Under what conditions do pro-democracy global actors support domestic opposition actors resisting democratic backsliding, and when does such support shape public opinion? This book project develops a theory of international rhetorical pressure that examines both the supply and demand of foreign engagement in backsliding contexts. On the supply side, it argues that international actors' public attention to democratic developments abroad is shaped by both domestic political developments and geopolitical ties. On the demand side, it suggests that foreign statements can shape public opinion toward pro-democracy movements. Drawing on an original dataset of US Secretary of State speeches, survey experiments, and elite interviews, the project shows that geopolitical interests often shape when international actors publicly address democracy abroad, but that when they do, foreign messages can meaningfully shape public opinion. The project highlights the increasingly international nature of backsliding and both the opportunities and challenges international engagement creates for domestic opposition actors.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Benjamin Yoel is the Jan Koum Israel Studies Program Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL). Benjamin studies democratic backsliding, nonviolent resistance, authoritarian politics, and the role of international factors in the context of regime change. He is particularly interested in understanding when and how international actors can help or hurt domestic opposition movements defend democracy. His book project examines the supply and demand-side of international rhetorical pressure in the context of democratic backsliding and opposition to it. Benjamin's other work examines mass public support for democratic backsliding, public willingness to support retaliatory measures by democratic governments against former backsliding leaders, and the broader challenges facing pro-democracy actors in an increasingly illiberal international system. His research has been published in Nature, the International Journal of Public Opinion Research, and American Politics Research. He received his PhD in Political Science from Michigan State University and BA and MA degrees from Reichman University.

What defines Israel Studies as an academic discipline today, and where might the field be heading in view of the profound changes shaping Israel, diaspora Jewry, and Israel's international standing? How has the aftermath of October 7 impacted academic research and university teaching about modern Israel in American academia? Join Amichai Magen and Ori Rabinowitz in conversation with Professor Donna Robinson Divine, former President of the Association for Israel Studies (2017-2019), and Dr. Asaf Romirowsky, executive director of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Donna Robinson Divine is the Morningstar Family Professor of Jewish Studies and Professor of Government, Emerita at Smith College, where she taught a variety of courses on Middle East Politics. Her writing includes Women Living Change:  Cross-Cultural Perspectives; essays from the Smith College Research Project on Women and Social Change; Politics and Society in Ottoman Palestine: The Arab Struggle for Survival and Power; Postcolonial Theory and The Arab-Israeli Conflict; Exiled in the Homeland: Zionism and the Return to Mandate Palestine; Word Crimes: Reclaiming the Language of the Israel-Palestinian Conflict; and October 7: The Wars Over Words and Deeds. Named the Katharine Asher Engel lecturer at Smith College for the 2012-2013 academic year in recognition of her scholarly achievements, she was also designated as Smith's Honored Professor for the excellence of her teaching. She was president of the Association for Israel Studies from 2017-2019, is an affiliate professor at Israel's University of Haifa, and was named to Algemeiner’s 2019 list of the top 100 people “positively influencing Jewish life."

Asaf Romirowsky, PhD, is the Executive Director of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME) and the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA). Romirowsky is also a senior nonresident research fellow at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies (BESA)  and a Professor [Affiliate] at the University of Haifa. Trained as a Middle East historian, he holds a PhD in Middle East and Mediterranean Studies from King's College London, UK, and has published widely on various aspects of the Arab-Israeli conflict and American foreign policy in the Middle East, as well as on Israeli and Zionist history. Romirowsky is co-author of Religion, Politics, and the Origins of Palestine Refugee Relief and a contributor to The Case Against Academic Boycotts of Israel. His latest book is entitled, October 7: The Wars Over Words and Deeds. Romirowsky’s publicly-engaged scholarship has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The National Interest, The American Interest, The New Republic, The Times of Israel, Jerusalem Post, Ynet, and Tablet, among other online and print media outlets.

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Contrary to expectations following the end of the Cold War, several autocracies have modernized without succumbing to democratizing pressures. This paper argues that a non-trivial number of 21st-century autocrats generate reputations for economic delivery via large-scale infrastructure due to its observability, tangibility, and durability as an asset, providing rulers with a credible commitment device for continued development while retaining authoritarian political institutions. I evaluate a central implication of this argument using geolocated data on 150,000 large-scale construction projects since 2005 and micro-level attitudes from nine harmonized survey datasets, covering 2.5 million respondents across 2,300 subnational districts. Exploiting within-district variation, I find that effective project delivery increases perceived government performance, with effects concentrated among established autocracies and democratic backsliders.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Chris Dann is a PhD candidate in Political Science at Stanford University and is a current pre-doctoral fellow with the Center for Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL). Before graduate school he received a BSc from the London School of Economics and an MSc at the University of Oxford. He then returned to LSE for two years as a pre-doctoral fellow, working for economist Professor Sir Tim Besley. His research interests lie in the political economy of large-scale infrastructure investments and how these shape the social contract. 

Why do some backsliding incumbents co-opt civil society while others fail? This paper introduces a theory of civic consciousness, contending that, as compared to their formal or political counterparts, informal and apolitical civil society groups often fail to recognize their civic resources. I show that government threats to associational freedom help these groups recognize their latent social capital and increase their willingness to mobilize in support of democracy. As evidence, this paper draws on original data comprising the universe of Polish civil society between 2011 and 2025, a prominent period of democratic erosion and partial recovery. I find that Poland's illiberal PiS government financially targeted formal opposition groups but spared informal, apolitical groups. Meanwhile, those groups developed increased agency, leading them to avoid optional government interactions during the backsliding period. An original civil society-level survey experiment confirms that, when facing government threats, informal and apolitical groups are more likely to engage in pro-democratic actions. Altogether, I illustrate how improved civic consciousness facilitates newfound agency and democratic commitment among previously overlooked corners of civic life.   

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Frances Cayton is the Einstein Moos Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford's Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL). Her 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. More broadly, her research probes the drivers and consequences of democratic engagement, primarily in Eastern Europe while also drawing comparison with other eroding democracies globally. 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.

Cayton holds a PhD 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. 

Six days before Israelis head to the polls—for what is perhaps the most dramatic and consequential national election in the country's history—what do the latest public opinion surveys tell us about the contending parties and possible outcomes of the elections? Is the Netanyahu bloc likely to win or lose the elections, or are we heading towards a possible stalemate or some new political constellation in Israel? Join Amichai Magen and Ori Rabinowitz for a conversation about the upcoming elections with expert public opinion researcher and political strategist Dr. Dahlia Scheindlin. 

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Dr. Dahlia Scheindlin is a political strategist and public opinion researcher who has advised on nine electoral campaigns in Israel and worked in 15 other countries over 25 years. She is a columnist at Haaretz newspaper and a policy fellow at Century International. Dahlia conducts public opinion research for civil society organizations, including joint Israeli-Palestinian surveys. She holds a PhD in political science from Tel Aviv University, and her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Financial Times, The Guardian, Foreign Affairs, and Foreign Policy, among other publications. She is the author of The Crooked Timber of Democracy in Israel: Promise Unfulfilled (2023), and in 2025, she was a Distinguished Middle East fellow at the University of Pennsylvania.

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Three years after the October 7, 2023, invasion and massacre, the questions and consequences surrounding the worst security failure in Israel's modern history continue to reverberate. With no National Commission of Inquiry established by the Netanyahu government to investigate how Israel was caught off-guard and no definite end to the multi-front war that followed the Hamas attack (in Gaza, Lebanon, Iran, and Yemen), how can we make sense of October 7 and its aftermath? Join Amichai Magen and Or Rabinowitz in conversation with Amos Harel as, three years on, they seek to understand the causes and consequences of the day that forever changed Israel, the Middle East, and the world.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Amos Harel is one of Israel's most accomplished and respected journalists and authors in military and defense affairs. As the military correspondent and then senior defense analyst for Haaretz for nearly three decades, Harel has covered Israeli security and published four books including, most recently, 06:29 - Anatomy of a Failure (published in Hebrew in May 2026), which examines the intelligence misses, military responses, and political context surrounding the October 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks. Previously, he coauthored, with journalist and screenwriter Avi Issacharoff, The Seventh War (2004), about the second Intifada, and 34 Days (2008), about Israel's second Lebanon War. Both books received the Chechic Award, given annually by the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) in Tel-Aviv. Harel's The New Face of the IDF, was published in Hebrew in 2013. In 2015, Amos Harel won the Sokolov Award, Israel's most prestigious prize for excellence in journalism.

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