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...

How Gerrymandering Happens and the Threat it Poses

May 3, 2023 | University of Utah

Gerrymandering is one of the most divisive issues in the United States, and for good reason. In fact, in 2021 CNN reported that voters consider gerrymandering to be biggest...

How Data Collection Undermines Democracy

May 3, 2023 | University of Utah

When using personal and private data, artificial intelligence can fundamentally discriminate against race, religion, and sex and the lack of data privacy permits therefore...

Does This Florida Legal Battle Spell the End of American Democracy?

Oct 23, 2020 | University of Chicago

On September 11th 2020, a federal court of appeals decided that Florida’s former convicts must pay all court fines before they can vote. This blunted the effect of Amendment 4, which passed in 2018,...

The Thai Government and Their Textbook Erosion

Oct 23, 2020 | University of Chicago

The Thai Government has demonstrated various textbook examples of authoritarianism and democratic erosion in the past year or so, and protests continuing despite COVID concerns exemplifies the...

In This Election, It’s Not Democrat or Republican on the Ballot– It’s Democracy

Oct 23, 2020 | University of Chicago

After a summer marked by a global health crisis, social upheaval, and a devastating economic downturn, the stakes of an American presidential election have never been higher. And with early voting...

Thailand’s Hypocrisy: A Case Study of Stealth Authoritarianism

Oct 23, 2020 | University of Chicago

Though the Thai government does not necessarily hide its autocratic tendencies, it is far from willing to let go of the democratic label. On October 15th 2020, after three months of student-led...

Unions and Political Representation: How the Decline of Collective Bargaining Threatens Democracy

Oct 23, 2020 | University of Chicago

In the United States, union membership has set a national standard – a north star – for employee protections, labor rights, and political organization in the workplace. However, since the 1980’s,...

The Danger of Trump’s Rhetoric in American Democracy

Oct 23, 2020 | University of Chicago

In 2016, a man with no political experience and little political support was elected president of the United States. Previously, no president had been elected without a background in government or...

Constitutional Hardball and the United States Supreme Court

Oct 23, 2020 | University of Chicago

In their seminal work How Democracies Die, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt identify two principal constitutional guardrails that, they argue, have allowed democracy to survive in the United...

The End of Nicaraguan Democracy

Oct 23, 2020 | University of Chicago

In 1984, Daniel Ortega of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) won the presidency after having overthrown the almost ten-year dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza Debayle. Ortega served one...

The Threat Against Democracy in the Era of “Fake News”

Oct 23, 2020 | University of Chicago

In 2016, American trust of mass media was at an all-time low. Gallup found that of 1,020 adult Americans surveyed, 32% reported having a “great deal/fair amount” of trust in the media. When sorted...