Milada Anna Vachudova of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill presented on “Europe in the Face of War and America’s Authoritarian Turn” during a Rethinking European Development and Security (REDS) seminar, co-sponsored by the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) and The Europe Center (TEC). Drawing on research coauthored with Nadiia Koval of the European Policy Institute in Kyiv, Vachudova examined how Russia’s war in Ukraine, democratic backsliding within the European Union, and changing U.S. foreign policy are reshaping Europe’s geopolitical role.

Vachudova began by arguing that Ukraine’s resistance to Russia’s full-scale invasion is also a defense of European democracy, national sovereignty, and the security of EU and NATO members. She situated this claim within a broader account of the EU’s power. Historically, the union has exerted influence through its democratic norms, economic integration, market access, and enlargement rather than military force alone. Yet she rejected the idea that Europe must choose between defending liberal values and pursuing geopolitical interests. Military capabilities, she suggested, can complement the EU’s normative and economic strengths.

That potential has long been undermined by political expediency. Vachudova pointed to Europe’s pre-2022 dependence on Russian energy and continued economic engagement with Moscow, as well as the challenge posed by authoritarian-minded political parties within the EU. These vulnerabilities illustrated the costs of prioritizing short-term economic interests over democratic commitments and long-term security.

Russia’s February 2022 invasion nevertheless prompted an unusually rapid European response. EU institutions, particularly the European Commission, moved to assist Ukrainian refugees, expand market access, impose sanctions, provide financial and military assistance, and revive enlargement. Vachudova emphasized that this early institutional leadership occurred amid an absence of traditional French-German leadership. It also coincided with the emergence of ad hoc coalitions and a shift in influence toward northern and eastern European states, whose governments have often taken a more urgent view of the Russian threat.

However, translating this initial momentum into sustained military capacity has proven difficult. Increased defense spending, including in Germany and Poland, has not eliminated obstacles to coordination, implementation, and collective action. The EU must contend with powerful veto players even as uncertainty about the United States raises questions about Europe's ability to defend Ukraine and itself.

Vachudova characterized the current U.S. trajectory as an “authoritarian turn,” arguing that the Trump administration’s approach to Russia and Ukraine has eroded transatlantic trust. In her assessment, perceived American unreliability carries significant security, reputational, and economic costs, including growing doubts among allies about dependence on U.S.-made weapons systems.

Despite these challenges, Vachudova identified reasons for cautious optimism. External threats can catalyze European integration, while democratic mobilization can counter authoritarian movements and Russian influence. She also described a pattern of “democratic bandwagoning,” exemplified by Canada moving closer to the EU. Ultimately, she suggested that Ukraine’s determination could help sustain enlargement and strengthen Europe’s identity as both a democratic community and a geopolitical actor. The central question is whether Europe can convert crisis-driven solidarity into lasting political unity and defense capabilities.

The Fisher Family Summer Fellows on Democracy and Development Program at Stanford University's Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law is now accepting applications for our summer 2027 program, which will run from Sunday, July 18, to Friday, August 6, 2027. The deadline to apply is 11:59 pm PST on Tuesday, January 12, 2027.

The program brings together an annual cohort of approximately 30 mid-career practitioners from countries in political transition who are working to advance democratic practices and enact economic and legal reform to promote human development. Launched by CDDRL in 2005, the program was previously known as the Draper Hills Summer Fellows Program. The new name reflects an endowment gift from the Fisher family — Sakurako (Sako), ‘82, and William (Bill), MBA ‘84 — that secures the future of this important and impactful program.

From Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, we select our program participants from among hundreds of applicants each year for the significant contributions they have already made to their communities and their potential to make an even greater impact with some help from Stanford. We aim to give them the opportunity to join a global network of over 500 alumni from 96 countries who have all faced similar sets of challenges in bringing change to their countries.

The Fisher Family Summer Fellows Program provides an intensive 3-week on-campus forum for civil society leaders to exchange experiences and receive academic and policy training to enrich their knowledge and advance their work. Delivered by a leading Stanford faculty team composed of Michael McFaul, Kathryn Stoner, Francis Fukuyama, Larry Diamond, Erik Jensen, and more, the program allows emerging and established global leaders to explore new institutional models and frameworks to enhance their ability to promote good governance, accountable politics, and find new ways to achieve economic development in their home countries.

Prospective fellows from Ukraine are also invited to apply for our Strengthening Ukrainian Democracy and Development (SU-DD) Program, which runs concurrently with the Fisher Family Summer Fellows Program. The SU-DD program provides a unique opportunity for mid-career practitioners working on well-defined projects aimed at strengthening Ukrainian democracy, enhancing human development, and promoting good governance. Applicants to the SU-DD program will use the Fisher Family Summer Fellows Program application portal to apply and indicate their interest there. You will then be directed to a series of supplemental questions specific to the SU-DD program, including requiring a detailed description of your proposed project.

The world is in a persistent, multi-decade decline in democratic governance. Yet a few cases point the other way. Brazil’s courts held Jair Bolsonaro to account, and Hungarian voters ended Viktor Orbán’s sixteen-year rule in April 2026.

On October 14, Anna Grzymala-Busse, Michelle and Kevin Douglas Professor of International Studies and Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and Alberto Díaz-Cayeros, Senior Fellow at FSI and Co-Director of the Democracy Action Lab, joined moderators Larry Diamond and Debra Satz for the second session in Stanford Continuing Studies' Reimagining Democracy speaker series produced in partnership with the Office of Community Engagement, the Stanford Democracy Hub, and the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL). They asked what these rebounds teach about democratic resilience, and how they might inform efforts to reimagine democracy in the United States.

Latin America: crime, inequality, and the question “What have you done for me lately?”

Diamond opened the discussion with a skeptical reading of the region. El Salvador under Nayib Bukele has become a byword for human rights abuses, but it is a small country. In Brazil, Flávio Bolsonaro is favored in this month’s presidential runoff and is widely expected to pardon his father. In Mexico, critics worry that Claudia Sheinbaum’s Morena party is rebuilding the one-party hegemony of the old PRI.

Díaz-Cayeros did not dismiss those concerns. “No party in any country should have a majority like the one Morena has,” he said, adding that such a majority “has been tremendously damaging for democracy.” Still, he cautioned against assuming the worst. Despite the temptations such a majority creates for Sheinbaum, he noted, many democratic spaces in Mexico have not closed. Even newly elected populists, such as Abelardo de la Espriella in Colombia and Keiko Fujimori in Peru, face real checks and balances on what they can do.

The deeper drivers, he argued, are crime and unmet expectations. Criminal organizations are well armed, increasingly sophisticated — “even into the realm of drones” — and their violence spills across borders, as Ecuador learned when groups displaced from Colombia moved south. “Nobody really knows how to solve this, and anyone who claims they do is lying,” Díaz-Cayeros said. “But the right has been particularly successful in making a claim that they know how to do it better,” promising that mano dura will control the violence.

He also pointed to what Latin American democracies have achieved. Over the past two decades, countries across the region reduced extreme inequality through conditional cash transfers embraced by governments of both left and right. And when roughly eight million Venezuelans fled the Chavista regime, neighbors absorbed them: the Dominican Republic took in two to three hundred thousand, and Ecuador about half a million.

Yet governments have failed on basic health services and decent education, and citizens notice. On Brazil, Díaz-Cayeros contrasted Lula’s transformative first presidency, which opened universities to Afro-descendant Brazilians and expanded poverty programs, with a current term that has “not a lot to show.” Many Brazilians, he said, are rightly asking what democracy has brought them in the last four years. “Can’t a political system find a younger politician that appeals to voters?” he asked, a question he said applies to the United States as well.

Finally, he warned against reading authoritarianism through a Cold War lens. Venezuela under Delcy Rodríguez and Nicaragua under Daniel Ortega show that “authoritarianism doesn’t seem to have a political color. The destruction of democracy is equally possible by someone on the right and someone on the left.”

Europe: volatility, the cordon sanitaire, and a representation gap on immigration

Why do voters who feel unheard turn to leaders who are often corrupt and fail to deliver, Satz asked. Grzymala-Busse noted that no politician advertises themselves as corrupt. Populists run on a critique of the elites who came before, and in Europe they have often been able to deliver material gains. Fidesz “very ably targeted” vast EU subsidies to rural Hungary and made good on its promise to raise living standards. “That house of cards collapsed because the government was so corrupt. But for 16 years, it worked.” Poland’s Law and Justice (PiS) government benefited from EU funds in the same way.

Asked whether Europe faces a long period of alternation between liberal and illiberal governments — as with Andrej Babiš in the Czech Republic and Robert Fico in Slovakia, both of whom lost power and returned — Grzymala-Busse distinguished between East and West. Since 1989, post-communist Europe has had the highest electoral volatility of any region, including Latin America, so today’s swings partly continue an old pattern.

Western Europe faces a different problem: the elite cordon sanitaire. Outside Italy, where Giorgia Meloni governs, mainstream parties in Austria, Germany, and France have agreed to keep far-right populists out of power. “That bargain has held so far,” she said, “but when you have 30, 40 percent of the population voting for the AfD, how sustainable is that? How democratic is it to keep out of power the party that won the plurality of the vote?” The Alternative for Germany began in the early 2010s as an economists’ party opposed to the Greek bailout before an internal coup turned it into a nationalist, anti-immigrant force.

On immigration, she cited polling conducted with the Hoover Institution this summer. The top issue for European voters is not immigration but “public services and the economic situation — they care about the same stuff that voters everywhere care about.” Immigration, however, is the issue on which voters feel least represented. Supporters of center-right and center-left parties alike see their parties as far to their left; only right-wing populist voters feel aligned with their party.

She added that disinformation, much of it seeded by Russia, China, and Iran, takes hold because “the uptake is domestic.” In Europe, populists in power can also capture public broadcasters, as in Poland, where the equivalent of NPR “became a government propaganda channel.”

Rebuilding democracy is possible

How do democrats rebuild once they return to power? Grzymala-Busse contrasted Poland and Hungary. In Poland, Donald Tusk’s coalition defeated PiS in 2023, but a president from the illiberal camp has vetoed reform after reform. The sharpest problem is the judiciary, where the previous government appointed roughly a third of the judges. “They need to be dealt with democratically,” she said. “You cannot reestablish democracy through anti-democratic means.”

Hungary is “a much simpler story.” Péter Magyar and the Tisza party won a landslide and a parliamentary supermajority, and they are reversing Fidesz’s institutional changes while the EU releases more funds. “But that’s not really a lesson for other countries,” Grzymala-Busse cautioned, “because very few of them enjoy that kind of absolute landslide victory.”

Asked what citizens and institutions can do, she offered two lessons:

• Citizens must keep demanding and participating. “Autocrats really benefit from popular indifference, from popular alienation, and above all from popular despair.” Illiberal incumbents are defeated through landslides that cannot be denied.
   
• Oppositions must make corruption concrete. Calling a government anti-democratic “doesn’t get us very far.” What works is telling citizens that “this government’s corruption is costing you” better schools, better roads, and a better life.

Satz pressed further: democracy is not only an instrument for delivering goods but has value in itself, because it gives people control over their lives. Díaz-Cayeros agreed that this liberal dimension is what has been lost. Majoritarian impulses have eroded the sense that an independent judiciary or electoral authority matters “just because the people have voted.”

Grzymala-Busse said European democrats have succeeded by framing liberal values in patriotic terms: abandoning checks and balances is a betrayal of national history, and attacking the free press is an outrage “in the birthplace of the freedom of speech.” In the American context, she suggested, the equivalent message is that dismantling checks and balances or going after the media is un-American.

Díaz-Cayeros raised a further concern for the United States: its outsized influence on Latin American elections. In Peru and Colombia, he said, voters described how President Trump’s endorsements on Truth Social created echo chambers around favored candidates. He also warned about unregulated platforms. In Brazil, evidence suggests that anti-Bolsonaro outlets were disproportionately left exposed to cyberattacks, and the Facebook page of one of the last human rights organizations operating in El Salvador has been down for weeks.

How bad could it get?

To close, Diamond asked both speakers to look over the horizon. What if Marine Le Pen wins the French presidency and the AfD performs nationally as it has in eastern German states? What if Flávio Bolsonaro returns to power, pardons his father?

Grzymala-Busse was cautiously optimistic that Europe will not repeat the 1930s. Then, voters faced a choice between anti-democratic options on the far right and the far left, and the economic situation was far worse. Today, parties legitimate themselves through elections. Meloni also offers another path: “someone who makes very extreme statements while campaigning, but then once in office” governs as a conservative without violating democratic norms.

Díaz-Cayeros likewise doubted that Latin America would return to the era of military dictatorships and mass disappearances. The Bukele regime in El Salvador “is as bad as it can get,” he said, but Brazil’s federalism, vibrant civil society, and fifty-year human rights legacy make that model unlikely there. His greatest concern was global rather than national: “The Amazon is a humanity commons,” he said, and the world “should not let Flávio Bolsonaro burn the Amazon.”

Satz closed by returning to Grzymala-Busse’s call to demand and participate. Reining in illegitimate power, she said, depends on citizens who know their rights and refuse to feel hopeless or helpless.

The Reimagining Democracy series continues next week, when Brandice Canes-Wrone of the Center for Revitalizing American Institutions and Didi Kuo of CDDRL will discuss money, parties, and political reform.

Key takeaways

Listening to Grzymala-Busse and Díaz-Cayeros side by side, I came away with a few lessons that cut across both regions and that are extremely informative for those fighting for democracy anywhere.

1. Backsliding grows out of three gaps. Democracies falter when they fail to deliver, when mainstream parties ignore the issues voters care about most, such as immigration in Europe and crime in Latin America, and when majorities stop valuing courts, electoral bodies, and a free press. Illiberal leaders don’t create these gaps; they exploit them.
    
2. Illiberal governments can deliver, for a while. Orbán held power for sixteen years in part because EU money let him raise living standards. Warning that he was undemocratic did little. What finally hurt him was corruption that voters could see and feel.
    
3. Reversal requires decisive wins. Hungary is rebuilding quickly because Tisza won a supermajority. Poland is stuck because the illiberal camp still holds the presidency. A narrow victory may be enough to take office, but not to repair institutions, and repair has to happen by democratic means.
    
4. Society sets the floor. Díaz-Cayeros believes Brazil will not become El Salvador because of its federalism, its vibrant civil society, and its strong human rights tradition. These structures decide how far a democracy can fall. They can’t be built in a crisis, though, so the time to raise that floor is while democracy is still healthy.
    
5. Recovery is not permanent. Babiš, Fico, and possibly Flávio Bolsonaro show that defeated illiberal movements return when restored governments disappoint. Lula’s second term is a warning: democrats must keep delivering and renewing their leadership.
    
6. Democracy must be argued for, not assumed. The speakers pointed to strategies that work: making the costs of corruption concrete, framing checks and balances in patriotic terms as part of national identity, and taking on hard issues without abandoning liberal principles.

In summary, democracy came back when broad coalitions won convincingly on concrete grievances and then governed well enough to keep their majorities. Above all, as Grzymala-Busse put it, autocrats benefit from indifference and despair. Democracy's most important resource is citizens who keep demanding and participating.

On October 8, 2026, Aleksandar Matovski presented at a Rethinking European Development and Security (REDS) seminar, co-sponsored by the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) and The Europe Center (TEC), on Russia’s nuclear escalation and restraint during the war in Ukraine. The central puzzle he sought to explain was why the severity of an external shock does not necessarily correspond to the timing or intensity of Russia’s response. Moscow has repeatedly resorted to nuclear threats and provocative signaling. Yet, at other times, it has absorbed substantial military setbacks without responding with comparable ferocity. The question, therefore, is what explains this variation in restraint and escalation.

Matovski identified three broad explanations in the existing literature. The first concerns external constraints, including backlash from Russia’s remaining partners, the limited battlefield utility of nuclear weapons, and the danger of confrontation with NATO. However, these factors primarily explain restraint rather than escalation. The second concerns credibility decay, whereby repeated threats without follow-through undermine credibility and encourage riskier behavior to restore it. The third concerns domestic political influences, including hardliner pressure, regime survival threats, and risk-averse elites and citizens. Interestingly, domestic politics can generate both escalation and restraint. The question is which pressures matter, when, and how they interact with external constraints.

Matovski consequently proposed his pressure cooker framework, based on three premises. First, Putin needs a “forever war” to maintain political control. Continued confrontation allows the regime to mobilize nationalism, justify repression, and redirect dissatisfaction toward foreign adversaries. Second, military failure does not necessarily imply domestic political failure. Much depends on how the Kremlin frames setbacks and manages their political consequences. Third, nuclear coercion is essential to sustaining the war. It discourages Western intervention and reinforces the domestic narrative that Russia cannot ultimately be defeated.

The mechanism begins with an external shock, followed by initial restraint and the gradual accumulation of political pressure. Initially, restraint may be advantageous because escalation can publicly acknowledge military failure, alarm risk-averse citizens, and create further external risks. The Kremlin can also temporarily defer the political costs of inaction by controlling the narrative. However, as setbacks accumulate, hardliners increasingly interpret restraint as weakness. Meanwhile, the wider public may question the war’s sustainability. Repeated unenforced threats also undermine Russia’s credibility and may encourage adversaries to test its limits. Eventually, the political costs of restraint may outweigh those of escalation, prompting more dramatic action.

Matovski illustrated this through the 2022 mobilization and nuclear scare. Despite the failure of Russia’s initial invasion, Putin initially avoided large-scale mobilization. However, following further setbacks, particularly Ukraine’s Kharkiv counteroffensive in September, domestic pressures arguably intensified. Putin subsequently announced partial mobilization and the purported annexation of four Ukrainian regions. Russia also intensified nuclear threats. In October, Moscow made allegations concerning a potential Ukrainian “dirty bomb,” amid heightened fears of nuclear escalation. Yet Russia subsequently withdrew from Kherson in November without nuclear retaliation. Matovski interpreted this sequence as consistent with his argument that escalation follows accumulated pressures rather than necessarily responding immediately to individual setbacks.

The central implication is that Russian restraint and escalation may represent different phases of the same political process. Apparent restraint may therefore be unstable, making subsequent escalation difficult to anticipate.

At a CDDRL research seminar held on October 1, 2026, Frances Cayton, the Einstein-Moos Postdoctoral Fellow at the Stanford Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, presented research from her book project on civil society in backsliding democracies.

Her presentation centered on the democratic potential of informal, apolitical civil society groups in resisting democratic erosion. She argued that autocrats devote little attention to these groups, leaving them with greater autonomy and the ability to decide when and whether to engage with the government. At the outset, these groups often have low civic consciousness, meaning they do not recognize the social capital and civic resources they hold. However, as autocratization threatens their independence, they become more aware of those resources and more committed to defending them, which makes them more likely to mobilize democratically and across partisan divides. 

Cayton began by noting that current scholarship often focuses on two ways autocratic regimes interact with civil society. First, they work alongside and reward groups that share their views as a source of support, and second, they crack down on opponents through repression and bureaucratic pressure. What this picture overlooks, Cayton argues, are the apolitical and informal groups that make up much of civic life, such as biking clubs and mushroom hunters, who often do not consider themselves part of civil society at all. 

To account for these groups, Cayton organizes civic life into a two-by-two framework of formal and informal organizations with political and apolitical missions. Formal groups have internal structures such as membership and dues, making them easy for the state to see. Informal groups have looser arrangements, such as friends who help stray dogs in their neighborhood. Political groups have an explicit political mission, such as human rights, labor, religious, or left-and right-wing causes, while apolitical groups focus on areas like sports, education, and the arts. 

Her argument therefore suggests that the less visible nature of these informal, apolitical groups makes them an almost blind spot in the autocrat's agenda, allowing them to maintain their autonomy. Cayton hypothesizes that, relative to formal pro-regime civil society, aspiring autocrats will target formal apolitical and opposition groups more often, but will not treat informal civil society differently. 

She then tests this through the case of Poland, drawing on a panel dataset covering the universe of Polish civil society, a survey of civic organizations, and interviews. Her analysis of public funding shows that after the Law and Justice party (PiS) took power in 2015, formal apolitical and formal opposition groups lost public funding relative to formal pro-regime groups, while informal groups saw no significant change. Informal and apolitical groups also became less likely to file optional financial disclosures, which she reads as a choice to remain less visible to the state. 

In her survey experiment, Cayton reminded civic groups of government threats to civil society. Informal and apolitical groups became more open to meeting groups with different political views and hosting cross-partisan events, while showing no greater willingness to work with PiS. Together, these results suggest that the regime's pressure largely bypassed informal and apolitical groups, and that the threat to civil society strengthened their commitment to independence and pluralism. 

Ultimately, Cayton's research shows that informal, apolitical civil society is a powerful tool for democratic resilience. As one interviewee put it, these groups often "become political in order to maintain apoliticality," which leads them to defend their independence by mobilizing in support of democracy.