How should allies deal with a superpower they can no longer rely on? Former Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland joins CDDRL to discuss her new book, "Unreliable Boyfriend: An Insider's View of Dealing with a Chaotic Superpower, Plutocrats, and Other Complicated People."

Freeland has seen these questions from two sides. As a foreign correspondent, she covered the rise of Russia's oligarchs in the 1990s. As a senior Canadian official, she helped renegotiate the trade agreement between Canada, the U.S. and Mexico. The book draws on both careers to examine how power operates inside government, why trade, security and democracy can no longer be treated separately, and how democracies might build coalitions strong enough to resist authoritarian states and domestic oligarchs.

Freeman Spogli Institute (FSI) Satre Family Senior Fellow and Mosbacher Director of CDDRL, Kathryn Stoner will moderate the conversation, focusing on democratic resilience, international political economy, U.S. foreign policy, Russia and Ukraine.  Audience Q&A will follow. Books will be available for purchase at the event.  

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Chrystia Freeland is Canada’s former Deputy Prime Minister, Foreign Minister, and Minister of Finance. With a background in Russian history, she first gained international acclaim as a foreign correspondent and editor for the Financial Times and Reuters, and later served as the deputy editor of The Globe and Mail. Her first book, Sale of the Century, told the story of the struggle between reformers and oligarchs in 1990s Russia. Her book, Plutocrats, established her as a leading voice on global economic inequality. After over a decade in federal politics, including a pivotal role in renegotiating the CUSMA, Freeland resigned from Parliament in early 2026. She has since served as a Resident Fellow at Harvard's Institute of Politics and an unpaid economic adviser to the Ukrainian government.

After the Arab Spring, Tunisia emerged as the one success story to transition to democracy, winning a Nobel Peace Prize in 2015 for its focus on inclusion and power-sharing. How, then, did its democracy collapse in 2021?

Drawing on unique interviews with senior Tunisian officials, alongside three nationally representative surveys of the population, The Rise and Fall of Tunisian Democracy points to an overemphasis on compromise, consensus, and power-sharing. Although power-sharing institutions can be useful at the start of a transition, the book finds that extending them beyond that point can lead democracy to unravel by frustrating voters and spurring the rise of populists and extremists. The book takes an in-depth look at Tunisia's transition and then explores how far the theory travels through a quantitative analysis of all democratic transitions between 1942–2020. Overall, the book reveals the dark side of power-sharing, broadening our understanding of the causes of populism, polarization, and democratic breakdown.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Sharan Grewal (PhD, Princeton 2018) is an Associate Professor of Government at American University and a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. His research examines revolutions and democratic transitions, particularly in the Arab world. His first book, Soldiers of Democracy? Military Legacies and the Arab Spring (Oxford University Press, 2023), explores why militaries support or thwart democratic transitions. It received APSA’s Best Book in MENA Politics Award and the Robert Jervis Best International Security Book Award. His second book, The Rise and Fall of Tunisian Democracy: Populism, Polarization, and the Perils of Power-Sharing, is forthcoming with Cambridge University Press in October 2026. His work has also been published in the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, and British Journal of Political Science, among other journals. His research has received funding from the National Science Foundation, the Henry Luce Foundation, the John Templeton Foundation, the Smith Richardson Foundation, and the Defense Security Cooperation University.

How has Russia sustained its confrontation with the West since 2022, and at what cost? In her new book, Hanna Notte argues the Kremlin is waging a war not only on Ukraine but over the global order itself.

Notte traces how Russia adapted after the invasion. It worked around sanctions, built new partnerships, cultivated support across the Global South and tried to deepen divisions within Western democracies. Her account combines policy analysis with field reporting from more than a dozen countries and interviews with officials, facilitators and ordinary people drawn into Russia's agenda.

The book also examines the domestic consequences. Notte finds that Putin's focus on confronting the West has distorted Russia's economy and moved the country from a tacit dictatorship toward a full one. She suggests Putin may outlast the West, but has gambled Russia's future in the process.

Satre Family Senior Fellow and Mosbacher Director of CDDRL, Kathryn Stoner will moderate the discussion, which will cover Russian statecraft, the durability of autocratic regimes under pressure and what Russia's strategy means for the U.S., Europe and the Global South. Audience Q&A will follow.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Hanna Notte is the Director of the Eurasia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies. She is also a senior associate (non-resident) with the Center for Strategic and International Studies and with the Kennan Institute. Notte's expertise is in Russia's foreign and security policy. She holds a doctorate and Master's degree in international relations from Oxford University and a BA in social and political sciences from Cambridge University. During her doctoral studies, she was a visiting researcher with the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Carnegie Moscow Center. Based in Berlin, she regularly writes for outlets such as the Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, the New York Times, and ZEIT, among others.

Join the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law for a conversation with Maria Kuznetsova and Dan Storyev, Russian journalists in exile and co-authors of How to Survive Authoritarianism: A Russian's Phrasebook for Everyday Life in America (Liveright, 2026). The book argues that Americans confronting a rising tide of authoritarianism don't need to invent a vocabulary for it: Russians already built one over generations of contending with illiberal rule. Kuznetsova and Storyev compile roughly 100 Russian words and phrases, from "power vertical," used to describe hypercentralized governance, to "mnogohodovochka," a term that mocks misguided state initiatives, tracing how this vernacular of double-speak helped ordinary citizens "make sense of how illiberalism takes shape." The discussion will bring that framework to the American context, examining the mechanics of authoritarian consolidation and the strategies available for resisting it, and drawing comparisons between the Russian experience and current U.S. politics. Satre Family Senior Fellow & Mosbacher Director Kathryn Stoner will be moderating the discussion.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Maria Kuznetsova is a human rights expert from Russia who tackles political prosecution and anti-war repressions. She has expertise in developing international advocacy campaigns and engaging in strategic communication with journalists and public figures on human rights issues, especially in the context of Russian war against Ukraine. Kuznetsova received a master of public policy from Harvard Kennedy School and is based in San Francisco.

Dan Storyev grew up between Russia and the US. An Oxford graduate, he has been working as a journalist and researcher for years, specialising on writing about the former Soviet space for English-language outlets. His writing appeared in the Financial Times, New York Times and Foreign Policy amongst others. Dan covers human rights and conflicts and has reported from hotspots all over the world, including Ukraine and Myanmar. Dan writes the English newsletter at OVD-Info, a leading Russian human rights watchdog, which Dan also represented at conferences, radio, TV and more. Dan had worked as a lecturer and tutor for a decade — his diverse experience includes guest lectures at Oxford, Ghent and KCL.