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.

These blogs reflect the views of the student authors, and not those of the Democratic Erosion Consortium.

The SAVE Act, Voter Suppression, and Erosion in the US

Conservatives are championing the SAVE Act as a way to combat voter fraud, but what about when it enforces voter suppression?

Hungary: A Case Study of Democratic Backsliding in the European Union

Hungary’s gradual democratic backsliding under Viktor Orbán demonstrates how legal reforms, centralized executive power, and weakened institutional checks can erode democracy from within, turning a once-promising post-communist transition into a partially free, delegative system

How Pakistans Government has Backslided Further since Imran Khan’s arrest

Democratic erosion is a gradual process that has been an ongoing process in Pakistan. While the country still holds elections and operates under the 1973 constitution, the quality of the democracy has weakened especially since Imran Khan, the former prime minister,...

Funding Backsliding: How Hungary Tests the Limits of EU Democratic Enforcement

Feb 12, 2026 | Boston University

The European Union recently froze 10 billion euros in payments to Hungary, over concern that the Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán, had failed to carry out promised judicial...

ANO 2011, Andrej Babiš, and Implications of the Fall 2025 Election on Czech Democracy

Feb 12, 2026 | Boston University

On October 3 and 4, 2025, the Czech Republic held its quadrennial Chamber of Deputies (Lower house of Parliament) election, which resulted in a decisive victory for ANO...

The Death Files: The Trump Administration’s Dangerous and Anti-Democratic ‘Self-Deportation’ Strategy

Apr 18, 2025 | Boston University

A social security master-list previously known as the ‘Death Master List’ meant for invalidating the social security numbers of deceased individuals is being repurposed in the Trump Administrations...

Democratic Erosion: Trump’s threats on vulnerable students

Apr 18, 2025 | Boston University

The Trump Administration has caused an influx of high-profile arrests of international students across the United States by the Department of Homeland Security over the last few weeks, following the...

Militarizing The U.S. Boarder With Mexico: A Sign Of Democratic Erosion

Apr 17, 2025 | Boston University

On April 11, 2025, President Donald Trump granted the U.S. military permission to occupy federal lands along the border between the United States and Mexico. (Per The Guardian) The declared purpose...

The JFK Files: Make America Paranoid Again

Apr 17, 2025 | Boston University

Donald Trump recently released 80,000 CIA files on the JFK assassination and the following investigation. These files were released to some degree in 2017, as was mandated by the National Archives...

The Brandmauer and its Recent Deterioration

Apr 17, 2025 | Boston University

Firewalls and regional equivalents to it have recently come under heavy strain as nationalist far-right parties have found themselves relative electoral success in the past two years in Central and...

Populism and Authoritarianism in Venezuela

Apr 17, 2025 | Boston University

Cyrus Sadr Democratic Erosion Professor Steven Rosenzweig 4/9/25 Populism and Authoritarianism in Venezuela The 2024 election of Nicolas Maduro is widely viewed as being fraudulent...

The Erosion of Democracy: Sending U.S. Citizens to El Salvador

Apr 17, 2025 | Boston University

The idea floated by former President Trump to deport “homegrown criminals”—U.S. citizens—to a maximum security prison in El Salvador is a troubling sign of democratic erosion in the United States....

“Unleashed” – Boris Johnson’s Populist Reincarnation

Apr 17, 2025 | Tartu University

On October 10th, 2024 I ordered the freshly released Boris Johnson memoir, Unleashed (Croft,2024). None of my relatives or friends from the UK, nor any of my classmates, paid any attention to this...

Democratic Erosion Disguised as Stability: Georgia’s Post-Election Crisis

Apr 17, 2025 | Boston University

In Georgia, parliamentary elections in October 2024 spurred mass mobilization and protest nationally over alleged electoral fraud and government violence. Thousands of individuals took to the...