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...

Disinformation in regards to the Ukraine Crisis

Jun 9, 2022 | University of California, San Diego

Both Russia and Ukraine employ disinformation in hopes of effectively determining who decidedly depicts their version of events. As best stated within the Politico article...

The Dangers of Orban’s Rule by Decree in Hungary

Jun 8, 2022 | University of California, San Diego

When a global pandemic is sweeping through one’s country, it is expected that someone in power would do everything they could to save the most amount of their people...

Is the U.S. in the throngs of totalitarianism? According to history (and Arendt), not yet. By Amalia Perez at Brown University.

Sep 26, 2017 | Brown University

More than half a century after being written, Hannah Arendt's hypotheses explaining the roots and contours of totalitarianism remain, unequivocally, a preeminent theoretical framework. The Origins...