The Backsliders: Susan Stokes analyzes the Recent Trend of Democratic Erosion | | |
Susan Stokes, Tiffany and Margaret Blake Distinguished Service Professor and 2025-26 CISSR Faculty Fellow recently published The Backsliders: Why Leaders Undermine their Own Democracies.
Stokes describes democratic backsliding as when elected leaders undermine their own democratic norms and institutions. This book explains why there’s a wave of this behavior in the 21st century and asks: what countries and what kinds of democracies are more prone to experience it, how does it work, why do voters tolerate it, and what can be done to counter backsliding or slow it down? Like many scholars in the United States, her interest in this phenomenon was sparked by the 2016 election and the first Trump administration, which "shook our confidence in the stability of American institutions." As a regional specialist in Latin American politics, she had also studied similar trends across that region.
Her focus on the relationship between inequality and democratic backsliding stems from a prior article she co-wrote with colleague Eli Rau at Tec University in Monterrey, Mexico. Through cross-national statistical analysis, they found that income inequality was the most important structural factor in predicting whether a government will engage in democratic backsliding. The Backsliders builds on this finding, with the first part of the book dedicated to understanding why unequal countries are more vulnerable to democratic backsliding.
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The book features original research funded by CISSR in 2021 by Stokes and her team at the University of Chicago Center on Democracy. This includes survey experiments conducted in the U.S., Mexico, and Turkey, as well as quantitative analysis of backsliding leaders' rhetoric. Her research confirms that both a polarized public and cynical voters benefit backsliders. What surprised Stokes most was how robust the inequality effect proved to be across different statistical models, and how decisions by left-of-center parties in the late 20th century opened the door to right-wing, ethnonationalist parties in the 21st. When asked about key takeaways, Stokes offered two: income inequality is dangerous for democracy, and there are effective forms of resistance to democratic backsliding. She emphasized that would-be autocrats' regimes have inherent weaknesses, and both resistance strategies and internal contradictions make them vulnerable.
Looking ahead, Stokes has a few projects that are outgrowths of this book. She and her collaborators are conducting more survey work in Eastern Europe to understand what happens to income inequality under backsliding leaders. She also has a major project funded in part by a CISSR 2025-26 faculty fellowship on mechanisms of direct democracy and their role in restoring confidence in democracy, and how they might draw citizens more fully into the political process. Additionally, she is the incoming president of the American Political Science Association, and in that role will be leading a presidential task force on the university in an era of democratic erosion. A collective effort, the task force will examine why backsliding governments attack universities and what strategies stakeholders have deployed to protect them, both in the U.S. and internationally. She expects this project to produce publications in a year or so.
The Backsliders is available at Princeton University Press.
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October 14th
The Chicago Forum
What do Iranians Want? A Discussion on the Future of Iran
12:30 pm - 1:30 pm
Quadrangle Club, Library
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October 14th
The Joyce Z. and Jacob Greenberg Center for Jewish Studies and the Chicago Center on Democracy
Rethinking Rights in Deeply Divided Places: Collective Equality as a Benchmark
5:00 pm
Social Science Research Building, Tea Room
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October 16th
Department of Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity
RDI Workshop Series: Iyko Day - The Possessive Investment in Asian American Class Power
4:00 pm-5:30 pm
Kelly Hall, Room 118
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October 14th
The Center for Latin American Studies and UNAM Chicago Conference
Ambiguity in Cartography: Symbolic possessions and territorial uncertainty in the New World
4:30 pm
Social Science Research Building, John Hope Franklin Room (Room 224)
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October 16th
The Center for Latin American Studies
Not Authentic, Always Modern. A reading and presentation of Taco
12:30 pm - 1:50 pm
Social Science Research Building, John Hope Franklin Room (Room 224)
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October 17-18th
Katz Center For Mexican Studies
Mexican Migration Project: Four Decades of Research, Lessons Learned and Perspectives in Uncertain Times
RSVP by October 10th
John Hope Franklin Room, SSRB 224, 1159 E 59th Street, Chicago, Illinois
| | Around Town and Down the Road | | |
October 17th, October 18th
Amnesty International USA's Midwestern Regional Activism Conference 2025
Amnesty International USA
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October 20th
Danielle Roper discusses her book, "Hemispheric Blackface," in conversation with Maya Berry
Seminary Co-Op Bookstore
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African Studies Workshop
Tuesdays, 5:30 to 7 pm, Foster 107
October 14, 2025, 5:30–7:00 pm
TBA
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Empires Workshop
Alternate Mondays, 12:00 to 2pm, Pick 105
Monday, October 20th, 12:00 - 2:00 pm:
Xiaoyu Gao, "Where did the Silver Go? Opium, Caravans, and the Redirection of Qing China's Bullion Wealth (1800-1850)"
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History and Theory of Global Capitalism
Wednesdays, 4:30 to 6pm, Pick 105
Wednesday, October 15th: Ella Coon, "Electronics Assembly and the Rise and Fall of the US Developmental Empire in Korea 1967-1982"
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Demography Workshop
Thursdays, 12:30 to 1:50pm, NORC
Thursday, October 23rd: Tamara McGavock
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Gender and Sexuality Studies Workshop
Tuesdays, 5 to 6:20pm, 5733 S University, 103
Tuesday, November 18th: Vicki Kirby, University of New South Wales, "Playing the Field: non binary promiscuity"
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Political Theory Workshop
Mondays 12:00 pm —1:20 pm in Pick 506
Monday, October 20th: Burak Tan, University of Chicago, Practice Job Talk
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Workshop on Latin America and the Caribbean
Alternate Thursdays, 5 to 6:30pm, Pick 118
Thursday, October 16th: Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby, "Creole: Portraits of France’s Foreign Relations During the Long Nineteenth Century"
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Early Modern Mediterranean World Workshop
Wednesdays, 11am – 12:30pm, Pick 105
Wednesday, October 22nd: Maureen McCord, "The Anglo-Mughal War and the Crisis of Monopoly in Western India"
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Immigration Workshop
Alternate Mondays, 12:30 to 1:45pm, Pick 105
Monday, November 10: Sophia Costa
| | Training the Mobile Great Wall: Social Class and Player-Coach Interactions | |
Teng Ge, 2020-21 CISSR Rudolph Fellow and 2023-24 Dissertation Fellow, highlights the importance of class and social background in relation to athletic performance and the active role that athletes play in the hierarchical playing field. “Training the Mobile Great Wall” reframes the way that athletes have been viewed in previous academic studies, which often portray players as passive recipients of resources or opportunities given to them. Ge, however, studies players' interactions with their coaches through a more active lens, using their class and social background as a key factor for determining how their athletic performance and experience vary. Historically, players had little to no agency or autonomy due to the control of the Chinese state over sport. Due to reforms in an effort to marketize Chinese sports to a more global audience, athletes can now make more decisions for their best interest rather than the teams. Ge’s findings reveal a drastic difference in how players from different class backgrounds utilize this agency and autonomy –– showing that relatively privileged players took no issue with asking for more personalized trainings or attention, whereas less privileged players did not want to appear bothersome to their coaches and rigidly followed instructions. Ge concludes that disadvantaged players are more likely to risk their health and education when making career-based decisions than their wealthier counterparts, which hindered them from fully developing needed athletic and improvisational skills. Although the differences in player’s active roles with their coaches were rather stark, this research emphasized that the levels of passiveness or activeness in player-coach interactions directly impacted the experiences that players had, and the resources and opportunities that players were able to secure themselves.
Read the full article here.
| | | Organ Donation as the "Gift of Life" | |
Wan-Zi Lu is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Stony Brook University and a 2019-20 Rudolph Fellow and 2020-21 Dissertation Fellow. Lu examines organ donation in the context of gift theory and provides a new perspective on how novel systems for encouraging organ donation shift from prior paradigms. Gift theory comprises competing discourses, such as what constitutes a gift, why gifts are given, and the nature of reciprocity. Acknowledging its divergences, Lu establishes gift theory as a framework through which to view organ donation, in part because of the frequently employed paradigm “gift of life.” The framing of organ donation as deeply altruistic underscores donation centers and transplant programs and stands as the primary incentive for donors. However, two novel programs seek to increase the incidence of organ donation to keep up with increasing demand and falling supply. The two programs use self-interest as a motivating factor for donors, turning the altruistic paradigm on its head. By indicating an intention to donate, donors and their families can be placed higher on a list of recipients. In the second system, donors receive a “voucher” in exchange for donation. Lu carefully notes that this novel strategy is a far cry from organ markets, because no currency is exchanged, but establishes several drawbacks. To Lu, facets of this new system seem to privatize and thus limit the gift of organs, or exclude recipients based on their beliefs about death.
Read the article here.
| | | Social Signaling and Childhood Immunization: A Field Experiment in Sierra Leone | |
CISSR 2025-26 Faculty Fellow and Assistant Professor of Economics, Anne Karing investigates signal incentives and cost-effective methods for decreasing childhood mortality rates through vaccinations in Sierra Leone. Through a variety of distribution methods of color-coded bracelets upon completing certain vaccinations, Karing finds that parents adjust their behavior and beliefs over their actions based on the positive social capital they gain. Childhood immunizations prevent roughly 2-3 million deaths per year, but despite increasing accessibility to vaccinations, only 56% of children in underdeveloped countries receive their first-year vaccinations –– many of which are received late. Guided by these statistics, Karing’s bracelet distribution sends a public signal to other parents, announcing which vaccinations their child has received and showing the tangible reward of completing timely immunizations. A bracelet that indicates a fully vaccinated child in a timely manner suggests a caring parent, whereas not completing easier, more accessible vaccinations sends a negative signal of being a negligent parent. Karing found that signaling led to a significant increase in timely vaccinations, suggesting that parents place a high value on the perceived benefits of public signaling. This study provides 3 main takeaways –– the first being that households with limited resources are keenly aware of how they are perceived, second being that the placement of signals substantially influences behavior, and lastly, that the prospect of signaling motivates parents to exert greater effort regardless of when the change may occur.
Read the full article here.
| | | Gang Rule: Understanding and Countering Criminal Governance | |
Benjamin Lessing, 2025-26 Faculty Fellow and Associate Professor of Political Science, examines the potential and character of complementary rule by gangs and the state in present-day Medellín. Lessing and coauthors establish that in Medellín neighborhoods where gangs rule, retail drug markets make up the majority of rents for gangs. These rents coincide with tightly interwoven communities, where civilians are governed and, in turn, demonstrate loyalty to gangs. Lessing finds that gang rule in neighborhoods where the state also has a strong presence stabilizes neighborhoods, and that an increase in state presence could lead to an increase in gang rule because of several complementary characteristics. Employing robust mixed-methods, Lessing subverts general assumptions about state-gang rule, establishing that gang rule can complement rather than substitute state rule and describes 3 cases where this could manifest. To employ quasi-natural testing, Lessing relies on a policy that subdivided the city into sections and changed the proximity of sections to state rule. He then determined how this had an impact on gang rule. Finally, Lessing draws conclusions based on results that trace impacts of complementary state-gang rule on governance, legitimacy, and economic development across Medellín.
Read the full article here.
| | | Natacha Nsabimana discusses Process, Performance, and Monumentality at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago | |
Natacha Nsabimana, Assistant Professor of Anthropology and 2019-20 CISSR Faculty Fellow, and artist Kaneza Schaal discuss the artistic process of creating art while navigating the intricacies of preserving history and actively trying to deconstruct and exorcize false narratives. In this talk hosted by the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Nsabimana offers an expert academic lens to this conversation, speaking about the historical context of Schaal’s performance. Referencing King Leopold's Soliloquy by Mark Twain, Patrice Lumumba's 1960 independence speech, Discourse on Colonialism by Aimé Césaire, and La Muette de Portici by Danile Auber, Schaal tells the story of King Leopold’s colonization of the Congo (DRC) under the guise of bringing civilization to the land and operating the Congo as a corporate state to extract its resources. Nsabimana emphasizes the history of exploitation and political violence and the importance of the Congo in the region. Nsabimana and Schaal discuss how the medium of performance is intentional, to truly convey the signaling, pageantry, and provide the most immersive storytelling experience possible. This lecture delves into how people cope with such history, how they are forced to move, and reshaping narratives. Through scholarship and artistry, the speakers answer the question of how we understand the monsters within us and how we process the violence we consume and engage with.
Watch the lecture here.
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