Workshop on the Political Economy of Autocratic Rule & Democratic Backsliding

June 23–24, 2025

Toulouse, TSE/IAST Building

The Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse (IAST) will be hosting a Workshop on the Political Economy of Autocratic Rule & Democratic Backsliding. This workshop is organized by the IAST Research Team on Political Economy (PE).

Background

Thirty years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, forms of autocratic rule persist in large parts of the world. Even worse, democracy today seems under immense threat: once consolidated liberal democracies, such as Hungary and Venezuela, have backslid into electoral autocracies; the Far Right is gathering momentum in several others; autocratic regimes are accused of interfering in foreign elections; and the Putin regime in Russia is waging war against democracy in Ukraine.

This interdisciplinary workshop gathers political scientists, economists, and scholars from related disciplines at the forefront of research into autocratic politics and democratic backsliding. It ties together recent advances in these research areas that help us better understand why democracy in the 21st century can be so fragile and non-democracy so resilient. Its focus is upon problems thought to be conducive to democratic backsliding, safeguards of democracy, the politics of information, notably censorship and propaganda, and the roles of intermediaries, ordinary citizens, and policies under autocratic rule.

Speakers:

Barton Lee (ETH)

Jane Esberg (UPenn)

Felix Haass (University of Oslo)

Mai Hassan (MIT)

Daniel Mattingly (Yale)

Monika Nalepa (University of Chicago)

Agustina Paglayan (UCSD)

Bryn Rosenfeld (Cornell)

Mehdi Shadmehr (UNC Chapel Hill)

Alexandra Siegel (University of Colorado)

Stephane Wolton (LSE)

Ekaterina Zhuravskaya (PSE)

Organizers: Anne Degrave, Felix Dwinger, Violeta Haas, Horacio Larreguy, Giacomo Lemoli, Kristin Michelitch, Ahmed Ezzeldin Mohamed, & Alberto Simpser

Location: Toulouse School of Economics (Auditorium 3 Jean-Jacques Laffont)

Dates: June 23-24, 2025

Registration: Registration is required to attend the workshop. Online registration opens soon. Presentations are upon invitation only.

Contact: For questions, please send an email to political.science.conf@tse-fr.eu.

------------------

This event is funded by a French government subsidy managed by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche under the framework of the investissements d'avenir programme reference ANR-17-EURE-0010.