Frances Cayton

Frances Cayton is a scholar of democracy and civil society. For the 2026-27 academic year, she is the Einstein Moos Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford's Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL). In 2027, she will join the University of South Carolina as an Assistant Professor of Political Science.

Frances' book project, "How Civic Consciousness Shapes Democratic Resilience," examines how, why, and under what conditions civil society encourages individuals to depolarize and resist democratic erosion. Combining extensive organizational and bureaucratic data, elite and mass surveys, experiments, and interview evidence, she demonstrates how informal and apolitical subsets of civic life retain critical latent democratic potential. The project primarily focuses on Poland and Hungary, though it also draws comparisons with cases across East-Central Europe and globally.

More broadly, Frances works on questions about the drivers and consequences of democratic engagement, particularly concerning conspiracy theories, opposition media, and the challenges of post-backsliding redemocratization. Her research is published or forthcoming in numerous outlets, including the American Journal of Political Science and Perspectives on Politics. Her work has been supported by the US Departments of State and Education, as well as the American Political Science Association. She is also the co-founder of EEPGW, a monthly online workshop on East European politics.

Frances holds a Ph.D. in Government from Cornell University. She earned her AM from Harvard University's Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies and a BA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.