Democratic Erosion University Course Student Blog

Students enrolled in our course are encouraged to write for the course blog, and to read and comment on posts from students at other participating universities. The blog offers students the opportunity to analyze current events through the lens of the theory and case studies they engage with through the course.

Arresting Opposition and Squashing Protests: Democratic Backsliding in Turkey Under Erdoğan

Turkey has been inching towards autocracy under Erdoğan and the AKP for the last 22 years.

2025 Romanian Elections: An Election Redo and a Barred Candidate

Only two weeks out from Presidential Elections, Romanian voters face a tough decision in deciding on the next leader of their country. The latest opinion polls show that nearly 40% of voters are still undecided on who to vote for. After all, most voters already cast...

Why Protecting American Democracy Means Coming Together In Protest

In the lead up to the 2020 presidential election, the Democratic Erosion Consortium's very own professors Robert Blair and Steven Rosenzweig wrote an article in The Boston Globe urging readers to “Get ready to protest like democracy depends on it.” The article was in...

Tyranny? You mean, Unity?: The Fateful Alliance of the Marcos-Duterte Clans in the Philippines

May 23, 2024 | University of the Philippines, Diliman

“Bagong Pilipinas, Bagong Mukha!”, (trans: New Philippines, New Face) the battle cry of the 2022 Marcos-Duterte campaign jingle echoed throughout the nation as the...

All the Web’s a Stage: New Media, Micro-Celebrities, and Fake News in the Philippines

May 21, 2024 | University of the Philippines, Diliman

“Celebrity” in Philippine politics can manifest in more ways than one. Most notoriously, celebrity makes itself evident when film and television stars participate in...

Partisan Elections — An Overlooked Threat to American Democracy

Mar 13, 2022 | Brown University

Sometimes it can feel like too much of the energy put into defending American democracy is being spent on symbolic fights. Democrats rail against voter ID laws that don’t do all that much hamper...

Psychology’s Role in Trump’s Populism

Mar 13, 2022 | Brown University

What are the psychological roots of President Donald Trump’s populist success? Understanding populism through Cas Mudde’s The Populist Zeitgeist and Jan-Werner Müller’s What Is Populism, the...

No-Knock Warrants, Police Power, and Democratic Backsliding

Mar 13, 2022 | University of Georgia

Discussions of police violence in American cities have led to the introduction of some troubling policy changes since the initial surge of protests in the summer of 2020. Rather than addressing the...

Are We Headed for WW3? Implications for Democracy

Mar 11, 2022 | University of Georgia

As of February of 2022, continually growing tensions between Russia and Ukraine have gathered global attention. Despite preemptive economic punishments from the international community, Russia...

Democracy – The Cost of Rwanda’s Recovery?

Mar 11, 2022 | University of Chicago

Paul Kagame’s presidency has been plagued with accusations of election rigging, suppression of free speech, and unjustified imprisonment of political opponents from the very beginning. Succeeding...

Stealth Authoritarianism and the UK Police and Crime Bill

Mar 10, 2022 | Brown University

The UK’s new Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill threatens the British public’s freedom of expression, assembly, and right to protest. Among other things, the proposed bill introduces...

The Power of a “Small, Fringe Minority”

Mar 9, 2022 | University of Georgia

The past couple of years have seen some questionable encroachments on the civil liberties that ensure democracy, in an effort by governments to stop the spread of the coronavirus pandemic. From an...

The Fall of Independent Journalism in Azerbaijan

Mar 8, 2022 | Ohio State University

The Azerbaijanian government has continued to silence its own journalists. It has made conscious efforts recently to forcefully stop protests regarding freedom of speech and the wrongful...

Watchdog Journalist’s Arrest Example of Free Press Collapsing in Bangladesh

Mar 8, 2022 | Ohio State University

In May 2021, an anti-corruption journalist for the largest newspaper in Bangladesh spent a month investigating government mishandling of the COVID-19 crisis before she sat down to have a meeting...