Citizenship is conventionally understood as a source of rights and protection. It is also a source of dependency: states retain distinctive authority over passports, legal identities, civil status, and mobility that citizens need even when they live abroad. Under authoritarianism, these dependencies become instruments of political control. The study introduces extraterritorial authoritarian citizenship, a continuing relationship in which emigrants depend on origin-state institutions whose provision of nominally universal rights is politically conditional. It generates latent leverage: the capacity to impose costs without exercising it against anyone in particular. Emigrants may curb dissent even when never targeted, and transnational repression activates leverage already at work. Using a four-wave panel survey of 4,000+ Russian emigrants in over 100 countries and 500+ interviews, the authors show that what emigrants fear is the open-ended legal and administrative reach of the origin state rather than targeted violence, that this fear suppresses contentious activism specifically, and that only the protection of another state reduces it. (In collaboration with Emil Kamalov and Karolina Nugumanova).

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Ivetta Sergeeva specializes in comparative social science, focusing on political behavior, civil society, citizenship and migration. In her research, she employs a mixed-methods approach, emphasizing surveys, statistical modeling, experiments, and interviews. Apart from her research skills, she has eight years of experience supervising projects in civil society and human rights organizations within the challenging context of contemporary Russia.

As Russia’s war against Ukraine grinds on and debate intensifies over how to end it, what could push the conflict into a more dangerous phase of escalation? This talk examines how the Putin regime’s domestic political imperatives shape when Moscow absorbs setbacks and when it escalates. It argues that Russian behavior reflects a “pressure-cooker” dynamic: external geopolitical constraints favor restraint, while battlefield failures, war weariness, and pressure from hardliners can gradually raise the domestic costs of inaction. The result is prolonged restraint punctuated by abrupt escalation across conventional, gray-zone, and nuclear domains. Counterintuitively, the greatest danger may arise before a domestic crisis fully materializes — when wartime exhaustion or the political and economic strains of a ceasefire loom, but the Putin regime still retains the capacity to act coherently. This argument has direct implications for Western efforts to manage escalation and negotiate an end to the war without inadvertently increasing Moscow’s incentives for risk-taking.

Aleksandar Matovski is an Associate Professor in the Department of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School. His research focuses on the impact of domestic politics on the durability and strategic behavior of authoritarian regimes, with a regional emphasis on Europe and the former Soviet Union. Matovski holds a PhD and MA in Government from Cornell University, an MA in War Studies from King’s College London, and a BA in Law from Saints Cyril and Methodius University, Skopje. Prior to his academic career, he was National Security Advisor in the Government of North Macedonia and Political and Military Advisor in the North Macedonian Ministry of Defense. 

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.