On October 9, 2025, FSI Senior Fellow Saumitra Jha presented his team’s research on how exposure to financial markets — meaning individuals’ exposure to tailored opportunities to directly engage with investment platforms and decision-making — can increase support for action on climate change. This CDDRL research seminar expanded on Jha’s earlier research on the effects of financial exposure and literacy as tools for reducing political polarization, including studies conducted in Israel, Mexico, and the United Kingdom.

During the seminar, Jha highlighted the study's relevance in an era of democratic backsliding, rising populism on both the right and the left, and increasing economic uncertainty. Jha emphasized that basic financial literacy — the ability to understand and practically apply financial concepts such as saving, investing, and diversifying risks— is essential for citizens navigating this environment. Jha’s team designed interventions that empower citizens, both in rich and poor countries, to build financial knowledge and, by focusing on common investments and the common good, ultimately mitigate political polarization and conflict.

The study focused on the partisan issue of climate change in the United States. Participants were oversampled from states either disproportionately affected by climate change or central to the green-energy transition — Pennsylvania, West Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, Arizona, Ohio, South Carolina, and Kentucky. Each participant in the treatment group initially received an investment portfolio that tracked stocks from either green energy companies (firms at the forefront of the transition, engaged in renewable energy like solar and wind) or brown energy companies (firms earlier in the transition, engaged in the extraction of fossil fuels such as oil and natural gas). Subjects had $50–$100 of real money or a virtual portfolio of funds to invest.

For five weeks, participants used a Robinhood-style investment platform (a simple online interface for buying and selling stocks) to trade their stocks. Midway through the study, they were able to trade across both green and brown stocks. At this point, they received additional financial disclosures (basic company performance data) and had access to climate-impact disclosures (data on companies' greenhouse gas emissions and how they affect or are affected by climate change). However, this is currently a central policy debate; very few participants actually chose to review climate disclosures, which Jha identified as a research question for a companion paper. The research team then evaluated results in four categories: (1) beliefs about human agency and tradeoffs with the green energy transition, (2) policy preferences, (3) political attitudes, and (4) personal behaviors.

The data demonstrated that this financial exposure treatment — i.e., hands-on stock trading experience — had a significant, meaningful, and lasting influence on participants’ beliefs. Relative to control, treated participants were 9% more likely to agree or strongly agree that human activity is a significant contributor to climate change. They further became more supportive of both government and corporate action to mitigate climate change, and came to view the green-energy transition as potentially economically beneficial. 

Further, the intervention was empowering, raising the financial literacy of participants and increasing their ongoing consumption of financial news outlets, rather than social media or Fox News. These effects were observable even eight months after the study. 

Further, these changes were not preaching to the choir — instead, the effects were observed across the political spectrum, particularly among those who were ex ante climate change skeptics. However, while treated participants were more likely to donate to climate causes and to consider climate when investing and working, they did not report an overall increased willingness to change their daily lives. For example, while reporting an increased willingness to reuse recyclable bags, most did not report an increased willingness to change ingrained daily habits, such as eating less meat or changing commute patterns.

Jha also previewed new results from a companion paper based on a long-term survey conducted 8 months after treatment. To examine how the treatment changes how participants preferred climate action to be implemented, the research team gauged support for two approaches: the “Abundance approach”, popularized by Ezra Klein, and the “Conservation and Regulation approach.” The Abundance approach emphasizes expanding investments in clean energy infrastructure, sustainable housing, and economic growth as solutions to climate change. By contrast, the Conservation and Regulation approach focuses on reducing energy use through government regulation, strong local autonomy, and personal restraint. The financial exposure treatment significantly raised the share of subjects supporting the Abundance approach.

Although the impact of foreign aid on governance and development has been widely debated, its effect on bureaucracies remains underexplored. This is significant as bureaucracies play a vital role in key functions of the state and can affect development and growth. CDDRL postdoctoral scholar Maria Nagawa addressed this gap in a recent research seminar examining how project aid impacts the incentives and efforts of bureaucrats in aid-receiving countries.

Aid projects have predetermined objectives, activities, timelines, and budgets that rely heavily on bureaucrats for implementation. Consequently, they can lead to a reallocation of bureaucrats’ time and effort away from core government duties. To explore these dynamics, it is important to consider bureaucrats’ preferences for work and how they allocate effort. In the context of aid, these preferences can relate to specific projects and organizational characteristics. Project preferences may include financial incentives, ownership over priorities, and discretion in implementation, while organizational preferences include exposure to donor funding, pay inequities, and coordination with peers. With these factors in mind, Nagawa conducted her study in Uganda, one of the top foreign aid recipients in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The study takes a mixed-methods approach, utilizing interviews, surveys, and survey experiments. Because data on bureaucrats who work on aid projects is virtually non-existent, primary data collection was vital to generating evidence on how aid reshapes bureaucracies. Nagawa conducted 64 semi-structured interviews across 14 central government ministries and agencies, finding that although bureaucrats are pro-socially motivated when they join government, donor-funded projects amplify the importance of financial incentives. These projects provide attractive allowances and other benefits, and while such rewards can drive bureaucrats’ effort on projects, they also create tensions among colleagues to the point of eroding collaboration within departments. This is in part because projects are selectively allocated under unclear criteria. Bureaucrats also highlighted how donor priorities often took precedence, making it harder for them to advance contextually appropriate policies.

Results from the survey of 559 mid-level bureaucrats across six ministries reinforced these findings. Nearly 70 percent of bureaucrats had worked on aid projects, and many observed that such projects increased inequalities in pay and opportunity within ministries. To further explore these dynamics, Nagawa conducted conjoint survey experiments, which confirmed that monetary gain was the strongest driver of effort on projects. Although bureaucrats had strong preferences for ownership and discretion, these factors did not influence their willingness to increase effort on projects.

Nagawa’s findings highlight how aid projects reshape bureaucrats’ incentives in ways that can negatively impact state capacity. Many civil servants value government service and prefer the autonomy of government funding, but the structure of project aid often pushes them to prioritize donor-funded projects over their governmental duties. This weakens the internal cohesion and collaboration necessary to maintain a robust government.

Nagawa underscored the need for increased donor coordination to reduce bureaucratic burden, alignment of aid with the budget cycle to ensure synergy between aid projects and government work, and focusing funding on scaling local priorities. The findings from this research provide an important roadmap for how to reform aid delivery and ensure aid supports rather than undermines government effectiveness as international development assistance undergoes unprecedented changes. 

On September 25, 2025, FSI Senior Fellow Claire Adida presented her team’s research at a CDDRL Research Seminar Series talk under the title, “Overcoming Barriers to Women’s Political Participation: Evidence from Nigeria.” The seminar addressed a central paradox in global politics: although women’s legal formal right to vote is nearly universal, deep gender gaps remain in informal forms of political participation, such as contacting a local government official or attending a community meeting. This lack of engagement means women’s voices are underrepresented in governance and policies are less likely to reflect their priorities. This is particularly salient in hybrid democracies, where informal political participation may matter more than casting a vote.

Adida situated the study in the context of Nigeria, a large and diverse democracy that remains heavily patriarchal. Surveys highlight these disparities starkly: nearly half of Nigerian men believe men make better leaders than women; two in five women report never discussing politics with friends or family; and women are consistently less likely than men to attend meetings or contact community leaders. Against this backdrop, the project tested interventions designed to reduce barriers that discourage women’s participation.

The research team identified three categories of constraints: resource-based (a lack of time, skills, or information), norms-based (social expectations that women should remain outside the public sphere), and psychological (feelings of disempowerment and doubt about one’s capacity to create change). The study focused on the last two. To explore these, the team partnered with ActionAid Nigeria to conduct a randomized control trial (RCT) across 450 rural wards in three southwestern states. Local leaders identified groups of economically active women, aged 21 to 50, who were permitted by their spouses to join.

All communities began with an informational session on local governance. Beyond that, two types of training were introduced. The first, targeted at women, consisted of five sessions over five months designed to build leadership, organizing, and advocacy skills. These emphasized group-based learning and aimed to foster collective efficacy — the belief that a group can act together to achieve change. The second, targeted at men, encouraged husbands to act as allies in supporting women’s participation. After the initial informational session, communities were randomly assigned to no longer receive further training, to receive the 5 sessions of women’s training, or to receive the 5 sessions of women’s training and the 5 sessions of men’s training.

The findings were striking. Women’s trainings had clear positive effects: participants were more likely to engage in politics, attend meetings, and contact local leaders. The quality of their participation also improved, suggesting greater confidence and effectiveness. There was also evidence that these women’s trainings activated collective and self-efficacy, lending credence to the Social Identity Model of Collective Action (SIMCA), a framework explaining how a sense of shared identity, group-based injustice, and group efficacy build political engagement. By contrast, men’s trainings produced modest results. They did not increase women’s participation beyond the women’s trainings and, in some cases, had small negative effects, such as on grant applications. Still, men’s trainings reduced opposition to women’s involvement, improved beliefs about women in leadership, and increased perceptions of more permissive community norms, even if they did not translate into an increase in women’s political participation.

Adida noted that these limited effects may reflect “ceiling effects” — many men in the sample were already relatively supportive compared to national averages, or lower attendance rates. It is also possible that changes in men’s attitudes take longer to manifest in behavior. The seminar concluded that advocacy trainings for women show strong promise in boosting participation, while efforts to reshape patriarchal norms among men may require longer-term strategies.

On May 29, 2025, Dr. Natalia Forrat, a comparative political sociologist and lecturer at the University of Michigan’s Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies, presented findings from her recently published book The Social Roots of Authoritarianism. Part of CDDRL’s research seminar series, the talk explored how authoritarian regimes are maintained not only through top-down coercion but also through everyday social dynamics at the grassroots level. Using fieldwork from four Russian regions, Forrat developed a framework that links citizens’ perceptions of the state to the type of authoritarian institutions that emerge, with implications for how different societies experience and resist autocratic rule.

At the core of Forrat’s theory is the insight that authoritarian power at the grassroots level is shaped by how ordinary people perceive the state. Do they view it as a “team leader” worthy of cooperation, or as an “outsider” that must be bargained with or avoided? These contrasting perceptions form the foundation of two distinct models of authoritarianism: unity-based and division-based.

In unity-based regimes, found in statist societies, the state is embedded in everyday life. Citizens engage with state officials as collaborators, and civic life is deeply intertwined with state-led institutions. This creates top-down political machines that recruit activists, channel discontent, and generate electoral support through community structures such as residential councils and cultural centers. Kemerovo, a highly statist region, exemplifies this model. Its dense network of community institutions performs both civic and political functions — organizing holidays and cleanup drives, while also mobilizing voters and monitoring dissent.

In contrast, division-based regimes operate in anti-statist societies, where the state is distrusted and seen as an alien force. Here, political life is mediated through informal, bottom-up networks of brokers — non-state leaders who command local authority. Rostov offers a vivid illustration. A former official described how community initiatives failed until informal leaders intervened. While state officials are ignored, trusted local figures can instantly galvanize action. This form of authoritarianism relies on clientelism and strategic distribution of perks and punishments.

Forrat’s comparative analysis — spanning the Kemerovo region, the Republic of Altai, the Republic of Tatarstan, and the Rostov region — reveals how different grassroots visions of the state produce divergent regime dynamics. Importantly, she argues that these regime types are not interchangeable: an autocrat ruling over an anti-statist society cannot adopt statist tools without risking backlash, and vice versa. Each regime requires a distinct toolkit to maintain legitimacy and control.

This distinction has powerful implications for democratization. According to Forrat, unity-based authoritarianism lacks institutions that ensure accountability of the executive branch — like independent media, party competition, and pluralist civil society — while division-based regimes lack institutions that cultivate collective unity — such as inclusive state-building or civic trust. Democracy, then, is not merely a midpoint between authoritarian extremes, but a system that must deliberately cultivate the institutions its authoritarian predecessor lacked.

Conventional indicators may suggest that the United States is not susceptible to democratic backsliding, given its levels of wealth and the longevity of its political institutions. Yet a different picture emerges when considering assaults on the law following President Donald Trump’s return to power. In a recent CDDRL seminar. U.C. Berkeley Distinguished Professor of Political Science Paul Pierson examined the institutional roots of this trend and how it was shaped by the current moment of polarization and rising inequality.

Deepening partisanship, Pierson explained, has eroded the checks and balances embedded in U.S. institutions. Some assert that polarization is not abnormal in our country’s history, but Pierson believes that the state of polarization today poses unprecedented challenges. Politics has been increasingly nationalized, with state elections serving as a virtual training ground for ambitious politicians. Local media have declined in influence relative to nationally oriented partisan news outlets like Fox News. State issues are blending into national politics. These trends have undermined the system of federalism that historically kept the national government in check. 

As politicians have become more concerned about teamsmanship and partisan loyalty, the path of least resistance for them has been to prop up their party leaders even at the expense of democratic processes. In the past, partisan politicians could be trusted to keep their leaders in check should they behave undemocratically, regardless of how popular they may be. A case in point is President Richard Nixon, who had been reelected in a landslide in 1972, but was later held accountable by members of his own party once his transgressions were revealed in the wake of the Watergate scandal. The same cannot be said for the contemporary Trump era, as politicians appear reluctant to hold their president accountable due to partisan considerations. This trend has undermined horizontal oversight and, arguably, vertical accountability. On the latter, political elites have failed to adequately press citizens to hold the current administration accountable. 

The U.S. remains an extreme outlier in its growing wealth inequality, as mirrored by the ascendancy of ultra-wealthy plutocrats. Campaign funding has been increasingly dominated by the ultra-wealthy, many of whom supported the Republican ticket in the 2024 election. That said, these individuals’ influence is not unlimited, considering that the president has leverage over them and has shown willingness to threaten their interests should they behave disloyally. 

Despite blatant warning signs, there are some reasons to temper the alarmism surrounding the prospects of democratic backsliding in the United States. President Trump is not overwhelmingly popular, and aspects of his agenda will unlikely garner support from most of the electorate. Furthermore, whether his legacy will endure following the end of his presidency is unclear. Indeed, the vulnerabilities of U.S. political institutions remain salient. But plenty of room remains for resisting anti-democratic transgressions, given the non-partisan orientation of the judiciary and the small size of the Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives.

The challenges confronting U.S. political institutions in the face of hyperpolarization and deepening wealth inequality demonstrate that democracy should not be taken for granted and that more efforts are needed to protect and strengthen democratic accountability.

A recording of Professor Pierson's talk can be viewed below:

As part of the CDDRL research seminar series, Clémence Tricaud, Assistant Professor of Economics at the UCLA Anderson School of Management, delivered a talk on the evolving nature of electoral competition in the United States. Her presentation explored a question of growing political and public interest: Are U.S. elections truly getting closer — and if so, why does that matter?

To begin answering this, Tricaud emphasized the need to clarify what we mean by “closeness.” She distinguished between vote margins, which measure how much one candidate wins over another in a specific race, and seat margins, which reflect the difference in how many seats each party wins in a legislative body like the House, Senate, or Electoral College.

These margins have real consequences. Seat margins affect which party holds power, the likelihood of legislative gridlock, and how legitimate elected officials are perceived to be. Vote margins, on the other hand, influence how informed and motivated voters are, especially if they feel their votes can truly make a difference.

Using a vast dataset covering over 150 years of U.S. federal elections, Tricaud and her coauthors documented a striking trend: while seat margins have narrowed significantly over the past 60 years, vote margins have remained relatively stable. In fact, there has been a decline in the number of extremely close races at the district level. This raises a puzzling question — how can national elections appear tighter if the races themselves are not actually becoming more competitive?

To address this, Tricaud presented a novel theoretical model of electoral competition. Building on the classic “Downsian framework,” where candidates try to appeal to the median voter, her model incorporates multiple districts, national and local shifts in voter preferences, and differences in whether candidates tailor their platforms to local constituencies or follow national party lines.

The model explains that two major changes have reshaped U.S. elections:

1. Better Information: Thanks to advances in polling and data analytics, candidates now have a much clearer sense of where voters stand.
2. Nationalization of Politics: Candidates increasingly campaign on unified national platforms rather than platforms tailored to respond to local issues.
    

Together, these changes help parties target just enough competitive districts to win control, even if many races remain lopsided. This leads to narrower seat margins without narrower vote margins.

Tricaud also examined campaign finance data to show how this shift affects political behavior. Since only a small number of districts are truly competitive, campaign resources are increasingly concentrated in these few swing districts. This geographic targeting could have troubling implications: growing political attention to a handful of places, rising regional inequalities, and a sense of disconnection between local voters and national outcomes.

In sum, Clémence Tricaud’s presentation provided a fresh lens on how modern campaigns operate and why elections may feel closer than they truly are. By disentangling seat and vote margins, her work sheds light on the evolving dynamics of U.S. democracy — and the challenges that come with it.

As Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine enters its fourth year, the resilience of international support is being tested. Public opinion in neighboring countries — many of which have absorbed refugees and face direct geopolitical pressure — has become a critical variable in sustaining aid and solidarity. In a REDS seminar talk, co-hosted by CDDRL and The Europe Center, Princeton Professor of Politics Grigore Pop-Eleches shared findings from a major research project examining what drives support for Ukraine — and whether empathy can help counter growing war fatigue.

The study draws on two waves of public opinion surveys conducted in eight countries bordering Ukraine and/or Russia: Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Moldova, Kazakhstan, and Azerbaijan. Over 1,000 people were surveyed in each country, with a randomly assigned half receiving a brief empathy prompt. This prompt asked them to reflect on the daily challenges Ukrainians face living in a war zone. The goal was to measure whether simply imagining life in Ukraine could increase support for the Ukrainian cause.

The presentation began by outlining the stakes. Support for Ukraine has implications beyond aid flows. It affects how elites justify their positions, how international coalitions hold, and how misinformation, especially from Russia, can shift public discourse. The researchers focused on whether empathy-based interventions could increase not only emotional identification with Ukrainians, but also concrete actions such as signing petitions, donating money, or supporting humanitarian and military aid.

The results were striking. The empathy prompt had a clear and consistent effect: participants who received it expressed more sympathy for Ukrainians, more concern for their well-being, and greater willingness to support aid, both humanitarian and military. Statistical tests showed that these effects were driven by increased emotional connection (not concerns about the security of their own country), highlighting the central role of affective empathy.

Importantly, the effects were not uniform. They were strongest in countries like Hungary and Lithuania, and among individuals with strong attachments to their own national group and among those who had not previously interacted with Ukrainian refugees. Conversely, those who identified closer with Russians or who regularly consumed Russian media showed weaker or even no response. This suggests that perspective-taking can be powerful — but only in the absence of competing narratives.

The presentation concluded with a discussion of the broader implications. Empathy may offer a low-cost, scalable way to strengthen international solidarity — but its success depends on timing, exposure, and context. In countries with few refugees or limited media exposure to Ukraine, empathy interventions can fill an important emotional gap. However, where pro-Russian sentiment or misinformation dominates, their effects are muted.

At a moment when global support for Ukraine hangs in the balance, this research offers an encouraging insight: even brief moments of reflection can move people toward solidarity — if the conditions are right.

Public sectors that are plagued by corruption and poor performance hinder the development of low-income countries. Populations globally tend to perceive the police as the most corrupt sector of government, partly due to their frequent interactions with citizens. Only once corruption is reduced can trust in institutions be restored, enabling the development of countries.

Therefore, Associate Professor Danila Serra at Texas A&M University and her collaborators decided to investigate whether a training program could incentivize traffic officers to behave more ethically. Their study, presented by Serra at a recent CDDRL seminar, was conducted in Ghana, where almost 60% of people perceive the police as corrupt. 

The program, titled “Proud to Belong,” focused on creating a new group identity of officers as ‘agents of change.' It also prompted the officers to focus on their original reasons for joining the police, rebuilding their intrinsic motivations to ultimately reduce their participation in corruption. The training was implemented through a randomized control trial in randomly selected traffic police districts in the Greater Accra Region. 

The researchers first measured the program’s effectiveness through an incentivized cheating game played by officers both prior to the training and 20 months afterward. The study found a significant reduction in the unethical behavior of officers playing the game, indicating that the program successfully strengthened their values.

To understand whether these impacts extend to field behavior, Serra and her team measured police field activity in the months before and after the program’s implementation. They analyzed administrative data such as the number of drivers sent to court, those required to pay a fine, and the fine amounts. The team hypothesized that if bribes were acting as substitutes for formal law enforcement, an increase in field activity would indicate a decline in officer corruption.

This data demonstrated that the program had a significant positive impact on officer behavior, but only during the first 3 months post-training. To reconcile the limits of this short-term impact with the long-term benefits implied by the cheating game, researchers determined that this may be because of the need for reinforcements following the program. For example, an award ceremony honoring the officers’ participation in the program, 9 months post-training, revived the positive impact on field behavior. Evidence also suggests that, 20 months after the training, low-rank officers in treatment districts were less likely to have been promoted, hinting at structural problems preventing the end of corruption.

The program designed by Serra and her collaborators demonstrates that it is possible to encourage more ethical behavior among bureaucrats through targeted training, offering a promising tool for reducing corruption. However, sustained training, ongoing reinforcement, and support from higher-ranking officers are necessary to maintain these behavioral changes and ensure lasting impact.

On April 17, 2025, Stanford’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), alongside The Europe Center and the Hoover Institution, hosted a seminar entitled “The Russo-Ukraine War: Peace for Our Time?” featuring Syracuse University Professor of Political Science Brian Taylor. The seminar examined the state of the war, the prospects for peace, and the political dynamics shaping both Ukrainian resistance and Russian aggression. Taylor emphasized that, despite mounting casualties and economic costs, peace remains unlikely in the foreseeable future due to the ideological rigidity and strategic goals of Vladimir Putin’s regime.

Putin’s own speeches, notably from February 2022 and June 2024, underscore his belief that Ukraine lacks legitimate statehood and is a ‘Western puppet.’ He accuses Kyiv of fostering “neanderthal nationalism” and allowing NATO to develop Ukraine as a military outpost. These views culminated in his June 2024 and April 2025 peace proposals, which demand complete Ukrainian military withdrawal from occupied regions, recognition of Russian sovereignty over Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson, and Ukraine’s permanent neutrality, demilitarization, and “denazification.” These demands remain wholly unacceptable to Ukraine, where President Zelensky has repeatedly asserted that ceding territory violates the constitution and would betray over a million Ukrainian citizens still living in unoccupied portions of the contested areas.

The seminar highlighted three core issues blocking peace: territorial integrity, security guarantees, and domestic political sovereignty. Ukraine insists on reclaiming all occupied land and seeks NATO membership or bilateral security commitments from Western powers. Meanwhile, Russia demands not only territorial concessions but also structural constraints on Ukraine’s military capabilities and internal laws. The Kremlin's calls for “denazification” include repealing post-2014 legislation on language and historical memory — proposals Ukraine sees as direct infringements on its sovereignty.

Territorially, the stakes are high. Ukraine holds parts of Kherson, Donetsk, and Zaporizhzhia, and is unwilling to legitimize Russian claims. International law supports Ukraine’s position: the UN Charter, Budapest Memorandum, and several treaties confirm Russia’s previous recognition of Ukrainian borders. The war, as NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg described, is the largest attempted annexation in Europe since World War II — a recolonization effort with severe implications for the international order.

On the battlefield, the war shows no signs of abating. Russian casualties exceeded 400,000 in 2024 alone, yet recruitment incentives and resource reserves remain robust. Some analysts argue that Putin is ideologically committed and politically insulated, making him indifferent to the war’s costs. Ceasefire discussions, while briefly floated in early 2025, have faltered amid escalating demands.

Taylor also explored the U.S. political context. President Donald Trump’s shifting rhetoric — from claiming he could end the war in 24 hours to hedging that he would “like to get it settled” — reflects uncertainty about future American policy. According to Russian sources, Putin believes he can manipulate Trump to secure favorable terms.

Ultimately, Taylor concluded that both sides see more advantage in fighting than in negotiating. The war is deeply rooted in Putin’s imperial ambition and ideological confrontation, not just geopolitics. Without dramatic shifts in leadership or battlefield fortunes, peace will remain elusive.

A full recording of Professor Taylor's seminar can be viewed below:

In an era of increased transnational repression against dissidents, opposition groups need to become more effective in galvanizing support and avoiding suppression. These organizations are simultaneously losing critical institutional donors, as governments are becoming less inclined to donate to pro-democratic movements. This makes it more important than ever for such organizations to find out how to stimulate collective action among diasporic communities and uncover new outlets for donations. 

Therefore, CDDRL Postdoctoral Fellow Ivetta Sergeeva and her collaborator, Emil Kamalov (EUI), decided to start the OutRush project to survey Russians who have fled since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. By understanding the conditions that drive Russian emigrants to donate to activist organizations, Sergeeva and Kamalov’s research, presented in a recent CDDRL seminar, could prove vital to more effectively mobilizing diaspora communities.

The Russian government has expanded its criminalization of oppositional organizations since the 2022 invasion, increasingly labeling groups as “undesirable.” This designation is for organizations that are allegedly a threat to Russian security, making any collaboration with them illegal. For example, Russian citizen Alexey Malyarevsky was recently sentenced to prison for donating to Alexey Navalny’s “undesirable” Anti-Corruption Fund (FBK). With 70% of Russian emigrants being afraid of repression since the invasion, Sergeeva predicted that this designation would discourage emigrants from donating.

To test their hypothesis, Sergeeva and Kamalov surveyed respondents annually through OutRush about their willingness to donate to theoretical organizations that fit various criteria. They utilized nonmonetary incentives, such as promising to send reports to respondents, which lowered the cost of the study.

Contrary to expectations, there was a positive correlation between the criminalization of an organization and the diaspora’s willingness to donate. The “undesirable” designation did not deter support as intended. Instead, it served as a marker that the organization was effective in its opposition, incentivizing donations. This effect was especially prominent among those residing in countries outside of Russia’s sphere of influence. At the same time, it diminished in host countries friendly to Russia, reflecting the continued fear of transnational repression. Furthermore, donor anonymity and organizational transparency further incentivized support. 

The very means through which authoritarian regimes attempt to suppress dissent — the criminalization of opposition groups — can actually be used to galvanize diasporic support. Sergeeva and Kamalov’s research serves as evidence that activist organizations have the opportunity to mobilize emigrants discontented with the regimes they fled, despite oppression.