to which Germans move are sociopolitically similar (to where they left) in terms of levels of turnout and federal election outcomes.
 

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Figure 3. Most moves occur over short distances. This figure uses data on all cross-county moves in Germany in 2015 to compute various metrics of the distance of such moves. Left panel: distribution of the distance between origin and destination counties. Center panel: share of all moves from a particular county that go to neighboring counties. Right panel: share of all moves from a particular county that lead movers to other counties in the same state. Own calculations using data from FDZ der Statistischen Amter des Bundes und der Lander (2019). The vertical dashed line indicates the median move (left) or median county (center and right).

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Figure 4. Movers tend to move between politically similar environments. This figure reports the distribution of the change in environments that movers experience upon a move (dark blue). This distribution is contrasted with the distribution of change in environments one would expect when simply considering population totals between county pairs (grey). The vertical lines indicate the medians for the actual (dashed line) and benchmark (dotted line) distributions, respectively.
 

Ultimately, “The local costs of moving” underscores how highly individual life events can undermine the quality of collective governance.

*Brief prepared by Adam Fefer

What’s the most exciting finding from your research, and why does it matter for democracy and development?

In the mid-1990s, I worked in the U.S. government at the State Department and the National Security Council, focusing on Russia and European security. One of the major issues at the time was whether NATO should expand to include countries in Central and Eastern Europe. I later wrote a book on that decision, which was published in 1999.

One of the most important things I found was that NATO enlargement didn’t come from a single formal decision by the president and his cabinet. Instead, it developed gradually, driven by individuals who believed strongly in the policy and worked to move it forward over time. It was a much more incremental and contested process than people often assumed.

What was especially significant was that policymakers saw NATO enlargement as a way to promote democracy and strengthen the rule of law in Central and Eastern Europe. By offering countries the prospect of membership, they hoped to encourage democratic reforms and political stability. I think NATO enlargement had a profound impact on democratic development in the region, and my research helped explain how and why that policy came about.

What have been some of the most challenging aspects of conducting research in this field, and how did you overcome them?

Much of my work sits at the intersection of political science and history, and one of the biggest challenges is studying relatively recent events, where records are often incomplete. When you study earlier historical periods, you have access to archives and official records, but when you study more recent foreign policy decisions, much of that material is still classified.

Because of that, I’ve relied heavily on interviews with policymakers and officials. Interviews are incredibly valuable, but they also have limitations. People remember events differently, and often present events in a light that best reflects their own role or perspective, which is why it’s important to interview multiple people and compare their accounts to develop a more accurate understanding of what happened.

I’ve also used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain declassified documents, although that process can take many years. Some requests I filed for my 1999 book didn’t produce results until I was working on later books in 2003 and even 2008. But over time, those documents helped confirm and strengthen my understanding of how key decisions were made. Doing this kind of research requires patience, but it’s essential if you want to understand how foreign policy actually develops.

How has the field changed since you started, and what gives you hope?

The field has changed quite a bit since I finished my PhD in 1990. One major shift was that after the Cold War ended, there was less emphasis on area studies and regional expertise. When I was trained, people were expected to combine theoretical work with deep knowledge of particular regions, which is now less common. 

What gives me hope is the current generation of students. Many students today are highly capable of integrating knowledge of politics and history with technological expertise. Especially at places like Stanford, students have the opportunity to combine social science knowledge with new technologies. I think that combination will shape the future of the field.

What gaps still exist in your research, and what projects are you currently working on?

I’m currently working on a project with Michael McFaul and Elizabeth Economy on great power competition, focusing on how major powers try to influence the foreign policy orientation of smaller states. It’s an important issue, especially given the current international environment.

I’ve also continued working on NATO enlargement and its long-term consequences. When I published my book on NATO expansion in 1999, I didn’t expect that these issues would still be so central decades later. But NATO enlargement continues to shape relations between Russia, Europe, and the United States, particularly in light of Russia’s war against Ukraine. Hence, understanding how those earlier decisions connect to current events remains a major focus of my work.

What advice would you give to students interested in this field?

Students should focus on topics that genuinely interest them. You can’t predict what will be important five or ten years from now. Choosing a topic solely because you think it will be important in the future isn’t a good strategy if you’re not truly interested in it. Instead, study subjects that motivate you and that you feel compelled to understand. Unexpected events can suddenly make your area of interest highly relevant. Passion and curiosity are essential for meaningful research.

What book would you recommend to students interested in international relations?

I recommend Robert Jervis’s Perception and Misperception in International Politics, published in 1976. Jervis was one of the most brilliant scholars in international relations and had a major influence on the field.

His book explores how leaders interpret and misinterpret the world, and how those perceptions shape international relations. It combines insights from politics, psychology, and history, and helps explain why cooperation between states is often difficult. It’s an excellent starting point for anyone who wants to understand the role of leadership and perception in international politics.

2. U.S. Security Partnerships Can Make Arab States Targets

Yom highlighted a paradox shaping the strategic environment of Arab states: the closer their security ties with the United States, the more vulnerable they may become in a regional confrontation.

“For the most part,” Yom explained, “the intensity of Iranian counterstrikes and retaliation on Arab states covaries with the degree of their relationship with the United States.”

States hosting American military bases or deeply integrated into U.S. security strategy are more likely to find themselves on the frontlines of Iranian retaliation.

“The more of a client state they are, the more troops they host, the deeper their foreign policies are tied to the demands of American grand strategy — then the more likely they are going to be struck.”

This dynamic creates a fundamental strategic dilemma.

For decades, small and medium-sized states in the region have relied on alliances with Washington to enhance their security. The current conflict illustrates how those same alliances can also increase their exposure to regional escalation.

3. Arab Governments Are Trying to Avoid Being Seen as Participants in the War

Arab governments today face a difficult balancing act: responding to Iranian attacks while avoiding the perception that they are fighting alongside the United States and Israel. Many Arab governments must navigate public opinion that is deeply skeptical of Israel and wary of Western military intervention in the region.

As Sallam put it, these governments are trying to avoid creating “the impression that they are fighting alongside the United States and Israel in this war.”

The result is a diplomatic tightrope: condemning attacks on their territory without being drawn into the broader conflict.

4. A Regional War Threatens the Gulf’s Economic Transformation Projects

A fourth major takeaway concerns the economic stakes of regional stability.

Blaydes emphasized that wars can have far-reaching political economy consequences. Major conflicts reshape investment patterns, redirect state resources toward security priorities, and increase global perceptions of risk.

When governments must divert resources toward defense spending and crisis management, economic diversification plans can quickly lose momentum.

For Gulf regimes that have tied their political projects to visions of economic modernization, prolonged regional instability therefore represents a serious political challenge.

“Suddenly, when you have a conflict that disrupts the flow of investments, tourism, and even trading routes in places like the Strait of Hormuz or the Red Sea,” Sallam observed, “this shakes the foundations of these projects.”

5. The War Is Occurring Amid Deep Divisions Among Regional Powers

The discussion highlighted that the war with Iran is unfolding against the backdrop of a significant regional rift.

According to Sallam, one emerging divide involves different visions for managing instability in fragile states. Some regional actors — including the UAE and Israel — have tacitly or directly promoted fragmentation of political authority in places like Sudan, Yemen, and Gaza.

Others, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Turkey, have tended to favor more traditional models of centralized authoritarian stability.

These competing strategic preferences have already clashed in multiple regional conflicts, most recently in Sudan and Yemen.

Thus, Iran’s potential neutralization as a regional power player as a result of the war, Sallam noted, will not necessarily result in regional stability. It will simply intensify these rivalries among the remaining powers.

6. War Strengthens Authoritarian Politics and Weakens the Prospect for Reform and Development

The panel highlighted the negative ramifications of regional conflict for reform and development.

“The constant violence is not productive for the promotion of democracy, development, or the rule of law,” Blaydes noted. “Having a constant stream of weapons, conflict, violence, post-conflict reconciliation, [and] regional rivalries…undermines all three.”

“Anytime a regional conflict breaks out,” Yom argued, “it’s always bad for democratic struggle on the home front.”

The war, according to Sallam, could result in outcomes that would be “catastrophic not only for the people and society of Iran, but also the people and societies of the region at large.”

A full recording of the March 3 panel can be viewed below:

For Oleksii Movchan, a member of the Verkhovna Rada (Ukraine’s Parliament) and deputy chair of the parliamentary committee on economic development, his focus is on expanding financing tools for reconstruction. As part of a project he began during his 2025 SU-DD fellowship, he is drafting legislation to reform municipal bond regulations, aimed at increasing the participation of local governments in securities and debt markets and attracting additional resources for rebuilding Ukraine. To accomplish this work, he has relied on the Problem-Solving Framework he learned at Stanford, and shares that his experience in the SU-DD program made him more confident in his values and encouraged him to “stand on [his] principles and values of integrity, openness, and respect to human rights and democracy.” By strengthening municipal access to capital, his work seeks to support infrastructure recovery while reinforcing transparent financial governance.

Maria Golub, a senior political and policy advisor working on EU and NATO integration, is developing a national Coalition for Recovery — an inclusive, cross-sectoral platform designed to unify Ukraine’s defense, reconstruction, and reform agendas. With Ukraine balancing the demands of war and reconstruction, Golub’s 2025 SU-DD project aims to ensure that recovery planning connects security, governance, and innovation rather than treating them as separate tracks. Currently in a pilot, her proposals have already informed the government's 2026 recovery and resilience planning process.

At the regional level, Mykhailo Pavliuk, vice-chairman of the Chernivtsi Oblast (state) legislature in Ukraine, is actively implementing reforms to advance self-government and deepen Ukraine’s decentralization process. His work, initiated during his time at Stanford in 2023, focuses on strengthening “consolidated, self-sufficient communities” by developing political, financial, infrastructure, and social strategies that can be carried out locally, including cross-border regional initiatives in Chernivtsi. He said the most important element is “supporting the potential of people at the local level through the activities of advisory bodies, consultations, and modeling of joint decisions,” bringing citizens closer to decision-making on community affairs. Pavliuk emphasized that decentralization has been critical to Ukraine’s resilience since 2022, while noting that “there would certainly be a greater outcome in peacetime,” without the constraints imposed by war.

In the media sector, Alyona Nevmerzhytska, CEO of the independent outlet hromadske, is actively implementing her 2025 SU-DD project to strengthen the organization’s long-term sustainability and resilience. Her work, she says, “addresses two interconnected challenges: financial vulnerability and the rapid emergence of AI in the media landscape.” By developing diversified revenue strategies and integrating responsible AI tools into newsroom workflows, she aims to “improve efficiency, counter disinformation, and expand audience reach.” Despite ongoing security risks, she shares that the newsroom has maintained consistent production, adapted its operations, and prioritized staff safety, demonstrating what she described as “strong institutional resilience.” During her time on campus, Nevmerzhytska met with Stanford journalism and technology experts, whose guidance enhanced her strategic thinking around AI integration and digital modernization, “providing practical insights and [the] confidence to adopt responsible AI tools for efficiency and multilingual production.” She reports that hromadske continues to serve as a platform for accountability and public debate, reinforcing its role within Ukraine’s civil society.

Iaroslav Liubchenko, currently CEO of Ukraine’s national electronic public procurement system Prozorro, focused his 2023 Stanford project on strengthening transparency, efficiency, and institutional integrity in Ukraine’s defense procurement architecture. Today, that vision has become central to his leadership agenda. Prozorro is advancing three core priorities: deepening European integration through the approximation of EU public procurement directives into national legislation — in cooperation with Member of Parliament Oleksii Movchan — and sharing Prozorro’s digital governance model with EU partners; scaling up defense procurement within the system, including drones, unmanned and robotic systems, electronic warfare capabilities, non-lethal equipment for military infrastructure, and strengthened cooperation with the Defence Procurement Agency; and developing the broader Prozorro ecosystem through new coalitions and markets, advanced digital instruments, and AI integration. Prozorro seeks to ensure that Ukraine’s defense and rebuilding efforts are supported by transparent, technology-driven, and institutionally resilient procurement systems — not only fully aligned with EU standards, but capable of serving as a model for public procurement reform across Europe.

Ukraine’s Path Forward

Together, the fellows describe a future shaped not only by physical rebuilding but by the strength of Ukraine’s institutions and civic life. When asked about the country’s priorities for the next several years, their responses aligned in three areas: securing victory and sustaining defense capacity, advancing EU integration, and rebuilding critical infrastructure. Each emphasized that reconstruction must be paired with governance reforms to ensure public trust and long-term resilience.

Amid the political, economic, and human toll of war, our fellows agreed that the “unbreakable spirit and will of Ukrainians” gives them hope. “I am inspired by the endurance of Ukrainian society,” said Nevmerzhytska. “Despite exhaustion and loss, people continue to volunteer, innovate, and support each other. That civic resilience gives me confidence that Ukraine’s democratic spirit remains strong.”

As we look to the beginning of the fifth year of Russia’s war, Ukraine’s future is still uncertain. But the projects these leaders developed during their time at Stanford have carried into their work in parliament, regional government, civil society, media, and the defense sector. What began as ideas for reform are now being tested and adapted under wartime conditions, as they work to keep institutions functioning and prepare for the country’s long-term recovery.

Introduction and Argument:

Many authoritarian countries hold elections where the incumbent might lose. The odds tend to be quite narrow, however, owing to the autocrat’s asymmetric control over economic resources, security forces, media, and so on. An important practical and theoretical question, then, is how the opposition can beat these narrow odds. 

Some scholars have argued that oppositions can defeat authoritarian incumbents by building broad, multiparty coalitions. Doing so should not only decrease the autocrat’s vote share but should also deter him from deploying state repression against the opposition’s supporters. Indeed, security forces will struggle or be hesitant to shoot at such large numbers of people, and doing so will likely attract international condemnation. All of this sounds intuitively plausible. 

In “When you come at the king,” Oren Samet shows how arguments for building big coalitions overlook a crucial possibility: If the opposition unites and performs well but still fails to defeat the autocrat, he may be “spooked” and react by doubling down on repression. This is because elections provide the government with information about its own and the opposition’s popularity. Too much opposition success further decreases the autocrat’s willingness to tolerate popular elections and freedoms. Therefore, the same strategy enabling oppositions to achieve a “stunning election” can — if the coalition fails to take power — lead to a “nearly stunning” election that further entrenches authoritarianism. Hence the paper’s title, a quote from The Wire’s Omar Little: when “you come at the king, you best not miss.” 

The paper provides both cross-national data and an in-depth case study of Cambodia to show how the logic of nearly stunning elections poses a serious dilemma for democracy promoters: When oppositions cannot defeat autocrats, then they must achieve a “sweet spot” of neither too many votes (which scares the incumbent into autocratizing) nor too few (which fails to threaten the incumbent and compel him to make democratic concessions). Yet deliberately planning to hit this sweet spot is simply not possible. Samet thus offers an important challenge to the claim that bigger is better in authoritarian elections.

Cross-National Findings:

Samet’s argument about the pitfalls of nearly stunning elections implies three hypotheses. First, and as previous scholarship suggests, coalitions should outperform individual opposition parties in authoritarian elections. Second, absent the incumbent’s defeat, autocratization is more likely as the opposition’s vote share increases. And third, absent the incumbent’s defeat, countries with high-performing oppositions should witness (a) an increase in state repression and (b) decreases in the quality of elections in the years following a nearly stunning election. Samet then analyzes all elections from 1990 to 2022 in cases where the same authoritarian leader or party had ruled for at least 10 years. This yields 286 elections: 58 (20%) featured coalitions, and 28 (10%) featured electoral turnovers. These numbers alone paint a bleak picture of the prospects for beating dictators. 

The statistical results broadly support Samet’s hypotheses. Coalitions do in fact perform better at the ballot box, winning a median vote share of 36% (compared to just 13% for individual parties). In addition, and consistent with the idea that hitting the “sweet spot” will encourage autocrats to make concessions, Samet finds a positive association between moderately strong opposition performance and democratic change. Importantly, however, levels of democracy decline sharply as the opposition vote share approaches 50%. Nearly stunning elections thus appear to provoke autocratization, both in the short- and medium-term. Finally, the relationship between nearly stunning elections and repression or electoral fraud is somewhat weaker. This may be because the autocrat has more than just these two tools at his disposal — he might limit the number of seats that can be contested in future elections, prevent the opposition from accessing state media, and so on.
 

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FIGURE 2: Opposition performance in authoritarian elections. Note: Density plots display the frequency of specific opposition (opp.) vote shares (left) and vote margins (right) broken down by coalition status.

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FIGURE 3: Opposition performance and electoral democracy change. Note: Displays elections that did not feature turnovers, plotted along two dimensions: opposition vote share and change in electoral democracy. ∙ (dot) denotes election with coalitions; × denotes election without. The gray lines plot LOESS regressions fit to the data, with gray shading indicating 95% confidence intervals.

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FIGURE 6: Predicted change in repression and electoral manipulation, with controls. Note: Displays predicted post-election changes in (1) V-Dem measure of electoral irregularities, comparing election at t with election at t + 1; (2) V-Dem measure of government intimidation of opposition, comparing election at t with election at t + 1; (3) Fariss (2014) physical integrity rights measure 3 years after election, using the lagged score as a baseline. Includes all elections that did not result in turnovers. Dotted lines indicate 95% confidence intervals.
 

The Cambodia Case:

Samet concludes by showing how his theoretical process — oppositions uniting, nearly winning an election, frightening the incumbent, then increasing authoritarianism — is borne out in Cambodia’s recent political history. Throughout the 2000s, Cambodia’s opposition was fragmented, in part due to deliberate actions by its authoritarian Prime Minister, Hun Sen. Ahead of the 2013 elections, in the face of mounting popular dissatisfaction with the government, the two largest opposition parties coalesced. Hun Sen was confident in his position, in part because Cambodia’s strongest opposition party had won just 22% of the vote in 2008. As such, he pardoned Sam Rainsy, one of the country’s most prominent opposition leaders, whom he invited to return from exile. 

The coalition did remarkably well in 2013, winning around 45% of the vote, but then alleged fraud and refused to take their seats in parliament. Opposition supporters then took to the streets in protest, where they were met with state violence. Yet Hun Sen made a number of concessions to successfully quell the protest crisis, including reforming the election commission.

By 2015, however, signs of autocratization became glaring. Opposition lawmakers were publicly beaten by the personal bodyguards of Hun Sen, who withdrew his prior pardon of Rainsy. Other opposition leaders faced politically motivated legal cases. Ahead of the 2018 elections, Hun Sen’s government hired an external survey firm, which found the opposition had become even more popular among Cambodians since 2013. Hun Sen’s fears were aggravated by a strong opposition performance in the 2017 local elections. 

Samet argues that this was the last straw: the government responded by promptly arresting and exiling opposition leaders and dissolving their coalition. All of this constituted the most dramatic instance of autocratization in Cambodia since the 1990s. Hun Sen’s allies then ran unopposed in the 2018 elections. By this time, the opposition was once again divided — particularly as regards how to face a government whose elections could barely be characterized as anything other than window-dressing. “When you come at the king” offers an important if distressing lesson for practitioners and scholars of democracy.

*Brief prepared by Adam Fefer